dont think star trek fits. you probably mean the pah-wraiths trapped in the fire caves by the prophets. probably used some kind of advanced tech that is never explained in the series, that is beyond human understanding. more similar to ORI and milkyway/pegasus ascended beings, how they arnt aware of each other, is barred from entering the galaxy.
Star Wars doesn't really do 'super advanced technology'. Like they've got space ships and hyperdrive and laser swords and shit, but they don't treat it like high-tech stuff, they treat it like we treat cars and swords.
Any universe where they have super advanced tech they'll treat it like we treat cars, because cars are also super advanced tech, it's just a tech you see daily and are familiar. How do you expect characters in a super technologically advanced world to react? They see that every day, it's not news to them.
I think the point is that the tech doesn't materially change most starwars characters interactions from
present day. It's not really scifi because the science / tech doesn't shape how the characters interact dramatically.
If you give the characters some real scifi-tech like put them inside computers, or have backup throwaway clone bodies, or jack them in to a hive mind, or give them time travel or alternate universes then the whole dramatic context of the character interactions has to change and the story has to be shaped by the technology to some degree. It'd likely be a bit more alien as our innate sense of constraints and jeopardy doesn't apply.
Only really the deathstar is anything different tech wise - it is only used once, and becomes more like a part of the maguffin.
The other fantastic dramatic features that starwars does use that are alien to us - precognition, mind control, reincarnation(sortof) - are magic rather than tech.
We don't treat iphones and AI like we treat cars. Star Wars has literal instantaneous communication anywhere in the galaxy and literal thinking, feeling machines, and they're like 'lawl my 9 year old built a stupid robot that speaks 4,000 languages with some plans he downloaded from them thar interwebs!' Technology, like everything else, is a spectrum - except in Star Wars. There's no sense that anyone in the SW universe is going 'Meh we've had starships for 10,000 years, but these new laser swords, man those are some hot shit!' or whatever. There aren't tech enthusiasts in Star Wars; you get a little bit of the gear-head enthusiasm for ships, but no one is raving about the new must-have gadget or that cool new meta-material they read about. They treat technology in Star Wars like we treat trees: just a brute fact of life with the occasional redeeming quality. Technology is change, and even if it wouldn't change significantly over the course of the various shows and movies, there's no evidence that it has ever changed.
So? It's still super advanced technology from our point of view. Next you'll tell me that Dune, Warhammer 40k or the Empire trilogy by Isaac Asimov are not advanced technology either because they're stagnant too.
Technology is not the main focus of Star Wars, but they do have super advanced technology.
Like hunks of metal, but that's not how I treat smartphones or fusion reactors or whatever. Technology is change, and there is no evidence in Star Wars that technology ever changes. They treat supercomputers with world-altering computational power compared to what we have like old console TVs from the 70s that you have to slap occasionally to make work again. Doesn't seem like high-tech to me.
People in 2025 don't really do 'super advanced technology'. Like they've got super powerful handheld computers on them at all times and all of human knowledge accessible at all times and planes and shit, but they don't treat it like high-tech stuff, they treat it like we treat carriages and books.
They don't treat it like high tech, they treat it like their granddad's old beater of a car that somehow never dies or fails to get you where you're going, but somehow never does a particularly good job either. They treat technology like we treat trees: a brute fact of life with some occasional redeeming qualities.
Just because they don't treat it like it's advanced, doesn't mean it isn't advanced from our, the audience's, perspective. Most tech in most sci-fi works is treated as a fact of life, no one goes "holy shit, they just invented hovercars!".
We're talking about technology in the context of a story here, so whether or not it's high tech to the reader is besides the point. Which, as I was trying to elucidate, is that what matters is how the characters treat technology relative to magic, not the audience.
Guy's over here talking about a story involving tech and magic and you're talking about how sci-fi works? I think you're confused about how genres work.
I think you inevitably face the whole “magic IS advanced technology” thing. If you actually want them to be different things, you have to have some answer to this.
Isn't it always different things? "Magic" being a different set of rules for how the world works. Technology being the things that can be achieved given the rules. And, whether advanced technology is influenced and how, depend on those rules, lore and culture.
