Magick vs technology: aren't fireballs just blasters?

[Brian G Turner]

So, characters enter a magic battle, throwing fireballs at each other.

Shouldn't they just use blasters?

If we invoke Clarke's third law about unexplained technology being magic, then magic by definition is just technology we don't understand.

Fine - Clarke's writing science fiction, not fantasy.

Which perhaps explains why fantasy writers completely ignore it, and instead are desperate to invent different fantastical explanations for what magic might be.

What I'd like to ask is this: if people are going to fight with fireballs, then can't we just treat them as guns of some kind?

Isn't there anyone writing anything like this where technology is treated as magic?

And shouldn't there be more of it?

The rationalist inside me wants magic to be more mysterious, less empowering - but if we are going to have people blast each other with energy bursts, treat them as carrying blasters outright instead of by proxy?

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

It's always been my contention that if something like, say, a crystal ball acts exactly like a telephone, it might as well be a telephone, not a crystal ball.

So, I agree that magic should be mysterious (and costly -- and by costly I don't mean something you can buy with money -- so, in my opinion, a last resort when you are out of other options) and not something you use to do things that you can do in any other way.

I'm not sure about the fireballs versus blaster thing, however, if the technology level doesn't reach that level, but arrows tipped with something like Greek fire would be as deadly, and no more magical than a blaster.


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[TheTomG]

Might be a difference in power source - the blaster relies on physical laws, and the fireball on magical laws. This would define that some sort of known chemical or other physical reaction powers the blaster. For the fireball, it is powered by "the force of will of the caster", some energy source that isn't in current physics ("the force of nature", "demons", "chi", "ley lines")

The different source is what gives rise to the different effects and costs of the weapon. In the blaster, the nuclear powered battery might run out. In magic, the caster may get distracted, or become tired, or risk death calling on his own life energy, or be denied assistance by the demons / angels / spirits. This can lead to a difference in the type of person using said weapon - anyone can pick up and point a blaster, but training is required to even create a fireball, though beyond that training in being a good aim would be pretty similar.

It can also lead to different plot points due to different consequences of the use of the weapons.

It's also "cooler" for the reader to envisage having that sort of power on hand - they know they can't go out and buy a blaster, but hey who knows, maybe you will discover you ARE a wizard and can channel those ancient forces out there. So I think fantasy has a bit more of the wish-fulfillment aspect to it, especially when done Hogwarts style where the person may be a magician and just not know it yet.

 

[skynes]

That's a really good question.

I like what TheTomG says about laws. When I'm reading sci-fi, I expect the things I read to have some basis in our reality and our laws of physics. But magic, I expect to have its own laws, quite unlike ours, but are still consistent and testable within their own world.

Also a fireball I think has wider applications than a blaster. A blaster fires a shot of energy. But if you can summon a fireball, then that implies some control of fire itself. It could be a fireball that explodes, or a more flamethrower wide area spout, or a single flame on the tip of your finger.

What do you mean when you ask "Isn't there anyone writing anything like this where technology is treated as magic? "

When I read this I was thinking of what I'm currently writing and exploring, dwarven runes. I created a whole bunch of different runes, but I wanted them all to work logically. So a rune of mountains makes something near immovable, so the people carve an incomplete rune on the door to their home, and the rest of the rune on a bar they slide into place. Slide it into place, the 'runic circuit' is complete and the door won't open until the bar is dislodged. I'm not sure if this is what you mean though.

 

[J Riff]

It seems to have gone full circle. Gernsback started out asking for an explanation for impossible actions, any halfway believable explanation, in order to curb the flood of fantasy-based space voyagings et. al.
Now, today, people seem to think that updated techno jargon qualifies a story as SF. Really, it's still mumbo jumbo... FTL, teleporatation etc. are no closer today than 50 yrs. ago.
Describing magic is just as difficult as making up scientific workarounds for deep space adventures. Probably harder, hence world-building, so that it all seems logical inside its own framework.
Still, in either genre, one can simply avoid the hard questions, and write an entertaining story. People of today have no trouble with spaceships, aliens, elves or dragons, in almost any permutation.

