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.
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.