If for example magic is only available to some people with the ability or what not. Technology will always be available regardless.
Stargate SG-1 is a great example where no matter what the magic is, it’s eventually revealed to be technology underneath - just really advanced technology. If you take all limits off science, it’s easy for the two to begin blending. They even do the “only available to some people” thing as technology: certain people share a gene with the ancient ancestors who made the high-technology, and so it recognizes and activates for them and not others.
Hm. I was thinking of the problem in terms of "what is", and not so much "what it looks like". SG-1 is a good example, where the argument is that there is no actual magic. Its "sufficiently advanced = looks like magic" not "... = magic".
I interpreted the question to consider actual existence of magic. So, I suppose it hinges on how "magic" is actually defined. Where I thought it would be some kind of forces / energy that is manipulated by will or tools. Hm... I suppose this is a lot more nuanced.
"I do think there are some things we don't understand. If we'd be back in time a thousand years, trying to explain this place to people, they could only accept it in terms of magic."
"Then perhaps it is magic. The magic of the human heart, focused and made manifest by technology. Every day you here create greater miracles than a burning bush."
And then...
"We are dreamers, shapers, singers, and makers. We study the mysteries of laser and circuit, crystal and scanner, holographic demons and invocations of equations. These are the tools we employ and we know many things."
The second Mistborn series by Brandon Sanderson gets close. It's a setting where magic meets wild west tech, including guns, cars, and electricity.
I've heard that his next trilogy in the setting will have more of an 1980s tech level.
A couple of Sanderson's short stories touch on space ships, computers, and magic.
EDIT: I didn't answer the question. Yes, I think it can work. I'm also a huge fan of Brian McClellan's Powder Mage books. This mixes musket level tech and industrialization with magic.
Shadowrun kind of does the same. It's not really super-advanced, since it's cyberpunk, but it's cyberpunk with magic. And it's my favorite setting, it's such a cool idea.
A lot of cyberpunk tech is vastly beyond our current abilities, though. They treat getting a new fully functional cybernetic arm like we treat getting silicone tits.
Why wouldn't it work? Stories usually fail because the plot is bad or because they're badly told, and it's not that hard to maintain verisimilitude just because seemingly opposite ideas like magic and advanced technology are combined - just communicate what your magic and technology can and cannot do in broad strokes and stick to it, and avoid asspulls that make no sense and/or undermine the character beats you're showing. But you get exactly the same issues in a story with only magic or only advanced technology.
Absolutely, there are lots of examples, but the first that comes to mind is Warhammer 40k, they have super advanced technology and magic coexisting and sometimes intermingling.
In Terry Pratchett's Discworld the wizards of the Unseen University built a possibly sentient supercomputer out of an ant farm (much faster and more powerful than previous druid-built computers based on standing stones, which were mostly limited to calendar calculations and required regular human sacrifices).
The Agathean Empire at the edge of the disc has little boxes with little imps inside which can paint a picture of what you point the box at in mere seconds.
Later, some Ankh-Morpork entrepreneurs trained imps to paint even faster on highly flammable nitrocellulose reels and, moving them very fast and lighting them from behind with excited salamanders, invented moving pictures (and promptly accidentally almost let the Things from the Dungeon Dimensions enter the disc).
Even later, some other Ankh-Morpork entrepreneurs created a continent-spanning network of semaphore telegraphs, even managing to send pictures through it.
All while some Dwarves in Ankh-Morpork invented movable type, while getting in trouble with the wizards, who're well aware that you can't use that to print magic books, for the type will remember...
And, all along, deep under their mountains, the Überwaldian dwarves have been digging up and using ancient Devices to power whole cities...
This was super common in the 1960s and 70s when hippies where the ones writing sci fi and the thought was that technological advancement would also come along with spiritual advancement to the point of supernatural powers. Star Wars, Dune, 2001: A Space Odyssey, and many others freely blend the supernatural with the technological. Sure it's not D&D magic with fireballs and shit but it's still magic. Further, if you want to look at a modern IP with this vibe look at World of Warcraft, where there are aliens from space with spaceships and shit with one of the most stereotypical fantasy settings you can imagine.
