Like Star Wars?
Wizards and spaceships? It’ll never work.
Spelljammer was a late 80s cocaine-fueled fever dream.
Star Wars doesn’t really do ‘super advanced technology’. Like they’ve got space ships and hyperdrive and laser swords and shit, but they don’t treat it like high-tech stuff, they treat it like we treat cars and swords.
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The whole “used future” aesthetic is a big part of what gives Star Wars its vibe.
How do you treat cars and swords.
Any universe where they have super advanced tech they’ll treat it like we treat cars, because cars are also super advanced tech, it’s just a tech you see daily and are familiar. How do you expect characters in a super technologically advanced world to react? They see that every day, it’s not news to them.
I think the point is that the tech doesn’t materially change most starwars characters interactions from present day. It’s not really scifi because the science / tech doesn’t shape how the characters interact dramatically.
If you give the characters some real scifi-tech like put them inside computers, or have backup throwaway clone bodies, or jack them in to a hive mind, or give them time travel or alternate universes then the whole dramatic context of the character interactions has to change and the story has to be shaped by the technology to some degree. It’d likely be a bit more alien as our innate sense of constraints and jeopardy doesn’t apply.
Only really the deathstar is anything different tech wise - it is only used once, and becomes more like a part of the maguffin.
The other fantastic dramatic features that starwars does use that are alien to us - precognition, mind control, reincarnation(sortof) - are magic rather than tech.
I never said Star Wars was sci-fi, it’s not. But it does have super advanced tech which is the issue being discussed.
We don’t treat iphones and AI like we treat cars. Star Wars has literal instantaneous communication anywhere in the galaxy and literal thinking, feeling machines, and they’re like ‘lawl my 9 year old built a stupid robot that speaks 4,000 languages with some plans he downloaded from them thar interwebs!’ Technology, like everything else, is a spectrum - except in Star Wars. There’s no sense that anyone in the SW universe is going ‘Meh we’ve had starships for 10,000 years, but these new laser swords, man those are some hot shit!’ or whatever. There aren’t tech enthusiasts in Star Wars; you get a little bit of the gear-head enthusiasm for ships, but no one is raving about the new must-have gadget or that cool new meta-material they read about. They treat technology in Star Wars like we treat trees: just a brute fact of life with the occasional redeeming quality. Technology is change, and even if it wouldn’t change significantly over the course of the various shows and movies, there’s no evidence that it has ever changed.
It’s still high tech if it’s vastly beyond our current technological ability.
They don’t treat it like high tech, they treat it like their granddad’s old beater of a car that somehow never dies or fails to get you where you’re going, but somehow never does a particularly good job either. They treat technology like we treat trees: a brute fact of life with some occasional redeeming qualities.
Just because they don’t treat it like it’s advanced, doesn’t mean it isn’t advanced from our, the audience’s, perspective. Most tech in most sci-fi works is treated as a fact of life, no one goes “holy shit, they just invented hovercars!”.
We’re talking about technology in the context of a story here, so whether or not it’s high tech to the reader is besides the point. Which, as I was trying to elucidate, is that what matters is how the characters treat technology relative to magic, not the audience.
That’s not how science fiction works.
Guy’s over here talking about a story involving tech and magic and you’re talking about how sci-fi works? I think you’re confused about how genres work.
People in 2025 don’t really do ‘super advanced technology’. Like they’ve got super powerful handheld computers on them at all times and all of human knowledge accessible at all times and planes and shit, but they don’t treat it like high-tech stuff, they treat it like we treat carriages and books.
Dune as well.
Warhammer 40k
Yeah, there are a lot of examples out there.
Tbf, in Dune all the “magic-y” bits get “scientific” explanations. I suppose you could argue the same with Star Wars and midichlorians.
Most magic books have a magic system that seems to be backed up by sciencey like explanations for their universe.
I can only think of a few that don’t, like Harry Potter.
