Clarke's Third Law: Difference between revisions

Within many works, the separation between science and magic can be blurred to deceive a bystander. In some cases, one may masquerade as the other. An important justification for many forms of [[Applied Phlebotinum]].

 

 

'''Compare:'''

* [[Cargo Cult]]

* [[Fantastic Science]]

* [[First Church of Mecha]]

* [[Science Fantasy]]

* [[The Spark of Genius]]

 

 

{{examples}}

== [[Anime]] and [[Manga]] ==

* ''[[Mahou Sensei Negima]]'' has one arc where thousands of students are given magic to wield. Then they fight off baddies with it. The catch? They [[Blatant Lies|are told]] it's just highly advanced computerized effect technology and that it's just a game, in order to keep up [[The Masquerade]].

'''Kaname:''' Magic, huh? No, I'm afraid it isn't that. This guy isn't using magic but rather... technology... The enemy has it, and it's an integral part of his mecha's defenses. }}

* ''[[Neon Genesis Evangelion]]'' tends to blur the lines between the scientific, esoteric/metaphysical and divine/spiritual.

* Ichika quotes this in episode 8 of [[Asobi ni Iku yo!|Asobi Ni Iku Yo]] to explain her "magic" scrolls.

 

== [[Comic Books]] ==

* The [[Scarlet Witch]] is this trope personified. Her power is actually to affect probability in order to make wildly improbable events happen. This has drifted to become a general ability to warp reality. Thus, despite her name and the description of her power as including "hex bolts," she is not actually magical.

** It was explicitly magical for awhile, but that's since been retconned.

* Abra Kadabra, a member of The Flash's rogues gallery, takes advantage of this. His entire schtick is coming from the 64th century, where the technology is so advanced that he passes as a magician in the 20/21st century.

** Eventually subverted when he made a [[Deal with the Devil]] to get real magic which [[Fantasy Kitchen Sink|also exists in the DC Universe.]]

* Although [[Superman]]´s enemy Mr. Mxyzptlk has vast powers traditionally attributed to magic, many recent interpretations of the character suggest it's due to his access to very advanced technology and the physical advantage that living on the fifth dimension confers over tridimensional beings like Superman.

* The [[Green Lantern]] rings and by extension the other Corps' power rings [[Hard Light|use light in order to form physical constructs]]. It's supposedly advanced technology, but because light isn't normally physical, for all intents and purposes the power rings are magic.

 

== [[Film]] ==

* In the [[Marvel Cinematic Universe]], Clarke's Third Law is actively discussed in ''[[Thor (film)|Thor]]'', where Thor states that magic and science are one and the same. There's also a mention in ''[[Captain America: The First Avenger]]'' when a Nazi agent calls Red Skull's technology magic. Plus, elements in multiple films imply that [[Iron Man (film)|Iron Man]]'s state-of-the-art Arc Reactor is based on the Tesseract, a powerful Asgardian artifact.

* The aliens in ''[[Cowboys and Aliens (film)|Cowboys and Aliens]]'' are never called as such. They're most often called demons and the cast never thinks of them as being technologically advanced. {{spoiler|Ella, another alien, says that she came from beyond the stars, giving the impression of an angel}}.

 

== [[Literature]] ==

** He inverts the law in several stories, where industrialized magic has replaced or mimicked technology. The best examples being his ''Darkness'' series, where magic has replaced all the technology of World War II, and ''The Case Of The Toxic Spelldump'' a pun-laden comedy novel filled with Virtuous Reality, Djinnetic Engineering, and similar magi-tek.

* Inverted in ''[[Discworld]]'' where sufficiently advanced ''magic'' is indistinguishable from ''technology''... for example, when Rincewind first sees a picture box, he surmises it must work by use of photosensitive materials capturing the light off the target.. right up until the magical imp inside complains that he's out of paint.

* Disputed by [[The Dresden Files|Harry Dresden.]]

{{quote|"Sufficiently advanced technology, my ass."}}

** A good number grow up in muggle families, so you should try not to think about this ignorance very much.

*** It was implied that sheer virtue of growing up in a muggle family was enough to make Hermione more qualified to teach the "Muggle Studies" course than the unnamed professor and that she explicitly said she was taking the course [[For the Lulz]].

** Happens in The Silmarillion with the Elves in Valinor.

* John Ringo's ''Council Wars'' series eats, breathes and defecates this trope. Elves, orcs, dragons etc that are the result of genetic engineering combined with nanotech, "spells" based on high energy manipulation of quantum physics, you name it.

