Heinlein’s Glory Road makes use of advanced technology alongside magic and even calls the latter magic. Heinlein then sort of shuffles back into the realms of science fiction by having a character say something along the lines (and I’m quoting from memory here, so don’t criticize me too harshly if I mess up) “Magic is a collection of techniques that work, though we haven’t yet discovered why.”
Nice try Mr. H. The spells and potions and whatnot could never be reconciled with any coherent science, and Glory Road should be considered fantasy, far outside the realms of pure S.F.
I don’t know. I want to say “It depends on the fantasy, and how ‘magic’ is treated in that fantasy,” but I’m having trouble backing that up. It seems to me that science/technology, even if it’s fictional, needs to have some mechanism by which it works, while magic does not.
Mass warps spacetime … seems pretty magical to me. I do not understand the mechanism of how that happens. It just does. Sci fi pretends that there are understandable mechanisms for the fantastical things that occur. Fantasy pretends that there is no possibility of understanding a mechanism I guess, but it still has things that happen, following observable rules, without understanding how. It just does.
To me it is the same game engine with different skins. Which is the point above about Star Wars. Space ships and droids as the skin and it is called sci fi.
Julian May’s Galactic Milieu / Many-Colored Land series qualify. They both include aliens, time-travel, FTL, and a number of other tropes, but the predominant “technology” is based around various psionic abilities and tech. Sure, it’s laid out as a scientific discipline, being able to be analyzed, trained, quantified and the like, but it’s still fundamentally magic. Some things can be replicated via tech, and some cannot.
Not being totally realistic isn’t the same as magical, is it? We don’t have the ability to genetically modify humans to have gills allowing them to breath under water, but would a science fiction story with such technology be at least plausible rather than magical?
Maybe. Maybe, for reasons we don’t know yet, installing gills on a human is completely impossible, and always will be, which means that a gilled human in SF is as “magical” as FTL travel. “Plausible” and “magical” are just points on a scale, between “unknown, but could be possible” and “unknown, but probably impossible.”
That’s not always true, especially recently. Most modern fantasy writers grew up playing D&D and other roleplaying games and were strongly influenced by them, so while magic exists in their world, it tends to follows clearly defined rules and mechanisms. Look at Brandon Sanderson or Jim Butcher, for example. In their books, magic is essentially a field of science they happened to invent.
Andre Norton was kind of interesting on this issue, because her stories mixed together technology, magic and psychic powers and treated them essentially the same. They were all just different ways of accomplishing a task and could be mixed-and-matched at will. Fighting a spirit? Shoot it with a ray gun, it might work where bullets won’t. Need to power your hi-tech base? Plug a witch into it. Your telepath needs more broadcast power? Wire them into your starship’s communication system.
Which brings up another thing; for some authors (like Norton) technology and magic are basically just props to serve the plot. They just don’t bother with coming up with an explanation for how anything works, it just does.
Also, there’s been a lot of cross-contamination in general between sci-fi and fantasy; in the case of fantasy magic being often treated as a sci-fi style “alternate physics” as a result. Heck, quite a few magic users use outright sci fi style force fields and energy beams.
As for more traditional ideas about magic, I’ve heard it said that in many ways classical magic can be considered a matter of anthropomorphizing the universe, and having it work. You can talk to the universe and if you know the right way to do it, the world will obey. A warding symbol will keep off evil not because it projects some sort of force, but because it commands evil to not approach; more like a “No Entry” sign than a force field. Classic magic often works more along the line of rules, “use symbol or ritual X to get result Y” not “apply force X for result Y”.
To be fair though, the author really leans into this and has fun with it.
The Infinite Improbability Drive is a wonderful new method of crossing interstellar distances in a few seconds, without all that tedious mucking about in hyperspace. As the Improbability Drive reaches infinite improbability, it passes through every conceivable point in every conceivable universe almost simultaneously. So you’re never sure where you’ll end up or even what species you’ll be when you get there. It’s therefore important to dress accordingly. The Drive was invented following research into finite improbability often used to break the ice at parties by making all the molecules in the hostess’s undergarments leap one foot to the left in accordance with the theory of indeterminacy. Many physicists said they wouldn’t stand for that sort of thing, partly because it debased science, but mostly because they didn’t get invited to those sort of parties. - Douglas Adams
Which is basically how computer programming works. There are plenty of modern fantasy writers who have seen a parallel between casting spells and writing code.