Star ocean, some final Fantasy, psychics in starship troopers
Sort of dr who? At least the time lords regenerating
DS9?
I think the MCU has done a good job with it, but I’d like to see a non-superhero version of it.
Star Wars
In the ‘advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic’ there is John Carter, Dune and a ton of other movies where the tech seems like magic.
There’s a Netflix movie called Bright, which is futuristic fantasy.
This was super common in the 1960s and 70s when hippies where the ones writing sci fi and the thought was that technological advancement would also come along with spiritual advancement to the point of supernatural powers. Star Wars, Dune, 2001: A Space Odyssey, and many others freely blend the supernatural with the technological. Sure it’s not D&D magic with fireballs and shit but it’s still magic. Further, if you want to look at a modern IP with this vibe look at World of Warcraft, where there are aliens from space with spaceships and shit with one of the most stereotypical fantasy settings you can imagine.
Super advanced technology is magic. Hell, regular advanced technology is magic. Just run with it.
It did in Final Fantasy VI with its Magitek
Most Final Fantasy games mix sci-fi and magic. Only the specifics of the lore around how it works changes with each FF universe.
Starship mage also did it well.
Why wouldn’t it work? Stories usually fail because the plot is bad or because they’re badly told, and it’s not that hard to maintain verisimilitude just because seemingly opposite ideas like magic and advanced technology are combined - just communicate what your magic and technology can and cannot do in broad strokes and stick to it, and avoid asspulls that make no sense and/or undermine the character beats you’re showing. But you get exactly the same issues in a story with only magic or only advanced technology.
It is called Star Wars, and it is one of the many reasons why I do not like it.
What about it specifically do you dislike? This type of setting definitely invites questioning by the audience and can break immersion, but I’m curious about your take on it.
I think this is the greater unpopular opinion I have, but here I go: It’s something more personal rater than anything. Since child I’ve always fund kinda stupid that a civilization that has ships with space travel capabilities still using swords to fight sigh LASER swords. I always felt Star Wars like a mediaval story, it have swords, magic, incest, politics, and the sci-fi stuff is a big flex tape. I’m pretty sure that without it, Star Wars wouldn’t never be the success that it is.
Funny you should mention those themes, because it was heavily influenced by classic Samurai films, which have a lot of similar “betrayal” story beats.
You don’t want guns in a spaceship. Don’t want to poke a hole in a wall and open it to space.
Swords make a lot more sense when fighting inside a spaceship. (Granted, short swords, probably, due to the limited space, but still.)
You might be glad to know that there’s only one scene involving the Force in all of Andor, and it’s nowhere near central to the plot. Cassian himself is a skeptic.
Or you might not care at all, and be sick of people telling you how good Andor is. Whatever your opinion is, it’s valid.
In dungeons and dragons there is a type of hybrid character you can play called an Artificer who treats magic more like technology, and there are a ton of examples in popular media that others have mentioned. I do think you have to determine how and if you’ll keep them distinct if that’s important to your plot, but if they developed alongside eachother maybe the technology of that world relies on magic to work.
Or maybe your magic relies on elder gods that don’t like the mortal hubris of critiquing the gods works so attempts to unravel magic gets you cursed or worse.
I think they can go together and the way you fit them can even become a plot point!
it exists, and is phenomenal:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rise_and_Fall_of_D.O.D.O.
You know what, basically any SCP will have varying levels of scifi and fantasy tropes, or sometimes none at all. Bottom line with SCPs is that anything is possible.
https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/68872/dungeon-planet-the-healer-always-leaves-alive
Found that little gem a few weeks ago and I believe it fits your ask pretty well 1:1
Honestly almost as good as my other favorite the past few years, https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/63759/super-supportive, but the latter seems to be more active than the former.
Absolutely, there are lots of examples, but the first that comes to mind is Warhammer 40k, they have super advanced technology and magic coexisting and sometimes intermingling.
It’s not magic, it’s extra-dimensional energy!
