Hey folks,
Some of you may know that I'm an Urban Fantasy nerd, but I also like my Sci-Fi, and oh boy do I like it when the two meet up.
The original mind worm that has me set on this particular thread is a Comic called The Red Star set in an AU Russia where they incorporate witches into their army, but not as special infantry or some such, but as artillery fuel.
One of the most striking panels in the graphic novel is a scene where a dozen or more witches are suspended from what is called a 'sky furnace' (think helicarrier form Marvel) with ports pointed down. The witches are all hooked up to the furnace and either power it, cast a spell in unison or through some other mechanism, are the catalyst for a massive blast of flame that really messes with some poor guy's day. Other panels have the MC asking for permission to run spells like a program, like there's a server somewhere that's doing the number-crunching for the spell to be cast. The marriage between technology and magic is just a beautiful thing in how it changes both. Siege engines powered by witches, spells run by computer, it a fun counterpoint to the 'tech and magic don't like each other' narrative a lot of other Urban Fantasy runs with *cough*Dresden Files*cough*
There are other examples that come to mind (Final Fantasy, Shadowrun, Gunnerkrigg Court, a healthy amount of steam-punk eg) but I want to take a moment and focus in on this idea!
What are some of your hot-takes?
Ideas you want to use in this vein/thing's you've enjoyed?
If you want to get speculative, postulate how your Sci-fi world would change with the advent of some kind of magic?
Below is one of my own takes on this (skip if you don't want to read me gushing about this, I don't mind
):
In my Urban Fantasy, magic is being worked into technology, but because all magic requires a contract with a spiritual entity (Making deals with Fey/Kami/Jinn etc) to work, it still needs a magic-practitioner somewhere in the system, even if the computers are doing the heavy lifting of casting the spells.
One example is making golems. In book 2, a lot of focus is on the use of Zombies vs Golems for dangerous/skilled labour.
Necromancy is pure magic at this point. It needs one practitioner (to power the spells) and one spirit to animate several dead people. The brains of the deceased are animated enough to function, allowing the zombie to do things that require skill, memory, learning etc.
Traditional golems need one practitioner (again, for power) and one spirit EACH for the golems, because the spirit is acting as the brain. Because weaker spirits are, by their nature, dumber, they need more powerful spirits for more complicated work. More powerful spirits cost more to contract with.
A company in my world is making robots that use low power spirits as rudimentary AI, catapulting them ahead of today's modern robotics, and because they're run off electricity, a single practitioner can have dozens of 'robot-Golems' running at a time at a relatively low cost to their own pool of magic. They're still running behind Necromancy in the labour market though, because robots are expensive to design and build where dead people are plentiful.
Some of you may know that I'm an Urban Fantasy nerd, but I also like my Sci-Fi, and oh boy do I like it when the two meet up.
The original mind worm that has me set on this particular thread is a Comic called The Red Star set in an AU Russia where they incorporate witches into their army, but not as special infantry or some such, but as artillery fuel.
One of the most striking panels in the graphic novel is a scene where a dozen or more witches are suspended from what is called a 'sky furnace' (think helicarrier form Marvel) with ports pointed down. The witches are all hooked up to the furnace and either power it, cast a spell in unison or through some other mechanism, are the catalyst for a massive blast of flame that really messes with some poor guy's day. Other panels have the MC asking for permission to run spells like a program, like there's a server somewhere that's doing the number-crunching for the spell to be cast. The marriage between technology and magic is just a beautiful thing in how it changes both. Siege engines powered by witches, spells run by computer, it a fun counterpoint to the 'tech and magic don't like each other' narrative a lot of other Urban Fantasy runs with *cough*Dresden Files*cough*
There are other examples that come to mind (Final Fantasy, Shadowrun, Gunnerkrigg Court, a healthy amount of steam-punk eg) but I want to take a moment and focus in on this idea!
What are some of your hot-takes?
Ideas you want to use in this vein/thing's you've enjoyed?
If you want to get speculative, postulate how your Sci-fi world would change with the advent of some kind of magic?
Below is one of my own takes on this (skip if you don't want to read me gushing about this, I don't mind
):In my Urban Fantasy, magic is being worked into technology, but because all magic requires a contract with a spiritual entity (Making deals with Fey/Kami/Jinn etc) to work, it still needs a magic-practitioner somewhere in the system, even if the computers are doing the heavy lifting of casting the spells.
One example is making golems. In book 2, a lot of focus is on the use of Zombies vs Golems for dangerous/skilled labour.
Necromancy is pure magic at this point. It needs one practitioner (to power the spells) and one spirit to animate several dead people. The brains of the deceased are animated enough to function, allowing the zombie to do things that require skill, memory, learning etc.
Traditional golems need one practitioner (again, for power) and one spirit EACH for the golems, because the spirit is acting as the brain. Because weaker spirits are, by their nature, dumber, they need more powerful spirits for more complicated work. More powerful spirits cost more to contract with.
A company in my world is making robots that use low power spirits as rudimentary AI, catapulting them ahead of today's modern robotics, and because they're run off electricity, a single practitioner can have dozens of 'robot-Golems' running at a time at a relatively low cost to their own pool of magic. They're still running behind Necromancy in the labour market though, because robots are expensive to design and build where dead people are plentiful.
