Quote:
Originally Posted by Astromancer
Occult practitioners are, have been, and will be, a part of the real world. Thus a hard sci fi story could feature a witch. Her spells might be bushwa, but she could be a real person earning her living as an occult practitioner.
That said, a spirit quest, even an ambiguously real one could fit.
|
Actually that's true. Putting religion into a sci-fi is not the same. It is not unreasonable that whether we live in a materialistic universe or not is one of the last things discovered; probably discovered at a level far beyond what is suitable for any kind of narrative except a cosmological or mythic one. Poul Anderson in Technic History had religion take the ambiguous role of seeking truth, goodness, and beauty, playing Russian Roulette with ones destiny and making heavy weather about it that we do at the present time (in that sense both Klingons and Vulcans certainly have a religion as it fulfills those purposes). He also had alien races with religions of their own as well as humans who were religious. What he did not have is certainty.
What constitutes "magic" is a definitional matter though. FtL travel is hard to do without so most writers handwave it and use a lot of technobabble. Psionics in many if not most cases really is indistinguishable from magic and is often treated as such by having rituals, etc.
Actually I would suggest going back to the beginning and rereading The Golden Bough and then adapting that for Space Opera.