Indistinguishable from Magic, 2 Rash and Final Action
Indistinguishable from Magic is now posted.
Two of Two.
This story is odd because it is a case where the humble author disagrees with his own muse, at least in regards to the title and theme. The story attempts to capture some of the eerie wonder of a magician’s lab in a museum of extraterrestrial artifacts.
The reader must judge whether the tale succeeds or fails, and such a judgment is final.
But I myself do not think technology is indistinguishable from magic, no matter how advanced it is. The two are based on different principles, have a different nature, and a different point when used in storytelling.
Magic produces awe and wonder because the things depicted in fairy stories are not merely impossible, they have a moral quality and a meaning that exists in any world haunted by fairies, besieged by demons, or relieved by angels. Such things are done by prayers and exhortations to the divinities great or small, whose office it is to govern reality itself. Magic is when a character speaks to the author. It is supernatural.
Technology, no matter how advanced, is natural, and if analyzed sufficiently, studied methodically, can be articulated. Technology, no matter how advanced, cannot do the impossible. Technology cannot break the laws of nature, not even the advanced technology exploiting hitherto unknown loopholes or fine print in such laws.
Even those things in non-fairy life which humans do, such as sing songs or fall in love, which bring the touch of eternity to us, and seem fairylike, or devilish or angelic, cannot be analyzed, nor studied methodically, nor articulated.
The phrase in the title comes from Arthur C Clarke. Mr. Clarke, as was the fashion in England in his schoolboy days, was a bit of a reductionist, a bit of a cynic, and may have mistaken the word “magic” for the word “unknown.”
Worse, he may have never questioned the dogma that outside scientific knowledge is no knowledge, no facts, no truths, nothing but airy clouds of mere opinion, or swamps of unfounded dogma, hence not to be believed. He may have never seen the paradox of dogmatic denunciation of dogmatism.
About John C Wright
John C. Wright is a practicing philosopher, a retired attorney, newspaperman, and newspaper editor, and a published author of science fiction. Once a Houyhnhnm, he was expelled from the august ranks of purely rational beings when he fell in love; but retains an honorary title.
