03-10-2019, 01:02 PM | #11 |
Join Date: Jun 2006
Location: Earth, mostly
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Re: Magic in Space Opera
I see no reason, personally, why the two can't live side-by-side. In a D&D-style setting, for instance, mages can become extremely powerful, and rule vast areas with their arcane powers; why wouldn't mundane inventors try to come up with technologies that can compensate for such advantages?
(I've been toying off and on with a setting that's pretty much D&D 3.5, the last version I played, but with competent engineers so there's a 20th-century-Earth-equivalent level of technology. Imagine a 9mm enchanted with the sorts of spells the sorceror's ancestors might have placed on a bow, for instance. And of course space travel becomes at once easier and more fraught with danger - your craft is struck by a largish micrometeroid and loses pressure, you frantically conjure up more air and a hull patch, and you make a mistake in the runes and find your computer's anti-demon software under attack by the Thing From Beyond Space that rode your wizardry...)
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If you break the laws of Man, you go to prison. If you break the laws of God, you go to Hell. If you break the laws of Physics, you go to Sweden and receive a Nobel Prize. |
03-10-2019, 01:43 PM | #12 |
Join Date: Jul 2007
Location: West Virginia
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Re: Magic in Space Opera
The Silence Leigh trilogy by Melissa Scott had an occult system that was more internally consistent than most of the science in many sci fi novels.
The Guild in Dune used psi powers fueled by drugs to fly through interstellar space. And Star Trek: Discovery flies through space on magic mushrooms (no really). So you can blend in magic if you wish. Kirk met Apollo and later either met or was, it's a point of view thing, the Faerie Queen. Deela, creepy as her, "I am Queen, you are my expendable sex slave/breed stock" is, is actually charming and charismatic. She and Kirk have chemistry and come off as equals. Which makes the warped dynamic of their relationship stranger and more compelling.
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Per Ardua Per Astra! Ancora Imparo |
03-10-2019, 05:14 PM | #13 |
Join Date: Sep 2004
Location: Upper Peninsula of Michigan
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Re: Magic in Space Opera
Patricia Kennealy-Morrison's Keltiad had magic in space opera, heavy on (obviously) Celtic myth elements. I thought it was a generally fun series.
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03-10-2019, 07:10 PM | #14 | |
Join Date: May 2010
Location: Alsea, OR
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Re: Magic in Space Opera
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50's to 70's Sci Fi tends to, in my experience, be far less fantasy than the post-80, Star Wars, Star Trek, and BSG influenced softer Space opera and softer sci-fi... Also, Star Wars produced a huge raft of nominally space opera novels, new ones coming every couple months. It's still a current element in newer Space Opera. There are still new Star Trek novels, too. The "new period" really dates, as far as I can see, to about 1980... The 50's to 70's sci-fi has a different feel, and the pre-50's is a third paradigm... Transhumanism and Cyberpunk are new genres... |
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03-10-2019, 07:25 PM | #15 |
Join Date: Jul 2007
Location: West Virginia
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Re: Magic in Space Opera
How do you guys feel about unapologetic Magic in an otherwise Hard Sci Fi setting? The Wizards simply say"What we do works but it isn't science. So don't bother trying to say it is."
As per my first suggestion, M:tA Mages and Scions ala Scion, in a more or less hard sci fi setting.
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Per Ardua Per Astra! Ancora Imparo |
03-10-2019, 08:29 PM | #16 | |
Join Date: Aug 2007
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Re: Magic in Space Opera
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It also wouldn't work IMHO conceptually in a setting where Magic isn't Secret. I'd want a different paradigm.
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Fred Brackin |
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03-11-2019, 12:43 AM | #17 |
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Join Date: Sep 2004
Location: Southeast NC
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Re: Magic in Space Opera
That would annoy me to no end. I find the idea of magic that specifically avoids being proven somewhat ridiculous. Otherwise, magic is just science with lazy analysis.
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RyanW - Actually one normal sized guy in three tiny trenchcoats. |
03-11-2019, 01:22 AM | #18 | |
Join Date: Oct 2005
Location: Ronneby, Sweden
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Re: Magic in Space Opera
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03-11-2019, 04:43 AM | #19 | |
Join Date: May 2010
Location: Alsea, OR
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Re: Magic in Space Opera
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OTOH, "Subjective View" and "unfaithful narrator" are standard tropes used by WWG to excuse lack of continuity checking and poor editing. |
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03-11-2019, 09:26 AM | #20 | |
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Ronkonkoma, NY
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Re: Magic in Space Opera
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You have to define what magic is. In GURPS, for instance, magic is the ability to effect change using an energy called mana. It's very quantifiable, and in high- or ultra-tech settings there are even spells that deal with contemporary technologies, like mana coprocessors and so on. The only reason magic usually seems mysterious or inexplicable is that it's usually practiced by low-tech cultures that haven't developed the scientific method yet. |
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