Why Are Technology And Magic So Often Mutually Exclusive?

Normally I'd ramble for a bit and tell people about my latest book releases, maybe plug a tee shirt, or offer a back link to something you might find helpful. This week though I'm talking about something that's very near and dear to my heart, so I'm skipping all the usual fluff. In short I would like to ask my readers a question, and it's a question I want them to take very seriously.

Why are magic and technology so often seen as mutually exclusive in mainstream fantasy and sci-fi?

Except in very rare circumstances.

There are countless examples of this sliding scale in fiction. In stories like A Flight of Dragons the whole premise of the book is that science and technology is actively eradicating most kinds of magic. In the popular series The Dresden Files just being near magic makes technology act up (which requires our lead to avoid things like computers, cinemas, and at times actual electric lights). Even in the classic series Harry Potter there's just something about the presence of magic that renders technology non-functional more often than not.

Why do we do that?

Clarke's Third Law

Even if you have no idea who Arthur C. Clarke is, you've heard his third law. In a nut shell it states that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. This is an oft-quoted rule when it comes to fiction, but according to Esther Ingels-Arkell over at i09 the law doesn't really work the way we think it does.

Accroding to Arkell's argument this law only holds water if the feat being accomplished is something we believe we can't do ourselves with the right time and training. While we might not be able to build a TV or a laptop, much less a car that runs off of solar power or methane gas, most people who know these things exist believe that they could be replicated by anyone. The reason that we freak out about magicians who seem to be able to levitate, people whose brain waves can bend spoons, and those who can be buried for a week before rising unharmed is that we know, deep down, these are not things that anyone can do. These things are well and truly magical.

Is Magic V. Technology Really About Ignorance?

Let's go back to A Flight of Dragons for a moment. The central crux of the story is that mankind is embracing technology and logic, and it is this philosophical decision to give science a big ole' bear hug that is robbing the world's great wizards (well, all but the evil one) of their powers. This is in a very real sense a metaphor for how we as readers and writers often think about magic. Magic is a product of a simpler time, whereas science is a product of enlightenment. Science can be explained, and magic can't be. Even in our fiction magic is something that just can't exist in a world where we've split the atom, have flying cars, or combat capable laser cannons. And if it does exist then technology just closes its eyes and refuses to admit that magic is there.

I see your fireball, and raise.

Well, most of the time anyway.

Breaking The Mold

There are a lot of niches where the sliding scale has been trod underfoot. The roleplaying game Shadowrun and the books set in its world combines the elements of high fantasy with the gritty neo-noir of cyberpunk for a strange, exciting love child. D20 Modern allows mages to store spellbooks on their palm pilots, and in Pathfinder gunslingers might adventure alongside sorcerers to deliver a one-two punch (even in this game though the resistance to guns existing alongside magic is prone to some hardcore resistance).

In the spirit of this co-existence I'll make a suggestion that goes even further; what would magic enhanced by technology look like? Say that ancient covens always had 13 witches because that was the timber the chant required to hit the proper level; what could one witch with a mixer and recording software accomplish? If psychotropic mushrooms altered your brain chemistry and perception so you could see spirits and ghosts, what could modern pharmaceuticals allow you to do? Using enchanted steel to make a sword is one thing, but what about bringing magic and science together to make a rail gun straight from the heavens?

What kind of marriage would you give science and magic if you wanted them to play nice?

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The Mortal Sins of Worldbuilding

Worldbuilding is one of the most unsung skills a storyteller can have. When it's done right the reader won't even notice it, except to remark on how cleverly and naturally everything fits together. When worldbuilding is done poorly though it's a "slam the covers and throw the book at a passing nun" kind of offense.

This practice becomes dangerous at the Vatican.

Generally speaking that's something you want to avoid.

So How Do I Avoid Bad Worldbuilding?

Normally this is where I'd launch into an exhaustive list of tips, tricks, and suggestions for how to make your world stand out among the stacks of other popular fictions on the market. However I already covered some of this in this entry all about building Dystopian futures, and Charlie Jane Anders has created this phenomenal guide to the 7 Deadly Sins of Worldbuilding available at io9.

How can you argue with this sweet graphic?

