tags: Clarke's Third Law

2006

June

2006 Jun 9

magic/imagination

I’m too lazy to look it up, but I can’t help but feel that there is some cognate root shared by these two words.

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2007

March

2007 Mar 6

more magic

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. —Sir Arthur C. Clarke

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2012

July

2012 Jul 14

systems of magic

Ever since I heard of Arthur C. Clarke's Third Law—any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic—I've often found myself thinking of how magic would end up being studied in a post-scientific revolution civilization. I know a lot of fantasy authors don't like making their systems of magic explicit, because it inevitably makes it magic less magical (and not making it explicit is also incidentally in line with Tolkien's thoughts on how magic should work: internally logically consistent the way logic in fairy tales and dreams are internally consistent, no matter how weird.)

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