Conference noted::sf

    I suspect the key is in the word "sufficiently". As an engineer
    you may meet artifacts that work, but by a mechanism not immediately
    obvious to you. But at this moment there are no artifacts on this
    planet (or are there?...) that are "sufficiently" advanced to be
    mistaken for supernatural actions.
    
    Now if you show a hovercraft to a stone age tribesman, how would
    he interpret what he sees.
    
    Or, assuming that a space drive is possible (but current physics
    says it isn't), then show one to a NASA engineer. What would be
    his reaction? or perhaps that is not sufficiently advanced?
    
    /. Ian .\

  And the number of years that equates to "sufficiently" is dropping all
  the time.  Of all the John W. Campbell editorials in Analog, the one
  I remember best was about this subject.  Campbell asked what would happen
  if the DoD's most advanced remotely-piloted-vehicle got tossed back
  30 years in time as a result of, say, getting too close to a nuclear
  weapons test.  The editorial came out around 1970 and Campbell pointed
  out that many of the components of such a vehicle would seem awfully
  strange to a scientist from 1940 (though they probably wouldn't think
  that magic was involved).  My memory is a bit sketchy (perhaps someone
  can dig up the reference? -- my own pile of Analogs has long since turned
  to mold) but I recall that there would be radioactive isotopes of elements
  that a 1940-era scientist would *know* had no radioactive isotopes.  I 
  imagine that LSI technology would give them pause as well...

  JP

I hope Earl Wajenberg shows up here...

I feel that Magic and Technology can be treated as equivilent, if you downplay
the differences.  I also feel that *the* way, is to accentuate the differences
which exist.  I do not enjoy a story with technology protrayed as magic,
as well as I enjoy a good clean Science fiction story.

The Technology has to be sufficiently advanced so that the observers of the
Technology have never even *thought* that this could be done, except, of
course, by magic.  *We* have had quite a bit of practice of imagining things
that could be done with technology, so I suspect we would be quite hard to
trick.

Then again, I think some people are more likely to see something wierd, and
automatically think of it as magic, and other people would automatically
start looking for how the technology worked.

Jim.

Different people in the same culture may have different definitions of
"sufficiently".  We work with high tech every day, so if we see something
we don't understand, our first thought is that it is "higher tech" than
we currently understand.  

For example, think about showing a radio to Alexander Graham Bell or Thomas
Edison, vs showing that same radio to your random person off the street in
the same time frame.  Bell or Edison will say "Neat, wow, how did you 
accomplish this *technical* feat?"  (and probably go insane trying to do it
themselves), but the guy off the street will probably say "Magic".  Simply
because in the one case they knew that *something* like this might be dimly
imagined as an outcome of what they currently understood, where in the other
case it was totally outside of the world-map of the person off the street.

That is why I think that trying to get a NASA engineer to say "Magic" is much
harder than getting someone who reads the National Enquirer to say it.  

-- Ken Moreau

 >I feel that magic and technology can be treated as equivalent, if
    >you downplay
    >the differences ...
    
    I beleive you can treat _any_ two things as equivalent, if you downplay
    the differences! :-)
    
    >I do not enjoy a story with technology portrayed as magic,
    >as well as I do a good clean Science fiction story.
    
    Then you'll miss one of the _classic_ SF books, Fritz Leiber's
    magnificent _Gather, Darkness!_
    
    Steve Kallis, Jr.
    

    The John W. Campbell editorial about the unmanned probe thrown back
    in time was titled "No Copying Allowed," and is in the book of
    collected editorials.
    
    Camopbell wrote it to stem a bunch of stories at the time about
    people who are in a space war (or equivalent) who steal or otherwise
    find an alien artifact and mass-produce it to Turn the Tide.
    
    He said it couldn't be done.
    
    He ought to have known -- his characters did it themselves in several
    of his space operas....
    
    Steve Kallis, Jr.
    

Thanks for the tip, Steve.  Do you happen to know whether that book
is still in print?  I can't recall ever seeing it on the SF shelves.

BTW, I agree with your comment about "Gather, Darkness."  *Not* a book
to read late at night when you're all by your lonesome...

JP

    re:.0
    
    Say you came across someone who performed some feat of magic before
    your very eyes.
    
    How would you be able to determine that it *wasn't* technology that
    was advanced beyond your understanding?
    
    I think that that is what Clarke had in mind.
    
    --- jerry

        I've always preferred a paraphrase of the quote:
        
        	Any sufficiently advanced technology is
	        indistinguishable from a rigged demo.
        
