I forgot to add, this is not going to be about magick vs tech. While that is a natural consequence of the shift, the solutions and problems created by those solutions are the focus of the plot. Humans have alligned themselves with magickal folk in all sorts of beneficial and occasionally parasitic relationships. Some have shunned all tech and regressed to a more reliable state; others have gone the opposite direction and have placed all their hope in eliminating the new arrivals. The same goes for the magickal folk who have arrived. There is a fair distribution of benevolent and malevolent entities.
Have to mention Robert Charles Wilson’s Darwinia: A Novel of a Very Different Twentieth Century
Wouldn’t canceling all electromagnetic activity in the area result in the immediate death of every living thing? Every cell in your body is dependent on electromagnetic interactions between molecules. The firing of muscle and nerve cells is triggered when ion channels open and allow previously built up electromagnetic potentials across the cell membrane to equalize. Anything that’s able to scramble the operation of electronic devices is going to have pretty bad effects on anything with a nervous system as well. I seem to recall previous threads around here somewhere that concluded that it would be impossible to change the laws of physics to prevent electricity from operating without also ending all life as we know it.
Not to mention the fact that canceling all electromagnetic ability will also result in a field of impenetrable darkness. Light is an electromagnetic wave just like radio is.
Thanks for the input Andrew, I’m afraid that I’ve a very poor grasp of physics in general. If I’m not mistaken there are many devices that cancel out electromagnetic activity in general. I believe they are referred to as “pinches”. They don’t seem to bother life forms too much. Perhaps they operate on specific frequencies.
First, this scenario is far from original: it’s been done to death. My personal favorite version of it is in Sean Stewart’s wonderful books that follow a similar premise.
Second, don’t worry about that. As I just said, there are some wonderful books that use a similar premise. As long as you use this as the backdrop for a great story and don’t assume that it’s the great story itself, you should be fine.
How has this affected society? There are some things that should be considered:
-How do major religions deal with this change? I would suspect that fundamentalist faiths treat this as the End Days and recast all the magical creatures as servants of Satan (or their own boogeyman). More reformist/progressive faiths will seek to live in harmony with the magical creatures. The Catholic Church will have a closely-reasoned, completely unpredictable response to the creatures, although there will be the danger of a rift in the church over the issue.
-Politics will follow similar lines. The President (or whoever is left president after the apocalypse) might, after a town’s inhabitants are slaughtered, launch an all-out war against the magical creatures. The war will be fought to a stalemate, and the military, having reached the breaking point, could mutiny. A civil war will have broken out.
-Some entrepeneurs are figuring out how to travel seamlessly between the magical and electrical zones; inventions might include golemcars, such as chariots drawn by zombie-horses on which the engine’s gears withdraw when magic is in control and the horses’ legs withdraw when electricity is in control, or something.
Daniel
Also, keep in mind that magic is magic: the magical creatures might be able to knock out electrical devices in some way that humans don’t yet understand, a way that prevents machinery from operating without killing organisms. Maybe, for example, something about the magical creatures causes metal to become a poor conductor of electricity.
Daniel
A “pinch” is an Electromagnetic Pulse generator, or EMP. An EM pulse is a massive blast of short-lived electromagnetic field; exactly what you’re assuming the magickal field is negating (or negated by). They don’t work exactly the way Hollywood might like them to but I’ll let some of the real science types explain exactly why, because I confess I don’t perfectly understand them myself. They’re a definate plot possibility for you, though.
Also, you’ve stated both that magickal fields negate electric ones and vice versa; how do we decide which? In other words, what happens to a powerful wizard walking through nuclear power plant? How do we determine who negates who? If it’s as simple as deciding that the more powerful negates the less powerful, then a conflict between the two would seem to be little more than each side moving its trump cards around.
Can several weak fields override a strong field? Maybe an electric fence can destroy a single zombie, but the undead seem to move in packs- can a horde of weak zombies overpower that same fence?
For that matter, is there a general loss in power associated with negating a field? Does negating that zombie’s magickal field cause an extra drain on the fence (that might alert someone within the fence) or is that fence perfectly powered until the zombies finally override it? Or, looking from the other side, a powerful wizard would easily overpower a laptop computer, but would doing so cause a slight drain on his magickal power?
Can those with magick who do not depend on it for life switch it off? Could a powerful wizard enter an electrical field undetected, then “power up” in the midst of the field?
An EMP works by releasing a blast of electromagnetic energy having a very wide range of frequencies. Every bit of metal that is in the path of the EMP acts as an antenna, converting some of this energy into electricity. Modern electronics are full of tiny, delicate semiconductor junctions easily destroyed by excess electrical energy, so an EMP is effective at permanently disabling unshielded microelectronics.
The effect of magic disabling technology could be handwaved as some kind of effect that acts similar to an EMP in that metal objects near a magic-powered entity start to spontaneously pick up small amounts of static electricity. This won’t directly harm living creatures, although the effect might be noticeable as static electric shocks and arcing off metal surfaces if you’re very close to something very magical. It will interfere with and eventually wreck anything based on semiconductor electronics. Simpler electrical devices, like a flashlight, would be a lot harder to disable than a computer. It would probably also be possible to design electronics that are more resistant to the effect, “Magic-hardened” electronics, similar to how it’s currently possible to design radiation-hardened electronics.
I also wouldn’t worry too much about the exact physics involved, so long as you at least make sure to be consistent in exactly what the effect does.
Of course, non-electronic technology would be completely unaffected by this. Stopping a modern computer from working is one thing. Stopping a steam engine, or preventing spring-powered clockwork devices from working would probably require changing the laws of physics to an extent that life as we know it would be impossible.
This is awesome. I am greatly indebted to you guys for this.
I Think I’ve got some anwers for a few of the scenarios posted here that might help out in figuring out a cohesive theroy of how magick and tech interact. I have separated out my magickal folk into three group based on certain criteria.
**Magickally Powered Contructs ** or MPC
These beings are purely dependant on magickal sources for their animation. They cannot USE or APPLY magick. They are not normall sentient beings and are normally some sort of created construct. Examples would include zombies, golems, certain types of spells, homunculi etc. This category would also include magickally powered devices.
Magickal Users or MU
This is the broadest group and contains all beings that are NOT in and of themselves Magickal and can use and apply magick to serve their needs or desires. MUs are capable of functioning in a zero intensity magickal field but will not have any of their extraordinary abilities available to them in such a condition. They are dependant upon the intensity of the field to begin all applications of magick, (neccessitating a minimal level to begin the process of gathering more intense fields to themselves).
Purely Magickal Beings or PMB
The smallest and rarest type, PMBs both generate their own field and can use and manipulate the ambient fields to apply and use magick. These are normally extremely high level beings, such as gods, demons or mages who have transformed themselves into a body of magickal construct.
cumulative effects it seems reasonable to me that a gathering of magickal folk will increase the intensity of the field where each field overlaps. The radius of each field is unaffected, thus providing only a token increase in range. It also seems reasonable that a lower level being might draw upon the field of a higher one.
It should also be noted that this isn’t intended to be an “us vs them” type scenario, and that I’m trying to simply establish a reasonable and logical set of rules to apply to my world.