“Any sufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology.”—Larry Niven
I thought that was Arthur C. Clarke (RIP).
The Arthur C. Clarke quote is “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”
The Niven quote interchanges “magic” and “technology” to make a different point. “Sufficiently advanced magic,” meaning magic that is well described by an author and has well-defined rules, would act in the same manner as technology in a science fiction novel. The more defined the rules are, the more resemblance “magic” would have to a technology, and it would be used in a fictional world in basically the same manner that technology is used in the actual world.
An example that comes pretty close to “sufficiently advanced magic” exists in L. E. Modesitt’s Recluce saga. It appears to obey conservation laws, for one thing; order and chaos act much like positive and negative charges. The people in that world can get lots of energy out of an order-chaos imbalance, but imbalances tend to be unstable and screw you in various ways. It also seems to be overlaid on top of normal physics in a way that makes sense; people in Recluce know how to make (primitive) guns, but they’re never used in battle because chaos mages can ignite gunpowder from a distance, killing the would-be gun user.
“Any sufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology.”—Larry Niven
I thought that was Arthur C. Clarke (RIP).
The Arthur C. Clarke quote is “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”
The Niven quote interchanges “magic” and “technology” to make a different point. “Sufficiently advanced magic,” meaning magic that is well described by an author and has well-defined rules, would act in the same manner as technology in a science fiction novel. The more defined the rules are, the more resemblance “magic” would have to a technology, and it would be used in a fictional world in basically the same manner that technology is used in the actual world.
An example that comes pretty close to “sufficiently advanced magic” exists in L. E. Modesitt’s Recluce saga. It appears to obey conservation laws, for one thing; order and chaos act much like positive and negative charges. The people in that world can get lots of energy out of an order-chaos imbalance, but imbalances tend to be unstable and screw you in various ways. It also seems to be overlaid on top of normal physics in a way that makes sense; people in Recluce know how to make (primitive) guns, but they’re never used in battle because chaos mages can ignite gunpowder from a distance, killing the would-be gun user.