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
I apologize if this sounds flippant, but it’s FICTION.
Literally ANYTHING works if its written well enough…
Shadowrun… yeah it works
Edit: I just noticed somebody else mentioned shadowrun aswell, well: I second that.
Star Wars did for a while.
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.
Arcane
All these youngsters forgetting about He-man
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.
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.
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.
Anime does this all the time; Especially the ISEKAI-Genre
Yes. It’s worked very well in the recent Zelda games
MCU does a good job. Iron Man is supposed to be science based, and Thor is a Norse god.
Artemis Fowl is a classic example of this. The fantasy world of fairies relies on super advanced technology in their world.