The black ocean series does a good job if blending the two together. But it sort of sets them in opposition to each other. Interstellar travel is made possible on futuristic spaceships by using magic to plunge the ship partially into another dimension, shortening the relative distance between stars. But unless the it is specially shielded against it, magic ruins and destroys technology.
Definitely, although I think it's most interesting if the advanced technology is based on the magic.
Like, let's say there is a world where there are magic plants that can heal you, people who can magically scry nearby locations if they meditate deeply, and stones that levitate in the moonlight.
And there's an evil empire that exploits the fuck out of this by industrially farming the plants to create a highly concentrated serum, removing people's brains and hooking them up to computers for magical sensing abilities, and attaching fragments of moon rocks to the levitating stones to create antigravity. Creating invulnerable flying supersoldiers with impossibly good radar powered by brain backpacks.
I always liked the Dresden Files take on technology and magic. It's not that they can't exist in the same universe, it's that magic causes absolute haywire with circuitry. So you can use technology, or you can use magic, but not both.
As in entertainment - yes. But when it comes to realistic representation and imagination as sci-fi then no.
it's really difficult as all magic that we understand becomes science. To create this artificial gap the world has to answer - why can't science understand, reverse engineer and bend magic?
Most scientific progression is very rapid. If fireballs exist then there will be a giant 1,000 rpm fireball machine by the end of the week and that's no longer magic as we see it.
So there has to be a strong artificial limitation why magic exists and cannot be understood and harvested which is really hard to write in scifi. You have to introduce religion, spiritual mysticism or some sort of societal control mechanism that prevents reverse engineering magic which is really hard to do in a way that satisfies the readers cognitive dissonance.
Personally I have found stories like that like Warhammer 40k, Star Wars etc. But without a big, establishrd name it's so hard to convince the reader. I recently finished the wheel of time and really couldn't get over this which ruined the entire premise for me.
In Attack on Titan, magic (titan powers) had historically an edge over humanity, but the story is in part about how Humanity's technology has advanced to almost surpass those magical powers and shift the power balance.
In dungeons and dragons there is a type of hybrid character you can play called an Artificer who treats magic more like technology, and there are a ton of examples in popular media that others have mentioned. I do think you have to determine how and if you'll keep them distinct if that's important to your plot, but if they developed alongside eachother maybe the technology of that world relies on magic to work.
Or maybe your magic relies on elder gods that don't like the mortal hubris of critiquing the gods works so attempts to unravel magic gets you cursed or worse.
I think they can go together and the way you fit them can even become a plot point!
The Psalms of Isaak series did this very well at the beginning -- starts off with a magic fantasy land but as you read you realize that there were forebearers with immense science and technology, and weaves a conflict between the two.
You know what, basically any SCP will have varying levels of scifi and fantasy tropes, or sometimes none at all. Bottom line with SCPs is that anything is possible.
We have high technology because we don’t have anything else to leverage.
I suspect a world with strong magic is liable to leverage that to the exclusion of technology.
A now-ended iseki story on Reddit’s HFY subreddit called “Wait, is this just GATE?” Asks the question of what would happen if a universe of only technology and no magic (ours) made contact with a universe of pretty much only magic and almost no technology beyond that found in the Middle Ages. It contains some tropes (used mainly as comedic relief or irony) and plenty of references to current magical-universe plot elements from games and novels, but is a surprisingly fresh and compelling examination of the cross-universe idea.
Absolutely. Read the nightlord series, just skip through the first half of book one, it's the first thing the author ever wrote and could have used better editing for sure. High tech kicks in at book 3
DCEU/MCU does this alot. Klarion the chaos lord use chaos magic(different from wanda's magic) to control starro nanotech, they call it techno-sorcery/magic-tech. but this will never occurs in sci-fi though, since magic isnt really a thing(maginery) when technology and science is used to explain the nature of the universe is involved. dark eleves and ASGARDIANS use magic and tech together.
magic is basically making things impossible to a possibility(probability manipulation through energy) with limitations depending on the type of cinema/comic/media universe that it is in.
or castlevania(the magical castle that use technology powered by magic)
Tad Williams did a decent job in "War of the flowers"
There was tech comparable to early 2000's (smartphones, electricity, cars, etc) but was powered by magic, and magic itself was still capable of being used.
