Magick vs technology: aren't fireballs just blasters?

[BAYLOR]

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?


Depends how educated he is and hosts.

It's possible some ancients might be sophisticated enough see it in terms then magic?

 

[Ray McCarthy]

Most people only believe most things are not magic because they are told it's just technology.
Various educated people from ancient Chinese, Babylonian, Greek, Indian, Golden era Islamic, Dark Ages, Renaissance would accept a sensible explanation that it's just a made thing as much as their own era technologies.

Most people today have no idea how anything works. The people that do know how to design a smart phone are seriously outnumbered by people today even among educated western people that in reality believe in magic.

I did a short story once. I must improve it. Perhaps a 12 C Alchemist is accidently in suspended animation due to Philosopher's stone experiment and he is found apparently perfectly preserved in a vault. When they find he has liquid in his veins they eventually revive him.
I think though it might be a very boring story.

 

[chrispenycate]

In some ways, the difference between fantasy and SF is as much in the writing style as in content. Take the Heinlein double novel 'Waldo' and 'Magic Inc'. Logically, with Waldo being space stations, robot limbs, and transmitted power, while Magic Inc. is broomsticks and curses - or are those power receptor antennae on that mop? - they should have made strange bedcover partners, but I have yet to hear anyone complain, because the style carries over. When Niven wrote 'Quite close to the End' it's a purest fantasy environment - but the viewpoint, the thoughtform, is SF. And I've read supposed science fiction with strong fantasy elements, and not just fifties psi stories. Not, generally the hard stuff which I can't get enough of to satisfy me, but even in some of the military books, and in a lot of space opera. That's not a complaint, by the way - technology should be able to do anything, given time, so wish fulfillment is on the cards, no?

 

[MWagner]

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.

I think as SF has declined in popularity over the last 30 years, and fantasy has increased in popularity, fantasy has come to take on a lot of functions and appeal that SF used to have. Geeks who would have pored over the system and architecture of a warp drive 30 years ago have been replaced by geeks who pore over the theory and architecture of a magic system. The way magic used to be depicted in fantasy had its roots in religion and the collective irrational wellsprings of human fears and desires. But that stuff makes lot of people today uncomfortable - especially the technically-minded people who make up much geek fandom. Religion is glossed over in most fantasy, and magic typically isn't unknowable or eerie. It's basically science with swords and castles rather than with space ships and planets.

And it's not only the authors who have been influenced by the mechanical approach to magic presented in video games. I'd hazard that many readers of fantasy today have played fantasy games at a 2:1 or greater ratio to reading books. I don't enjoy that approach to magic. In fact, if I see the words 'magic system' in a review, it's a huge red flag that I'm not the intended audience. But it seems to me that it's a case of authors giving most readers what they want - magic as a toolkit of utilitarian weapons and resources that a character can employ tactically to achieve her ends.