* Taken to its absurdist extreme in ''The Flying Sorcerers'' by David Gerrold and Larry Niven. A planetary scout gets stranded on a primitive world, and has to enlist the help of the natives to get to a place he can summon help. Said natives have to be taught production technology and how to create certain things in order to do this...which makes them regard him as a high-powered magician The story is also told from the perspective of ''one of the natives'', for added humor. [[The Other Wiki]] even has a [[wikipedia:The Flying Sorcerers|page]] on the story.

* ''[[Enchantress From the Stars]]'': The Andrecians view Imperial technology as magic wands that turn people to stone (stunners), dragons (rock-chewer), monsters with no faces (Imperials in suits) and the examples in the summary. Also, telepathy and psychokinesis among the Federal field agents are stand-ins for advanced technologies humankind can't think of yet.

* In [[H. Rider Haggard]]'s ''[[She]]'', She Who Must Be Obeyed uses magic that she explains is simply knowledge and technology that are completely unknown to the main characters.

* In [[Mark Twain]]'s ''A [[Connecticut Yankee]] in King Arthur's Court'', the main characters success relies on the 6th Century folks mistaking his 19th century tech as wizardry.

* In Christopher Stasheff's Warlock series, the inhabitants of the planet Gramarye interpreted abilities like telekinesis as "magic" due to their ancestors' decision to adopt a low-tech pseudo-medieval culture and the passage of centuries without contact from any other planets. Beings such as fairies, trolls and whatnot, according to the main character, were the result of a combination of psychic powers, a psi-sensitive local plant called "witchmoss" and a lot of fairy tales.

 

* ''[[Stargate SG-1]]'': Most of the technology of the [[Sufficiently Advanced Alien]]s is taken as magic by the majority of the less advanced civilizations in the galaxy. To be fair, however, most of those civilizations are human-based and far less advanced than our current level of civilization.

** Also, in one episode in later seasons, Daniel tries to tell a village that there is no such thing as magic; it is, however, ineffective because no sooner has he finished saying this than he and the rest of his team are beamed away in a flash of light, leaving the villagers baffled. Daniel hangs his head and complains at the timing.

** [[Sufficiently Advanced Alien|Time Lord]] technology in general is this trope.

*** Time Lord founders Rassilon and Omega seem to have been particularly inclined towards this trope. Most of their inventions are outwardly non-technological in design and could easily be taken for magical artifacts.

** In "Who Watches The Watchers", Picard deliberately invokes this trope in an attempt to convince the natives that he is ''not'' a god.

*** He almost fails.

* In ''[[Warehouse 13]]'', this seems to held as the mentality of the Warehouse agency with regards to the artifacts they collect, or at least by Artie as he claimed in the first episode:

{{quote|""If a radio landed in the hands of Thomas Jefferson, do you know what Jefferson would do? He would just lock it up, until he figured out it wasn't going to kill him. That's exactly what we do here. We take the unexplained... and we safely tuck it away."}}

 

== [[Tabletop Games]] ==

** Adeptus Mechanicus Priests rever machines as holy relics, in turn ensuring that whatever they build, they will not skimp on the cost, using the absolute best. Their maintenance of it also treats each individual machine as a holy spirit. While this seems outwardly weird by our standards, this means that they will not cut corners on maintenance and will always do a precise job, keeping the machine at top efficiency until the end of it's life. Played straight by the Ecclesiarchy however, especially in [[Dawn of War]] Soulstorm, as somehow a relic (which is usually old bones) blessed by a saint confers invulnerablility, with no other explanation given otherwise.

** The 40K universe is as much an inversion, as it is playing it straight. By the time 40k rolls around, Humanity had suffered a civilizational collapse some 15,000 years previously where the only technology maintained was either practical and necessary, or picked up by the Mechanicus which developed into a cult as the original source material for development and maintenance degraded and they needed a way to maintain the technology without losing the ''how'' to do it. Since their lives depended heavily on keeping their systems working...

** The [[Skele-Bot 9000|Necrons]], due to their nature, can't access the Warp and thusly don't have the [[Psychic Powers]] that other races do. Instead, they turn to their hyper-advanced science, which is more than comparable in effectiveness; combat scientists called "Crypteks" actually take the place that combat psykers do in other races, and their various scientific disciplines [[Whatevermancy|are even named like disciplines of magic]]. Psychomancy includes [[Emotion Bomb|blasting an opponent's mind with fear or despair so they die or go insane]] and [[Casting a Shadow|teleporting through clouds of darkness]]. Plasmancy controls [[Pure Energy]], but also can control [[Playing with Fire|fire]] and [[Light'Em Up|light]]. [[Time Master|Chronomancy]] is [[Exactly What It Says on the Tin]]. Ethermancy is the control of [[Blow You Away|air]] and [[Shock and Awe|lightning]]. Geomancy, despite the name, is actually more about [[Alchemy As Magic|alchemy]] than about [[Dishing Out Dirt|direct earth control]]; Crypteks following this discipline are known as Harbingers of Transmogrification.