Absolutely yes. One of my favorite anime is GATE. It has a portal open from a alternate world at Roman level technology with legions and classical architecture, but it has dragons, elves, and magic and they send an army through to invade modern day Japan. The counter-attack is insane. Do a google search for "massacre of alnus hill"
What about it specifically do you dislike? This type of setting definitely invites questioning by the audience and can break immersion, but I'm curious about your take on it.
I think this is the greater unpopular opinion I have, but here I go: It's something more personal rater than anything. Since child I've always fund kinda stupid that a civilization that has ships with space travel capabilities still using swords to fight sigh LASER swords. I always felt Star Wars like a mediaval story, it have swords, magic, incest, politics, and the sci-fi stuff is a big flex tape. I'm pretty sure that without it, Star Wars wouldn't never be the success that it is.
You might be glad to know that there’s only one scene involving the Force in all of Andor, and it’s nowhere near central to the plot. Cassian himself is a skeptic.
Or you might not care at all, and be sick of people telling you how good Andor is. Whatever your opinion is, it’s valid.
Naaah, man, you can't come with that kind of logic here, but I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt and say yes, let's say that they do not use guns because they can make holes in the spaceship, would that be a problem? I don't think so, since there is oxygen in the space that star wars presents us. I've always loved how the Death Star explode.
Like Star Wars?
Dune as well.
Warhammer 40k
Yeah, there are a lot of examples out there.
Tbf, in Dune all the "magic-y" bits get "scientific" explanations. I suppose you could argue the same with Star Wars and midichlorians.
Most magic books have a magic system that seems to be backed up by sciencey like explanations for their universe.
I can only think of a few that don't, like Harry Potter.
MTG books too, the magic sustains some kind of machinery or spell, so basically magic-based technology.
Star ocean, some final Fantasy, psychics in starship troopers
Sort of dr who? At least the time lords regenerating
i was thinking more some of episodes where they used magic, like the "old gods that predate the universe"
DS9?
dont think star trek fits. you probably mean the pah-wraiths trapped in the fire caves by the prophets. probably used some kind of advanced tech that is never explained in the series, that is beyond human understanding. more similar to ORI and milkyway/pegasus ascended beings, how they arnt aware of each other, is barred from entering the galaxy.
Wizards and spaceships? It'll never work.
Spelljammer was a late 80s cocaine-fueled fever dream.
Star Wars doesn't really do 'super advanced technology'. Like they've got space ships and hyperdrive and laser swords and shit, but they don't treat it like high-tech stuff, they treat it like we treat cars and swords.
The whole "used future" aesthetic is a big part of what gives Star Wars its vibe.
Any universe where they have super advanced tech they'll treat it like we treat cars, because cars are also super advanced tech, it's just a tech you see daily and are familiar. How do you expect characters in a super technologically advanced world to react? They see that every day, it's not news to them.
I think the point is that the tech doesn't materially change most starwars characters interactions from present day. It's not really scifi because the science / tech doesn't shape how the characters interact dramatically.
If you give the characters some real scifi-tech like put them inside computers, or have backup throwaway clone bodies, or jack them in to a hive mind, or give them time travel or alternate universes then the whole dramatic context of the character interactions has to change and the story has to be shaped by the technology to some degree. It'd likely be a bit more alien as our innate sense of constraints and jeopardy doesn't apply.
Only really the deathstar is anything different tech wise - it is only used once, and becomes more like a part of the maguffin.
The other fantastic dramatic features that starwars does use that are alien to us - precognition, mind control, reincarnation(sortof) - are magic rather than tech.
I never said Star Wars was sci-fi, it's not. But it does have super advanced tech which is the issue being discussed.