Yes, but it tends to be the minority of sci-fi works. Arthur C. Clarke probably did more hard sci-fi than most others. His short story Technical Error is a good example. Putting aside the question of whether it’s scientifically accurate, the things that happen are not just scientifically plausible based on current knowledge, but the hypothetical science is actually explained in the story. And certainly much if not all of 2001: A Space Odyssey is hard science, though some might question whether that applies to the ending.
But an example of sci-fi short stories that really are basically magic, at least in the sense that no explanation is given or even hypothesized, there’s The Little Black Bag by C.M. Kornbluth, and the famous Mimsy Were the Borogoves by Henry Kuttner and C.L. Moore, writing under the pseudonym Lewis Padgett. Both involve fantastical devices from the distant future accidentally sent into the present day, in the former a medical bag, in the latter, children’s toys.
That’s an interesting analogy. Thanks to my older brother, I first learned programming (in FORTRAN) when I was only about 10 or 12, and that was kind of how I saw it. You couldn’t directly tell the computer what to do, you instead cast a series of spells that achieved the desired result. Appropriate to this view, the first complete program I ever wrote involved casting spells that caused an IBM 7040 to write poetry!
No, it wouldn’t be plausible. The amount of dissolved oxygen in a volume of water is much smaller than the amount of dissolved oxygen in the same volume of air. So the surface area of the gills would need to be many times the surface area of the interior of the lungs. Human gills would be like having parachutes growing out of your neck.
Actually the biggest problem with giving humans gills is hypothermia. Water conducts and absorbs heat much better than air, and a breathing organ by the nature of its function has a very large surface area. Not a problem for coldblooded creatures like fish, but a mammal given gills would die really quickly from all the body heat being drawn out of them.
Star Wars, as already mentioned more than once, is what I call “Science Fantasy”. It has the trappings and tropes of science fiction, but makes no real effort to use real science. The Fantastic Four comic (and a lot of the Marvel Universe) is the same way.
Actually, there’s a sort of continuum between Science Fantasy and Science Fiction. I always felt that Silver Age DC comics were a trifle less fantasy than Marvel’s – they actually and consciously tried to incorporate actual science facts into their stories, and some of the stories were science logic puzzles, instead of simple punch it out action stories set in a science fiction-y universe.
And you could argue that a lot of science fiction stories that allow a limited number of things clearly beyond real technology or scientific explanation – FTL, teleportation, time travel, etc. etc. – are really on the Science Fiction/Science Fantasy spectrum, but much closer to the Science Fiction end.
Heck, both Marvel and DC (and other comic book companies) eventually blended in magic with the science fiction. Not surprising – they’re cranking out stories every month. They can’t use well thought-out hard science fiction stories for all of them.
A book that I liked is ‘Celestial Matters’ by Richard Garfinkel.
Set in a universe where the “scientific” ideas of the ancient greeks are the actual laws of nature.
While having some aspects of an alternate history, it is mainly a work of science fantasy depicting a world where spells, pragmatically used by some to achieve the same results as the use of technology, call upon a spectrum of major to minor deities of the present to the past that are functioning when called upon or omni-present and restricted to local use or having a greater area of influence. Spells are not toxin-free and can have an ill effect on the environment when the appropriate deities and if certain practices are not considered, disaster can follow.
Just yesterday I saw a comic book panel on Facebook, where Sue Richards was taunting Reed by saying that something was “Magic! Magic magic magic magic magic!”, and Reed was stolidly replying “I don’t believe in magic” like a great big killjoy.
Of course a lot of the comments were dissing Reed for being stupid, when both his worst enemy (Dr. Doom) and one of his friends (Dr. Strange) are powerful magicians. Not to mention his nanny (Agatha Harkness). How can he not believe in magic when it’s right there in front of him? He’s such a dummy, how did he ever get a sexy lady like Sue, what a nerd, this is why Doom will always be superior, and so forth. As the more annoying elements of fandom are wont to do.
I think it’s more a failure of imagination on the part of the writers, than any kind of personality flaw in Reed. You see that in a lot of “science fantasy” narratives, scientists who refuse to accept the supernatural even when it’s staring them in the face. And it doesn’t make sense. In the Marvel Universe, magic is unquestionably, unambiguously real, and someone as smart as Reed Richards would never deny that. To him it would be just one more branch of science, and worthy of thorough study.
He knows there are people doing things they call “magic” but to him there is no “supernatural”: it happens; it follows observable rules; it is no more or less than a poorly understood science.