For those of you who didn't click the second link, you seriously should. However the salient sins you need to avoid when it comes to worldbuilding are:

1. Ignoring Infrastructure: You can't save a world when you don't know who picks up the trash.

2. Not Explaining Current Events: Why is plot happening now? Why not 50 years ago/ahead?

3. One-Dimensional Parodies: No characters, especially ethnically derivative ones, may be flat.

4. Monoliths: No one in a party/ethnicity/country feels the same way about everything. Ever.

5. Simple History: Real history is full of happenstance, unfortunate weather, and bad decisions.

6. Soulless Locale: If you can't touch, taste, and smell this place, it will be flat and boring.

7. Follow the Ripples: If people can read minds, then what does that change about a society?

Could I add more to this list? Absolutely! Does more need to be added? No, not really. Anders hits all the high notes and if you follow the advice given your world is going to be a lot more believable. The problem is that once you've built the stage you still have to come up with an interesting story to have play out on it.

An author's work is never done, is it?

Making Immortals Interesting

A long time ago, when I was still fresh to the author mantle and light-headed from being added to Goodreads (my page is here if you're curious), I began my first ever blog. It was called "Notes From the Editor's Desk", and it was meant to provide a humorous look at all the things editors have to look at that writers might not even know they'd doing wrong. It was short-lived, but while it was around it was liked by several people. Not only that it gave me a chance to be snarky, and to say the things I wasn't allowed to say to writers I was editing. Well, now that this blog's been up and running for a while I'd like to bring back the spirit, but hopefully garner a little more interest than I did the first time around.

All that said, we're going to tackle an immortal question today. Namely, what the fuck do you do with them?

Immortal as Lover

We've seen this trope from Tolkien to Twilight, and yet it never seems to creep other people out the same way it does me. A character whose age is measured in centuries somehow falls in love with a person who lacks experience, along with the ability to shrug off time, and it is very rarely questioned. Vampires, elves, demi-gods, djinn, demons, angels, and the list goes on and on.

Because this just screams long-term commitment.

This is, at least for me, where the suspension bridge of disbelief snaps and my imagination takes an Indiana Jones style tumble into croc-infested waters. On the one hand, sure, it's a nice sentiment that love might stretch across gulfs and unite two souls. But when Hugh Hefner does this we call him a dirty old man. In purely human experience anything more than a few decades one way or another tends to make people look askance, and wonder how long that older partner is going to dote on his latest play toy before moving on.

That's kind of the problem with immortal couples when one partner is very obviously outside the bicentennial club. Unless both characters have similar longevity, or the immortal in question is very young, chances are good that what we are seeing is simply a passing fancy. Because when one lives for several hundred years, humans are kind of like kittens. They're adorable, they're cuddly, and you can have some good times, but one day you turn around and they're just giving up the ghost. That's how time moves when you're ancient, and the more times you've gone through the process, the less and less attached you're capable of becoming.

Possible Fixes

While I don't advocate people do this, there are ways to make this more believable. Two were already mentioned; make both partners immortal, or make your immortal a younger member of the breed. This can make the inevitable loss truly heart-wrenching, rather than just more run-of-the-mill grief. However, if a writer insists on going the Lolita route with this, the best possible fix is to make the connection believable.

Why do people fall in love? Well, once their brains have calmed down and gotten all that pesky dopamine cleaned out, it's because of respect, similar feelings and opinions, shared activities, and what they add to each other's lives. Have the younger character win the immortal's interest and admiration by standing out in some way. If you have an elven general who wrote the book on tactics, have her out-flanked by a younger, but talented human. The competition and respect for skill creates a starting place for a meeting of the minds, which might lead to a meeting of the hearts. Remember it should be because of what a person does, not because of what they are. For Twilight fans, smelling good doesn't count.

Immortal as Time Capsule

Of all the ways to depict immortals, this has to be one of the most ham-handed in existence. Writers essentially treat characters like a snap shot of their last heyday, and the immortal has refused to progress further for some unknown and unknowable reason. Sort of like your grandparents.

In my day everyone wore brown robes, and we were happy.