We don't treat iphones and AI like we treat cars. Star Wars has literal instantaneous communication anywhere in the galaxy and literal thinking, feeling machines, and they're like 'lawl my 9 year old built a stupid robot that speaks 4,000 languages with some plans he downloaded from them thar interwebs!' Technology, like everything else, is a spectrum - except in Star Wars. There's no sense that anyone in the SW universe is going 'Meh we've had starships for 10,000 years, but these new laser swords, man those are some hot shit!' or whatever. There aren't tech enthusiasts in Star Wars; you get a little bit of the gear-head enthusiasm for ships, but no one is raving about the new must-have gadget or that cool new meta-material they read about. They treat technology in Star Wars like we treat trees: just a brute fact of life with the occasional redeeming quality. Technology is change, and even if it wouldn't change significantly over the course of the various shows and movies, there's no evidence that it has ever changed.
So? It's still super advanced technology from our point of view. Next you'll tell me that Dune, Warhammer 40k or the Empire trilogy by Isaac Asimov are not advanced technology either because they're stagnant too.
Technology is not the main focus of Star Wars, but they do have super advanced technology.
How do you treat cars and swords.
Like hunks of metal, but that's not how I treat smartphones or fusion reactors or whatever. Technology is change, and there is no evidence in Star Wars that technology ever changes. They treat supercomputers with world-altering computational power compared to what we have like old console TVs from the 70s that you have to slap occasionally to make work again. Doesn't seem like high-tech to me.
People in 2025 don't really do 'super advanced technology'. Like they've got super powerful handheld computers on them at all times and all of human knowledge accessible at all times and planes and shit, but they don't treat it like high-tech stuff, they treat it like we treat carriages and books.
It's still high tech if it's vastly beyond our current technological ability.
They don't treat it like high tech, they treat it like their granddad's old beater of a car that somehow never dies or fails to get you where you're going, but somehow never does a particularly good job either. They treat technology like we treat trees: a brute fact of life with some occasional redeeming qualities.
Just because they don't treat it like it's advanced, doesn't mean it isn't advanced from our, the audience's, perspective. Most tech in most sci-fi works is treated as a fact of life, no one goes "holy shit, they just invented hovercars!".
We're talking about technology in the context of a story here, so whether or not it's high tech to the reader is besides the point. Which, as I was trying to elucidate, is that what matters is how the characters treat technology relative to magic, not the audience.
That's not how science fiction works.
Guy's over here talking about a story involving tech and magic and you're talking about how sci-fi works? I think you're confused about how genres work.
-Arthur C Clarke
Not the point of his quote
I think the MCU has done a good job with it, but I'd like to see a non-superhero version of it.
Star Wars
In the 'advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic' there is John Carter, Dune and a ton of other movies where the tech seems like magic.
There's a Netflix movie called Bright, which is futuristic fantasy.
It did in Final Fantasy VI with its Magitek
Most Final Fantasy games mix sci-fi and magic. Only the specifics of the lore around how it works changes with each FF universe.
I apologize if this sounds flippant, but it's FICTION.
Literally ANYTHING works if its written well enough...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadowrun
Came here to mention this. Good reference there, chummer.
Super advanced technology is magic. Hell, regular advanced technology is magic. Just run with it.
I think you inevitably face the whole “magic IS advanced technology” thing. If you actually want them to be different things, you have to have some answer to this.
Isn't it always different things? "Magic" being a different set of rules for how the world works. Technology being the things that can be achieved given the rules. And, whether advanced technology is influenced and how, depend on those rules, lore and culture.
If for example magic is only available to some people with the ability or what not. Technology will always be available regardless.
Stargate SG-1 is a great example where no matter what the magic is, it’s eventually revealed to be technology underneath - just really advanced technology. If you take all limits off science, it’s easy for the two to begin blending. They even do the “only available to some people” thing as technology: certain people share a gene with the ancient ancestors who made the high-technology, and so it recognizes and activates for them and not others.
Hm. I was thinking of the problem in terms of "what is", and not so much "what it looks like". SG-1 is a good example, where the argument is that there is no actual magic. Its "sufficiently advanced = looks like magic" not "... = magic".
I interpreted the question to consider actual existence of magic. So, I suppose it hinges on how "magic" is actually defined. Where I thought it would be some kind of forces / energy that is manipulated by will or tools. Hm... I suppose this is a lot more nuanced.