 

[Mirannan]

There was a book I read once (the name escapes me as does the author) in which Clarke's Second Law was given its head. The story was about a society in which apparently magical items were found, pretty well at random, scattered all over the landscape, and everyone in that society thought of them as magical - because they were so high-tech that nobody could fathom how they worked. Some random examples of such items were homing, heartseeking throwing daggers; lightning wands; telephonic jewellery.

Magic blurs into science. This is particularly true, also, from another direction; if magic has rules that are always followed, then in principle magic can be investigated scientifically - in which case magic and tech are the same.

Unless, that is, magic requires some "spark" that cannot be learned. I've read a couple of stories featuring people who are high-grade magical theorists who can't cast a spell to save their lives, because they simply don't have the Gift.

 

[Brian G Turner]

It's always been my contention that if something like, say, a crystal ball acts exactly like a telephone, it might as well be a telephone, not a crystal ball.

Exactly! I would very interested to read a fantasy like this.

Might be a difference in power source - the blaster relies on physical laws, and the fireball on magical laws.

That's what I mean, though - by invoking Clarke's third law, they are both sourced from physical laws. Magical laws are simply physical laws that are not understood in these terms yet - hence why you get writers these days trying to define actual physical laws for magick (such as Brandon Sanderson, etc).

Traditionally in this world, magick has always been about trying to deal with forces you could not explain - life, death, weather, seasons, etc. In short, because there was no model to explain the natural world, various systems of metaphor arose to describe it. That's the ultimate origin of magic.

Yet in the fantasy genre it's moved so far away from its root, and instead become an extreme exaggeration of LOTR, primarily through role-playing games.

The result is that we end up with books of spell blasting heroes, because it looks cool, and the meaning has been lost. Heck, even Gandalf wouldn't be able to stand up to most modern fantasy mages - he was a much more subtle character.

I dunno. I'd just like to see a different approach to magic that dares to step away from the role-playing influence which has turned it into a wish fulfillment fantasy.

Probably why I enjoy the low magic books in the genre these days, because protagonists have to try and solve their own problems, instead of simply clicking their fingers.

Another waffly post.

 

[Jonathan C]

Well, technology seems like the wrong word- its usually treated more like an ability. Punching someone isn't really technology, and neither is the ability to shoot fireballs from your hands. The fantastical explanations just stem from the fact that people in real life can't do stuff like that, and if the story uses magic a lot then people expect consistency.

Also, in real life historically science and magic were often treated as the same thing. Magic is just a word that has taken on a different meaning than what it used to- it originally meant something like "the art of influencing events and producing marvels using hidden natural forces" (eg. in some places, poisoning could count as witchcraft, purely because you needed secret natural knowledge to create poisons, and not because people thought you could also fly on broomsticks). It wasn't seen as un-scientific until scientists started thinking that magic wasn't real, or perhaps to just stop calling what was real magic. To say magic was a metaphor for understanding the way the natural world works is to confuse magic with myth, which were two different things.

In other words, magic really was just science most people did not understand, hence in Tolkien the race of Men thought that the Elves had magical powers but the Elves themselves thought that all the fantastical stuff they did was pretty mundane and didn't get what the big deal was.

I don't think its the "rationalist" in you that prefers low fantasy or mysterious magic- lots of rationalists probably prefer magical systems. This just seems like a question of taste. And magic is all about empowerment, and always has been. Its just a question of which characters you are following- low fantasy stories usually don't follow the wizard unless his magic isn't very empowering (for whatever reason), where a lot of high fantasy stories do follow the wizards and the people with magical abilities, and we learn the rules only because they are learning them too.

As for where magic is treated like technology, how about Codex Alera?

 

[TheTomG]

I do think the differing laws though lead to both differing consequences, so the story drives differently, but also a whole different feel of escapism. We can't have a blaster today, but maybe in 100 years, so there's an element of still within the real everyday world there - with magic, we aren't going to discover casting fireballs in 100 years, so it becomes more unreal.

Coolness is definitely a factor, but right enough it has moved toward instant gratification. Kazam! Fireball. No days, weeks or even months of preparation for your magic, with intricate rules to be followed - just sheer, naked, immediate gratifying power.