Think about your grandparents for a minute though. Sure you probably had to explain Google to them a few dozen times before they could do a search without finding a hundred porn sites and a thousand viruses, but I'll bet you they figured out how a DVD player worked just fine. They probably dressed in fashions that made sense for this day and age, and they probably spoke in modern vernacular. I'd lay you odds they even did weird things like read the newspaper and watch the latest in television programming.

This is where the time capsule immortal sort of falls apart. In order for a sentient individual to remain so firmly planted in the past there cannot be any change in its surroundings. One of the main reason Dracula wants to go to London is that it's the future, and he's sick of being the lord of a dying past. He adopts English speech, English dress, and while he's exotic and foreign, no one remarks on how 3rd century he is. He successfully blended in with the Victorian era despite having been alive and slaying since a time when the newest cultural development was the crusade.

How to Fix This

The easy way is to take that desire you have to make a quirky character who will act as a mouthpiece for charmingly out-of-date statements, and crush its windpipe with a cinderblock. That is a bad reason to make a character, and doubly so if he or she doesn't actually contribute to the story at large.

Next, decide whether or not the character is capable of changing. It's been suggested for vampires in certain role playing games that they are frozen in the moment they were destroyed, which makes it hard for them to adjust. But even if that's the case, camouflage is important to someone who lives forever. So, if the character can't change, then he or she needs to go somewhere that fact won't be noticed or remarked upon. Wild mountains, crumbling castles, isolated frontiers like Alaska or Siberia make sense. If you're in downtown New York wearing ruffled sleeves and carrying a sword cane though, people are going to notice. People like the authorities, which could blow apart any sort of cover.

Not all immortals live in modern fantasy worlds. In fact, some of them live in worlds of their own. This is quite possibly the easiest way to make time capsules believable. A wandering sidhe prince, a plane-hopping demigod, or an ancient wizard with a pocket dimension all his own don't have to abide by your customs. In this case the strange differences the audience sees are more culture shock than anything else. Immortals are free to display unusual knowledge like proper spoken Latin, or out-of-date skill sets like broadsword fighting. They might even feel more comfortable surrounded by the art and architecture of their times. Just remember, everyone is shaped by their environments and cultures. Even if they're the ones setting the standard.

Immortal as Deus Ex Machina

We've seen this one a lot too. The Great and Powerful Whosey-Whatsits will know what to do, if only he/she/it/they were here. Hell, the entirety of the character of Dr. Who practically is this trope. That doesn't mean you're allowed to slap it into your story and claim it's groundbreaking.

Everyone forgets that the Tin Man has to watch everything die. After they gave him the capacity to love.

How to Fix This

Immortal characters can, and should, have knowledge or skill far beyond the mortal ken. Elves aren't born with the ability to shoot three arrows simultaneously and bulls-eye with all of them. They got there the same way anyone else did; practice. 150 years of practice just happens to go a pretty long goddamn way. However, it's important to remember that assholes, rejects, the socially outcast, and the downright curmudgeonly make it to old age as well.

How do you think the immortal got to be immortal? Careful planning and sheer determination is good, but cowards can live forever as well. Just remember that any character who is reduced to a set of stock abilities, or a singular purpose is probably not going to be terribly interesting. Sure Lancelot was the guy who had sex with the queen. He was also the strongest of all Arthur's knights, a brutal Gaul, and he enjoyed playing the flute as well. Everyone, even immortals, should be real. Just like real people, not everything about them is positive.

Final Thoughts

Immortality is a very, very messy thing. It is quite possibly the oldest MacGuffin in human history, stretching back to the Epic of Gilgamesh. That said, immortality is kind of like alternative history that's able to walk and talk; you have to figure out every little detail in your head to make it work. Is the immortal also indestructible? What powers does it possess? Is it a ghost in the shell that reincarnates, or is it a single being that was genetically modified through either chance or science to defeat age forever? And lastly, perhaps most importantly, is immortality a requirement to make the story work or is it just a thing you wanted to slap on for a coolness factor?

For those interested in past "Notes From the Editor's Desk" entries, either go to the page on the right, or click this link here. If you're interested in keeping updated with yours truly, follow me on Facebook, or jack yourself in at my Tumblr, where I welcome any and all questions or queries for other elements to add to this newest section of The Literary Mercenary. As always, thanks for stopping by.