Do you think a story that mixes magic with super advanced technology can work?

Like Star Wars?

I think the MCU has done a good job with it, but I'd like to see a non-superhero version of it.

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic

-Arthur C Clarke

I apologize if this sounds flippant, but it's FICTION.

Literally ANYTHING works if its written well enough...

It did in Final Fantasy VI with its Magitek

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadowrun

Super advanced technology is magic. Hell, regular advanced technology is magic. Just run with it.

I think you inevitably face the whole “magic IS advanced technology” thing. If you actually want them to be different things, you have to have some answer to this.

Techomages from Babylon 5 come to mind.

The second Mistborn series by Brandon Sanderson gets close. It's a setting where magic meets wild west tech, including guns, cars, and electricity.

I've heard that his next trilogy in the setting will have more of an 1980s tech level.

A couple of Sanderson's short stories touch on space ships, computers, and magic.

EDIT: I didn't answer the question. Yes, I think it can work. I'm also a huge fan of Brian McClellan's Powder Mage books. This mixes musket level tech and industrialization with magic.

Shadowrun kind of does the same. It's not really super-advanced, since it's cyberpunk, but it's cyberpunk with magic. And it's my favorite setting, it's such a cool idea.

Shadowrun… yeah it works

Edit: I just noticed somebody else mentioned shadowrun aswell, well: I second that.

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.

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.

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.

Arcane

In Terry Pratchett's Discworld the wizards of the Unseen University built a possibly sentient supercomputer out of an ant farm (much faster and more powerful than previous druid-built computers based on standing stones, which were mostly limited to calendar calculations and required regular human sacrifices).

The Agathean Empire at the edge of the disc has little boxes with little imps inside which can paint a picture of what you point the box at in mere seconds.

Later, some Ankh-Morpork entrepreneurs trained imps to paint even faster on highly flammable nitrocellulose reels and, moving them very fast and lighting them from behind with excited salamanders, invented moving pictures (and promptly accidentally almost let the Things from the Dungeon Dimensions enter the disc).

Even later, some other Ankh-Morpork entrepreneurs created a continent-spanning network of semaphore telegraphs, even managing to send pictures through it.

All while some Dwarves in Ankh-Morpork invented movable type, while getting in trouble with the wizards, who're well aware that you can't use that to print magic books, for the type will remember...

And, all along, deep under their mountains, the Überwaldian dwarves have been digging up and using ancient Devices to power whole cities...

There's a ton of examples, so yeah.

My home brew ttrpg setting is exactly that

Artemis Fowl is a classic example of this. The fantasy world of fairies relies on super advanced technology in their world.

MCU does a good job. Iron Man is supposed to be science based, and Thor is a Norse god.

The black ocean series does a good job if blending the two together. But it sort of sets them in opposition to each other. Interstellar travel is made possible on futuristic spaceships by using magic to plunge the ship partially into another dimension, shortening the relative distance between stars. But unless the it is specially shielded against it, magic ruins and destroys technology.

A sequel to Arcanum that moves the timeline forward into the information age?

Sure, there are books like that and Shadowrun.

Yes. It's worked very well in the recent Zelda games

Clarke's Third Law: Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

Yes. Many wireless already exist.

Comic books do this all the time.

And Wandavision is about as nail on head as you are going to get

Magic is Supermans only real weakness aside from kryptonite

Warhamer 40k

Starcraft

League of Legends

Final fantasy

The Palladium Rifts RPG

Dune

Starwars

Definitely, although I think it's most interesting if the advanced technology is based on the magic.

Like, let's say there is a world where there are magic plants that can heal you, people who can magically scry nearby locations if they meditate deeply, and stones that levitate in the moonlight.

And there's an evil empire that exploits the fuck out of this by industrially farming the plants to create a highly concentrated serum, removing people's brains and hooking them up to computers for magical sensing abilities, and attaching fragments of moon rocks to the levitating stones to create antigravity. Creating invulnerable flying supersoldiers with impossibly good radar powered by brain backpacks.

Yes and it sounds cool as hell

it exists, and is phenomenal:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rise_and_Fall_of_D.O.D.O.

Starship mage also did it well.

As in entertainment - yes. But when it comes to realistic representation and imagination as sci-fi then no.

it's really difficult as all magic that we understand becomes science. To create this artificial gap the world has to answer - why can't science understand, reverse engineer and bend magic?

Most scientific progression is very rapid. If fireballs exist then there will be a giant 1,000 rpm fireball machine by the end of the week and that's no longer magic as we see it.

So there has to be a strong artificial limitation why magic exists and cannot be understood and harvested which is really hard to write in scifi. You have to introduce religion, spiritual mysticism or some sort of societal control mechanism that prevents reverse engineering magic which is really hard to do in a way that satisfies the readers cognitive dissonance.

Personally I have found stories like that like Warhammer 40k, Star Wars etc. But without a big, establishrd name it's so hard to convince the reader. I recently finished the wheel of time and really couldn't get over this which ruined the entire premise for me.

Star Wars did for a while.

Like most things by Philip K. Dick, the man who has more movies based on his writing than any other author?

Sure. Maybe the advanced tech is powered by magic, maybe the "magic" is just lost advanced technology.

I always liked the Dresden Files take on technology and magic. It's not that they can't exist in the same universe, it's that magic causes absolute haywire with circuitry. So you can use technology, or you can use magic, but not both.

In Attack on Titan, magic (titan powers) had historically an edge over humanity, but the story is in part about how Humanity's technology has advanced to almost surpass those magical powers and shift the power balance.

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."

-Arthur C. Clarke

Iron man and other Marvel movies started being very science. Oriented, but quickly combined magic or turned to magic

That's prevalent in the Might and Magic series. But (probably depending on the game) the high technology is often hidden from the common folk.

Yes.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/35420518

The Starship’s Mage books do this.

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!

In any other setting, when we take specific, tiny stones and carve patterns into them until they can perform tasks for us, we call it magic.

DCEU/MCU does this alot. Klarion the chaos lord use chaos magic(different from wanda's magic) to control starro nanotech, they call it techno-sorcery/magic-tech. but this will never occurs in sci-fi though, since magic isnt really a thing(maginery) when technology and science is used to explain the nature of the universe is involved. dark eleves and ASGARDIANS use magic and tech together. magic is basically making things impossible to a possibility(probability manipulation through energy) with limitations depending on the type of cinema/comic/media universe that it is in. or castlevania(the magical castle that use technology powered by magic)

Anime does this all the time; Especially the ISEKAI-Genre

Absolutely. Read the nightlord series, just skip through the first half of book one, it's the first thing the author ever wrote and could have used better editing for sure. High tech kicks in at book 3

Yes. Do a time travel story and new tech will be seen as miraculous magic by those pesky Elizabethans.

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.

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.

You are going after two different nerd groups, so if you are able to keep them both happy... sure

Definitely not. I give no reason.

The Psalms of Isaak series did this very well at the beginning -- starts off with a magic fantasy land but as you read you realize that there were forebearers with immense science and technology, and weaves a conflict between the two.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Psalms_of_Isaak