I'd like to see magic being slower, more costly, which would of course move it away from it's commonplace "huge fights in dungeons" approach. Like you say, Gandalf is vastly powerful, and he wins out, but he doesn't win with showy pyrotechnics (and such showy pyrotechnics as he has early on seem to be mostly fireworks with only a little bit of magic there to shape them - all the explosions and light seem primarily chemically based.)

So, if you are thinking of creating something with a different approach to magic, it gets my vote!

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

I dunno. I'd just like to see a different approach to magic that dares to step away from the role-playing influence which has turned it into a wish fulfillment fantasy.

Well (blushing modestly) I can think of a couple of fantasy novels that aren't influenced by role playing games. The magic is based on principles that were considered scientific in the 17th and 18th century, and the stories are personal, rather than epic.

 

[AnyaKimlin]

Purely on a practical level magic is something you carry with you, always. A blaster needs to be transported and depending on the size maybe heavy. Magic can't be knocked out of your hand etc Mine is set in a world with guns, mobile phone, laptops, MP3 players etc so I had to give consideration to when magic was used and when it wasn't.

 

[Dave]

That's what I mean, though - by invoking Clarke's third law, they are both sourced from physical laws. Magical laws are simply physical laws that are not understood in these terms yet - hence why you get writers these days trying to define actual physical laws for magick (such as Brandon Sanderson, etc).

And the reverse is true too. FTL and travel through wormholes and such - none of them are possible with present physical laws and yet they are standard science fiction concepts. I have a Star Trek Technical Manual that tells me in great detail how everything on the Starship Enterprise-D actually works along with the chemical composition of Dilithium Crystals.

 

[Abernovo]

Brian, Jim Butcher references role-playing games, but much of the magic is utilised through the equivalent of blasters in the Dresden Files novels. His MC, Dresden, has magical powers that interfere with modern equipment such as electronics, but to focus them, he uses a 'blasting rod' and a staff. Without them, he's still powerful, but it's the difference between hand-to-hand combat and a gunfight.

I know that's Urban fantasy, rather than the High Fantasy you're probably looking for, but I thought it might be relevant. He still keeps the magic reasonably mysterious, in that he has arcane rules for its governance, but at the same time, his MC philosophises that magical energies may be related to a wider and unrealised part of physics, similar to electro-magnetism and gravity. It's one of the things I like about the series, Butcher's mixing of fantasy with the everyday.

 

[Brian G Turner]

Shouldn't they just use blasters?

If anyone was unsure of what I mean, then you can see this clearly for yourselves by visiting the Elder Scrolls Online website:
http://www.elderscrollsonline.com/en-gb

(sorry, you have to enter a birth date to show you're over 18)

Then click on the top heading "The Alliance War".

You are then treated to a montage of real gameplay, where magic is clearly being used as an analogue for blasters. The mediaeval context completely fails under that context - no one would build castle walls, and trebuchets to breach them, if every second character can call lightning from the sky, and launch fireballs that do d20 x 1000 damage.

Visually, that animation has every appearance of low-tech science fiction, and doesn't justify its pseudo-historical context.

But I keep encountering this same approach in fantasy fiction - utterly modern ways of thinking, and an absolute ignorance or disregard for the everyday experience of mediaeval living.

No one can be expected to get that perfect, but I much prefer the authors I read to at least make the effort, instead of basing their inspiration on the visuals linked to above.

Otherwise the story can have no real foundations or lasting appeal IMO.

 

[HareBrain]

But I keep encountering this same approach in fantasy fiction - utterly modern ways of thinking, and an absolute ignorance or disregard for the everyday experience of mediaeval living.

No one can be expected to get that perfect, but I much prefer the authors I read to at least make the effort, instead of basing their inspiration on the visuals linked to above.

I agree, but how many modern readers even know there's a difference? Or would care if they did? And if most readers don't care, neither will publishers.

 

[Ray McCarthy]

where magic is clearly being used as an analogue for blasters.