Techomages from Babylon 5 come to mind.
"I do think there are some things we don't understand. If we'd be back in time a thousand years, trying to explain this place to people, they could only accept it in terms of magic."
"Then perhaps it is magic. The magic of the human heart, focused and made manifest by technology. Every day you here create greater miracles than a burning bush."
And then...
"We are dreamers, shapers, singers, and makers. We study the mysteries of laser and circuit, crystal and scanner, holographic demons and invocations of equations. These are the tools we employ and we know many things."
I love B5 so much.
The second Mistborn series by Brandon Sanderson gets close. It's a setting where magic meets wild west tech, including guns, cars, and electricity.
I've heard that his next trilogy in the setting will have more of an 1980s tech level.
A couple of Sanderson's short stories touch on space ships, computers, and magic.
EDIT: I didn't answer the question. Yes, I think it can work. I'm also a huge fan of Brian McClellan's Powder Mage books. This mixes musket level tech and industrialization with magic.
The Sunlit Man is even more tech combined with magic. Read that one yet?
What other books do you like in that genre? I loved Mistborn/Cosmere realm and Powder Mage series.
The Sunlit Man was so good. I love books that have fast pacing right from the start, and trying to figure out how the world worked was so much fun.
Shadowrun kind of does the same. It's not really super-advanced, since it's cyberpunk, but it's cyberpunk with magic. And it's my favorite setting, it's such a cool idea.
A lot of cyberpunk tech is vastly beyond our current abilities, though. They treat getting a new fully functional cybernetic arm like we treat getting silicone tits.
Shadowrun… yeah it works
Edit: I just noticed somebody else mentioned shadowrun aswell, well: I second that.
Why wouldn't it work? Stories usually fail because the plot is bad or because they're badly told, and it's not that hard to maintain verisimilitude just because seemingly opposite ideas like magic and advanced technology are combined - just communicate what your magic and technology can and cannot do in broad strokes and stick to it, and avoid asspulls that make no sense and/or undermine the character beats you're showing. But you get exactly the same issues in a story with only magic or only advanced technology.
Absolutely, there are lots of examples, but the first that comes to mind is Warhammer 40k, they have super advanced technology and magic coexisting and sometimes intermingling.
It's not magic, it's extra-dimensional energy!
Sure, and by that definition it's also not magic in LoTR
Arcane
In Terry Pratchett's Discworld the wizards of the Unseen University built a possibly sentient supercomputer out of an ant farm (much faster and more powerful than previous druid-built computers based on standing stones, which were mostly limited to calendar calculations and required regular human sacrifices).
The Agathean Empire at the edge of the disc has little boxes with little imps inside which can paint a picture of what you point the box at in mere seconds.
Later, some Ankh-Morpork entrepreneurs trained imps to paint even faster on highly flammable nitrocellulose reels and, moving them very fast and lighting them from behind with excited salamanders, invented moving pictures (and promptly accidentally almost let the Things from the Dungeon Dimensions enter the disc).
Even later, some other Ankh-Morpork entrepreneurs created a continent-spanning network of semaphore telegraphs, even managing to send pictures through it.
All while some Dwarves in Ankh-Morpork invented movable type, while getting in trouble with the wizards, who're well aware that you can't use that to print magic books, for the type will remember...
And, all along, deep under their mountains, the Überwaldian dwarves have been digging up and using ancient Devices to power whole cities...
This was super common in the 1960s and 70s when hippies where the ones writing sci fi and the thought was that technological advancement would also come along with spiritual advancement to the point of supernatural powers. Star Wars, Dune, 2001: A Space Odyssey, and many others freely blend the supernatural with the technological. Sure it's not D&D magic with fireballs and shit but it's still magic. Further, if you want to look at a modern IP with this vibe look at World of Warcraft, where there are aliens from space with spaceships and shit with one of the most stereotypical fantasy settings you can imagine.
MCU does a good job. Iron Man is supposed to be science based, and Thor is a Norse god.
I think a better example than Thor would be Dr. Strange. Thor is just an alien, and his people have advanced technology, not actually magic.
Dr. Strange literally uses magic magic.
There's a ton of examples, so yeah.