* Inverted in the ''[[Eberron]]'' setting where mundane technology is all but discarded because [[Magitek|magic has reached the point where it could be called a technology in and of itself.]]

 

== [[Video Games]] ==

* [[Septerra Core]] does this big time. Both technological equipment and magical abilities are powered by radiation from the Core, a gigantic friggin' biocomputer! Essentially, anything done by a living thing is magic, and anything done by a machine is technology. Then again, the line between lifeforms and machines is blurred too, with the game having both sentient robots and biotechnology (see [[Living Ship]]).

* Biotics in ''[[Mass Effect]]'' run the whole gamut of [[Psychic Powers]] and could easily be mistaken for magic. In fact, biotic characters fill the "mage" role of the game's [[Fighter, Mage, Thief]] dynamic. However, given the game's extreme levels of [[Shown Their Work]] and [[Mohs Scale of Sci Fi Hardness|hard sci-fi]], it's plausibly explained as the result of [[Unobtainium|Element Zero]] in the body stimulated by electrical currents generated in the person's nervous system.

* Bascially the main source of the advanced tech from ''[[Asura's Wrath]]'' comes from this law, though with a more Hindu and Buddhist Twist.

 

== [[Web Animation]] ==

* Parodied in [[Homestar Runner|Strong Bad Email]] [http://www.homestarrunner.com/sbemail143.html #143 technology]:

{{quote|'''Strong Bad:''' The word ''technology''... means... ''magic''. It's basically anything that's really cool that you don't know how it works. And if it breaks, you have to buy a new one.}}

 

== [[Web Comics]] ==

* ''[[Girl Genius]]'' gives us [http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/comic.php?date=20081205 the inverted version], where Agatha [[Tim Taylor Technology|pimps up]] a magic wand.

** Later, in a side story the warlord progenitor of the Heterodynes exclaims "[http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/comic.php?date=20140818 Grah! Vat kind uf sufficiently advanced technology iz dis?!]"

* ''[[The Order of the Stick|Order of the Stick]]'' had a gag that any sufficiently advanced ''and reliable'' magic is indistinguishable from technology.

* In ''[[El Goonish Shive]]'' it's unclear, even to Tedd, if Tedd's TFG should count as technology or magic. It has been confirmed in [http://egscomics.com/?date=2008-11-13 this comic] that it a combination of both and thus Magitek.

* Eridan of ''[[Homestuck]]'' refuses to believe that magic exists and insists on calling it science, even calling the magic that he uses "White Science".

** Earlier, in a trans-temporal memo made by Karkat, Kanaya asks him if magic is real. While he says he's not sure, the point is moot since all the equipment Sgrub has leaves nothing for magic to really offer. They kind of have magic in the Alchemy already.

* In ''[[Skin Horse]]'', Dr Virginia Lee, a sane scientist in a Mad Science universe, believes that any sufficiently ''stupid'' technology is indistinguishable from magic.

 

== [[Western Animation]] ==

* [[Cargo Cult]]

* In an interview on Apple's webpage, a member of the design team for the newly unveiled iPad invokes/discusses the trope, repeatedly mentioning that the feature set may seem like the result of magic. [[Memetic Mutation]] ensued.

* Any technology of the 21st century when compared to even a few decades ago. We have robots, lasers, and we're working on holograms and energy shields.

** Remember those plasma balls from the 80s? That was a proof of concept that energy shielding was actually technologically possible. The only hangup, even today, is the prohibitive energy cost to make it worthwhile. The energy required to ''shield'' something has to be equal to or greater than the energy released against the shield, and has to maintain that at a constant output.

* Played as a joke with anyone who works with electronics. A lot of times, when electronics are overloaded to the point of catastrophic failure, they burn and release smoke. This smoke is referred to as "magic smoke". And the reason why electronics stop working is "once the magic smoke leaves, it doesn't come back."

** This is rather reminiscent to the concept of phlogiston, a hypothetical matter used to explain burning prior to the discovery of oxygen.

 

{{reflist}}

[[Category:Applied Phlebotinum]]

[[Category:Speculative Fiction Tropes]]

[[Category:Laws and Formulas]]

[[Category:Magic and Powers]]