But aren't Blasters a magical fantasy device dressed up as technology? I considered them in one of my SF and decided the Aliens would only use rail guns, plasma, lasers in space but terrestrially guided missiles and smart bullets. A compressed gas powered needle gun only at very short range, often by assassins and hollow drugged pins as the shot. I've no blasters. Um... Some very rare people can do fireballs. But there is nothing mediaeval, they have had Starships for thousands of years, their steam age maybe 5,000+ years ago.

Mediaeval Setting:
I think if only one or two people in an entire nation could do magical fireballs people would still build castles?
When powerful cannon became common, people had the pre-existing castles, so too you can have a scenario where people DID build castles and the Fire Ball practitioners are a new phenomenon?

but I much prefer the authors I read to at least make the effort, instead of basing their inspiration on the visuals linked to above

I'm increasingly convinced that some authors need to give up watching video / computer games / films / Graphic novels / Comics for years. What works visually, perhaps you are too distracted to think about it, often doesn't work in a written work.

EDIT

I did enjoy the Magic Engineer and other books in the Recluce Saga. As long as you don't try to analyse it or look too closely it's fun.

 

[Alias Black]

If we invoke Clarke's third law about unexplained technology being magic, then magic by definition is just technology we don't understand.

I think "science" might be a better word than "technology":

• Science gives us understanding of electromagnetic principles, technology then uses that knowledge to give us rail guns.
• Magic gives us understanding of psychokinetic principles, technology then uses that knowledge to give us wands (example).

Fullmetal Alchemist (the manga/anime) actually does this impressively well.

Isn't there anyone writing anything like this where technology is treated as magic?

Several. Two come to mind:

• Foundation by Issac Asimov. To control a people, the Foundation restricts knowledge to nuclear science and creates a religion around it. People believe the technology born of the Foundation to be holy, its manipulators divine and the Foundation itself a sacred place.
• Omnissiah in Warhammer 40k. Clearly inspired by Asimov, technology originally created by the Emperor of Mankind (who now is a sort of eternal coma), is considered sacred. As such, innovation and changes to them are considered blasphemy, and the Empire has remained technologically stagnant for 10000 years.

 

[BAYLOR]

If you took one of our ancient ancestors and deposted him in the present , he see our technology as magic.


Our age doesn't seem to put much stock magic because we can't get it to work . But what about in the distant past?

 

[steelyglint]

'Aren't fireballs just blasters?'

I wanted to say it depends on whose balls are on fire, but it would probably be Jerry Lee Lewis.

The 'magic' we in this world read about in fantasy novels is simply the high technology of that particular fantasy world/universe. We call it 'magic' because, not being able to understand or explain it, 'magic' is all we have for the job. If you could go to that fantasy world and look back at where you came from as a native it would appear exactly the same from that viewpoint.

If somebody uses a crystal ball to communicate over distance, then crystal balls are that world's equivalent of a telephone or a radio. If they use a wand or a spell to hurl a 'fireball', then that is their equivalent of whatever Earthly weapon best fits the results.

If their technology requires some mental component of the operator to function, then its equivalent would be the kind of mental control technology here that is, in its infant stages, currently being developed to fly aircraft and such.

There is a world where 'magic' is the high technology, yet it gets visitors from other places, some of whom have technology much more as we know it here. Particularly weaponry. Its a two volume fantasy by Stephen Donaldson. So when you've got 'magic' fireballs and devices that could legitimately be called 'blasters', both in the same world, then calling a 'magic' fireball a 'blaster' sort of falls down. They also had communication devices, which shatters the crystal ball idea, too.

.

 

[Ray McCarthy]

Our age doesn't seem to put much stock magic because we can't get it to work

Oh ... not true.
Of course actual Crystals / Angels / Wiccan practitioners etc are a small minority. As are the folk pagan Christian veneer people (Holy Wells, Statues, Miracles of Saints, Relics etc).
Then we have all the widely believed pseudo-science. It's rife. I'm not even going to list it all as I'm sure lots of people here believe different bits of it. It's no different to believing in Magic.

Then again, are you considering only a certain demographic today?

deposted him in the present , he see our technology as magic

Depends how educated he is and hosts.