My home brew ttrpg setting is exactly that
Artemis Fowl is a classic example of this. The fantasy world of fairies relies on super advanced technology in their world.
The black ocean series does a good job if blending the two together. But it sort of sets them in opposition to each other. Interstellar travel is made possible on futuristic spaceships by using magic to plunge the ship partially into another dimension, shortening the relative distance between stars. But unless the it is specially shielded against it, magic ruins and destroys technology.
It's a great series too. I'm overdue a catchup 🙂
A sequel to Arcanum that moves the timeline forward into the information age?
God I wish we had gotten more than one Arcanum game...
With out Tim it would never be the same even if the rights were not in limbo
Yes. Many wireless already exist.
Comic books do this all the time.
And Wandavision is about as nail on head as you are going to get
Magic is Supermans only real weakness aside from kryptonite
Warhamer 40k
Starcraft
League of Legends
Final fantasy
The Palladium Rifts RPG
Dune
Starwars
Sure, there are books like that and Shadowrun.
Clarke's Third Law: Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
Definitely, although I think it's most interesting if the advanced technology is based on the magic.
Like, let's say there is a world where there are magic plants that can heal you, people who can magically scry nearby locations if they meditate deeply, and stones that levitate in the moonlight.
And there's an evil empire that exploits the fuck out of this by industrially farming the plants to create a highly concentrated serum, removing people's brains and hooking them up to computers for magical sensing abilities, and attaching fragments of moon rocks to the levitating stones to create antigravity. Creating invulnerable flying supersoldiers with impossibly good radar powered by brain backpacks.
Yes and it sounds cool as hell
Yes. It's worked very well in the recent Zelda games
Starship mage also did it well.
Star Wars did for a while.
I always liked the Dresden Files take on technology and magic. It's not that they can't exist in the same universe, it's that magic causes absolute haywire with circuitry. So you can use technology, or you can use magic, but not both.
It becomes less of a thing as the series progresses.
Yes.
Sure. Maybe the advanced tech is powered by magic, maybe the "magic" is just lost advanced technology.
Isn't that what SheRa used? Magic was an energy to be harnessed by the technology.
"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."
-Arthur C. Clarke
— Pratchett, maybe..?
it exists, and is phenomenal:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rise_and_Fall_of_D.O.D.O.
Like most things by Philip K. Dick, the man who has more movies based on his writing than any other author?
As in entertainment - yes. But when it comes to realistic representation and imagination as sci-fi then no.
it's really difficult as all magic that we understand becomes science. To create this artificial gap the world has to answer - why can't science understand, reverse engineer and bend magic?
Most scientific progression is very rapid. If fireballs exist then there will be a giant 1,000 rpm fireball machine by the end of the week and that's no longer magic as we see it.
So there has to be a strong artificial limitation why magic exists and cannot be understood and harvested which is really hard to write in scifi. You have to introduce religion, spiritual mysticism or some sort of societal control mechanism that prevents reverse engineering magic which is really hard to do in a way that satisfies the readers cognitive dissonance.
Personally I have found stories like that like Warhammer 40k, Star Wars etc. But without a big, establishrd name it's so hard to convince the reader. I recently finished the wheel of time and really couldn't get over this which ruined the entire premise for me.
In Attack on Titan, magic (titan powers) had historically an edge over humanity, but the story is in part about how Humanity's technology has advanced to almost surpass those magical powers and shift the power balance.
Yes.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/35420518
The Starship’s Mage books do this.
In any other setting, when we take specific, tiny stones and carve patterns into them until they can perform tasks for us, we call it magic.
That's prevalent in the Might and Magic series. But (probably depending on the game) the high technology is often hidden from the common folk.
In dungeons and dragons there is a type of hybrid character you can play called an Artificer who treats magic more like technology, and there are a ton of examples in popular media that others have mentioned. I do think you have to determine how and if you'll keep them distinct if that's important to your plot, but if they developed alongside eachother maybe the technology of that world relies on magic to work.
Or maybe your magic relies on elder gods that don't like the mortal hubris of critiquing the gods works so attempts to unravel magic gets you cursed or worse.
