(no subject)

[ann_leckie]

rachel_swirsky has placed me under an obligation to post this.

Long ago, on a message board far away, someone posted something that nearly sent me to the emergency room with the burning of the epic stupid. It went like this: the poster was working on a novel set in a world where magic worked, instead of science.

Okay. So. When queried, the poster further explained that you know, magic worked! And not, like, machines and stuff.

In vain did one explain that machines work because the universe is fundamentally the way it is, and a universe where machines did not work would be so alien as to be, perhaps, not inhabitable by humans. Machines do not function because of some mystical "scientific" or "machine" property they possess.

And, furthermore--the thing Rachel says I ought to post--Clarke's law works in both directions.

Sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. Yes?

Sufficiently comprehensible magic is indistinguishable from technology. If you know magic works, and can wield it reliably, then it's susceptible to scientific investigation, and susceptible to use as technology.

Which makes a problem for fantasy, actually--if the universe is made so that magic works, then it's not magic, is it?

I would elaborate, as it is an issue I have pondered more than once, but I'm brain-ached at the moment, and must return to my perusal of The Unholy Grail: A Social Reading of Chrétien de Troyes's Conte du Graal

Comments

Re: I spit on Clark's Law

[ann-leckie.livejournal.com]

But symbol and metaphors are tools based in writing and language--both technologies.

Re: I spit on Clark's Law

[zornhau.livejournal.com]

Yes, but in technology, symbols are merely descriptive and arbitrary. In magic, symbols are (usually) active and non-arbitrary.

Imagine a rain maker.

A technological version would be a big skywards-pointing ray gun, with a button marked "Rain!".

The form would be dictated by engineering, and the labelling, colour scheme, decoration and controls would be entirely arbitrary.

An equally reliable magical version might be a cup chained to a stone by a spring. The cup would have to bear the correct inscriptions, and be manufactured out of the right material at the right time of day, with the moon in the correct phase. The only way of activating the spell would be solemnly filling the cup with water, and sprinkle it on the nearby ground, meanwhile chanting a simple spell.

To me, they're very different in quality. One's technical, the other poetical.

Re: I spit on Clark's Law

[ann-leckie.livejournal.com]

But if the cup chained to a stone by the spring worked it would be no different, really, from the raygun. In fact, if the correct inscriptions, the material and time of manufacture affect the rainmaking, how is that different from the design of the Raygun, which will have been manufactured with whatever properties make it effective? And in fact, if we're in the world where the cup is an effective rainmaker, that raygun is going to share properties with the cup to the extent that those properties are effective in the cup. Which means, likely, that the decoration and materials of the raygun are not, in fact, arbitrary. Because we're operating in a universe where such things aren't arbitrary for rainmaking.

And I propose that in a universe where the cup at the spring worked, no one would be building the rayguns--it's probably more expensive than hiring a smith to make gold cups with "Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head" engraved on the rim.

It seems to me you're locating the difference between magic and tech in outer trappings--your tech is suspiciously magic-like, with its mysterious button. Which is really only reinforcing Clarke's law, IMO.

Re: I spit on Clark's Law

[zornhau.livejournal.com]

Wouldn't that depend on how easy or ubiquitous magic was?

Perhaps the rain cup needs to be maintained through yearly rites involving the whole locality.

The rain gun, however, can be flown in on a helicopter.

Would the rain gun need to look like its purpose? That depends on how the magic works. If symbols need to be activated before they are magically powerful, then I think not.

Also, since it works, the rain gun symbolises the ability to make rain, just as a thunderbold can symbolise sudden death.

Re: I spit on Clark's Law

[ann-leckie.livejournal.com]

But what makes the rain gun effective, in this world? What is the button doing? Is it activating symbols? It's doing something.

And you're right, the expense of the tech--cup or gun--is a complicated issue and depends on many factors.

What they symbolize, though--our minds are susceptible to metaphor, but the rain is not. The form of the gun or the cup might mean something to its users, but it's not part of what makes it rain. Either one, if they work, are tech. What that tech means to its users is a whole other aspect of the matter, and not really relevant to Clarke's Law. IMO

Re: I spit on Clark's Law

[zornhau.livejournal.com]

If we look at the real world (in which magic clearly does not work, but people once thought it did), there's usually a distinction between magic and materialist technology, even though they interact.

I sharpen my sword so it will cut people, without any sense that that works in anything other than a mundane way, but I also carry a charm to bring me fortune in battle.

I think - in Fantasy story telling - it can be interesting for magic and and technology to coexist in the same way.

Going back to Clark's Law: A very very advanced technology might be wonderous indeed, but the laws governing it would be mathematical. It wouldn't feel or act like magic, unless it had been set up to do so: the light switch works without me addressing a prayer to the bound Salamander.

Yes, very reliable and well understood magic would be a technology, but it would be one based on solemn ritual and the interaction of symbols and symbolic things. A society based on such technology would be very different from a Stross future.

Re: I spit on Clark's Law

[ann-leckie.livejournal.com]

Yes, very reliable and well understood magic would be a technology, but it would be one based on solemn ritual and the interaction of symbols and symbolic things. A society based on such technology would be very different from a Stross future.

Oh, certainly!

I sharpen my sword so it will cut people, without any sense that that works in anything other than a mundane way, but I also carry a charm to bring me fortune in battle.

I think - in Fantasy story telling - it can be interesting for magic and and technology to coexist in the same way.

Yes--I'm not against Fantasy! Or against magic in fantasy! Heck, I've only sold two actual science fiction stories, and all my other sales have been fantasies. No, wait, I forgot a SF flash piece.

It's just that opposing magic with technology, as though one can't or won't work in the presence of the other, without thinking through the implications of that, isn't tremendously smart. Clarke's Law is a handy rule of thumb for why that won't work.

And setting up a universe that is, to all intents and purposes, identical to ours but also magic works and that magic is not the same thing as technology just because it's "magic" is to make a universe with a basic incoherence, to use another commenter's term, that needs to be addressed, if only in the mind of the creator.

All of this, of course, is my opinion. Any writer can write anything she likes, and if it works it'll have my admiration. Or sometimes even if it doesn't work, if it pushes my buttons hard enough. :)

Re: I spit on Clark's Law

[zornhau.livejournal.com]

Ah, yes, I do agree with the idea that they are not opposed. If magic works, then it does so as part of the universe.

Re: I spit on Clark's Law

[paulwoodlin.livejournal.com]

I think this can be cleared up this way. Science has certain premises, magic has different premises, but in order to use either, you have to be able to make logical deductions from those premises. If you cannot make logical deductions from the premises, then something is wrong with the premises.

Of course, in real life, something is wrong with the premises of magic, but that's another issue.