I think they can go together and the way you fit them can even become a plot point!
Iron man and other Marvel movies started being very science. Oriented, but quickly combined magic or turned to magic
The Psalms of Isaak series did this very well at the beginning -- starts off with a magic fantasy land but as you read you realize that there were forebearers with immense science and technology, and weaves a conflict between the two.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Psalms_of_Isaak
https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/68872/dungeon-planet-the-healer-always-leaves-alive
Found that little gem a few weeks ago and I believe it fits your ask pretty well 1:1
Honestly almost as good as my other favorite the past few years, https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/63759/super-supportive, but the latter seems to be more active than the former.
You know what, basically any SCP will have varying levels of scifi and fantasy tropes, or sometimes none at all. Bottom line with SCPs is that anything is possible.
We have high technology because we don’t have anything else to leverage.
I suspect a world with strong magic is liable to leverage that to the exclusion of technology.
A now-ended iseki story on Reddit’s HFY subreddit called “Wait, is this just GATE?” Asks the question of what would happen if a universe of only technology and no magic (ours) made contact with a universe of pretty much only magic and almost no technology beyond that found in the Middle Ages. It contains some tropes (used mainly as comedic relief or irony) and plenty of references to current magical-universe plot elements from games and novels, but is a surprisingly fresh and compelling examination of the cross-universe idea.
Yes. Do a time travel story and new tech will be seen as miraculous magic by those pesky Elizabethans.
Absolutely. Read the nightlord series, just skip through the first half of book one, it's the first thing the author ever wrote and could have used better editing for sure. High tech kicks in at book 3
Definitely not. I give no reason.
DCEU/MCU does this alot. Klarion the chaos lord use chaos magic(different from wanda's magic) to control starro nanotech, they call it techno-sorcery/magic-tech. but this will never occurs in sci-fi though, since magic isnt really a thing(maginery) when technology and science is used to explain the nature of the universe is involved. dark eleves and ASGARDIANS use magic and tech together. magic is basically making things impossible to a possibility(probability manipulation through energy) with limitations depending on the type of cinema/comic/media universe that it is in. or castlevania(the magical castle that use technology powered by magic)
Anime does this all the time; Especially the ISEKAI-Genre
Yup.
Yep
All these youngsters forgetting about He-man
Tad Williams did a decent job in "War of the flowers" There was tech comparable to early 2000's (smartphones, electricity, cars, etc) but was powered by magic, and magic itself was still capable of being used.
Absolutely yes. One of my favorite anime is GATE. It has a portal open from a alternate world at Roman level technology with legions and classical architecture, but it has dragons, elves, and magic and they send an army through to invade modern day Japan. The counter-attack is insane. Do a google search for "massacre of alnus hill"
It is called Star Wars, and it is one of the many reasons why I do not like it.
What about it specifically do you dislike? This type of setting definitely invites questioning by the audience and can break immersion, but I'm curious about your take on it.
I think this is the greater unpopular opinion I have, but here I go: It's something more personal rater than anything. Since child I've always fund kinda stupid that a civilization that has ships with space travel capabilities still using swords to fight sigh LASER swords. I always felt Star Wars like a mediaval story, it have swords, magic, incest, politics, and the sci-fi stuff is a big flex tape. I'm pretty sure that without it, Star Wars wouldn't never be the success that it is.
You might be glad to know that there’s only one scene involving the Force in all of Andor, and it’s nowhere near central to the plot. Cassian himself is a skeptic.
Or you might not care at all, and be sick of people telling you how good Andor is. Whatever your opinion is, it’s valid.
Funny you should mention those themes, because it was heavily influenced by classic Samurai films, which have a lot of similar “betrayal” story beats.
You don't want guns in a spaceship. Don't want to poke a hole in a wall and open it to space.
Swords make a lot more sense when fighting inside a spaceship. (Granted, short swords, probably, due to the limited space, but still.)
Naaah, man, you can't come with that kind of logic here, but I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt and say yes, let's say that they do not use guns because they can make holes in the spaceship, would that be a problem? I don't think so, since there is oxygen in the space that star wars presents us. I've always loved how the Death Star explode.