        But anyway... imagine taking a credit-card sized radio back,
        say, 50 years.  They knew all about radios, and there's stuff
        being broadcast that you can pick up (the same radio wouldn't
        be especially impressive 200 years ago).  Now, here's this
        little lump of plastic and rock (semiconductor) which is
        physically incapable of doing *anything* but sitting there...
        to their technology.  And it's playing music.  No tubes,
        no nothing.  The headphones a scientist might make sense
        out of, though the speaker technology doesn't much resemble
        anything they could do then.  But the receiver itself?  They
        might not think of it as "magic", but it might as well be.
        
        Now try bringing that same radio---maybe with a Mr.
        Microphone---back to the stone age and see what reaction
        you get.  Or if you're really brave, try showing up in North
        Eastern Mass. during the witch hunts...
        
        	/dave

Re .8:

>     Say you came across someone who performed some feat of magic before
>     your very eyes.
>    
>     How would you be able to determine that it *wasn't* technology that
>     was advanced beyond your understanding?

I tape it with my VCR and watch it several times, using the frame advance
when appropriate.  It worked wonders with David Copperfield's recent show.
:-)

(When he was making pearls appear, they were balanced on the back of his
thumb.  When he made the woman's body disappear, the head was fake and she
was behind the back of the light, which folded down.  For the walk through
the Great Wall, he left the booth via the roll-away stairs.)


				-- edp

    Re .8:
    
    Interesting you shopuld mention that, Jerry.  As it happened, the
    late-19th=early-th Century Robert Houdin (whom Erich Weiss took
    his stage name, Harry Houdini, from) amazed the relatively uneducated
    (what we'd call "Third World") peoples with "magic" built on the
    technology of the time.  Example:  he had a metal object that he
    put into a case, and told, say, an Arab chieftan to have tyhe strongest
    member of his band try to lift.  He would then speak a few appropriate
    words and gesture, and the strongman would nearly rupture himself
    trying -- unsuccessfully -- to get the thing out.  Then Houdin would
    gesture again and lift the object out effortlessly.  Of course,
    since the object was made out of iron, and the stand the case was
    on contained a huge electromagnet, the trick isn't surprising. 
    Naturally, the audiences in question thought it _was_ magic.
    
    Steve  Kallis, Jr.
    
    P.S.:  Concerning whether _Gather, Darkness!_ is in print or not;
    I'm not sure.  I've had my copy since it first came out in hardcover.
    
    -S
    

Re .3:  A word of explanation: Jim Baranski probably hoped I would join this
note because he once played in a science fiction role playing game that I ran.
In it, my magic was indistinguishable from technology.  It was set in the 25th
century and I proposed that psychic phenomena are real and, with the proper
scientific understanding and technical assistance, can be made reliable.  So I
had a world where about one third of the population was at least a little
psychic. 
    
To distinguish magic from technology, you must first define both.  In 
particular, you would have to define "magic," and probably the words "natural" 
and "supernatural."

As a quick first try, let me define "natural" as meaning, "producible by the 
system of bodies in space and time that we observe around us."  Thus if our 
minds are the products of our brains, our minds are natural.  If not, our 
minds are supernatural ("souls").  If there is a God that produced the 
universe, then He is supernatural, unless you think that causality can run in 
a circle.

Which brings up the next point.  If magic is defined as a supernatural 
operation, a given operation will be supernatural or not depending on what you 
think nature can produce.

A stone-age shaman does not, in this sense, believe in "magic."  He has 
probably never entertained a definition of "natural" like the one I proposed.  
He thinks it is quite "in the nature of things" that trees and streams and 
stones are aware and volitional creatures, and that you can persuade or coerce 
them by various traditional means.  When we would say he is working "magic," 
he might describe his operations as engineering or politics.

A Renaissance ceremonial wizard, however, DOES consciously believe he is 
performing magic, since he seeks to contact and bargain with or control a 
spirit which he believes to be formally, strictly supernatural and separate 
from the material world.

Now let's look at magic as it appears in literature.  Renaissance-style 
"Spirit Masters" who make pacts with demons or serve gods are common enough. 
James Blish did the masterpiece of that line in "Black Easter."  The mortal 
magicians in Poul Anderson's "Three Hearts and Three Lions" seem to work that 
way, too.

Also common are people with "The Gift," a magical power that either crops up
randomly or runs in families or races.  The wizards of Ursula LeGuin's 
Earthsea triology are such folk.  So are Katherine Kurtz's Deryni.  Tolkien's 
elves are so riddled with it, they do magic without even noticing.  To them, 
it isn't magic, but nature; they live in a larger world than we do.

Then there are wizards who depend on "Secret Lore" that seems to have nothing
to do with spirits or innate powers.  Harold Shea, the "Incompleat Enchanter"
invented by Pratt and deCamp, is the best example.  He discovered a way to get
to other universes, where "magic" works according to laws that he knows and
the inhabitants don't. 

T. H. White's Merlin, in "The Sword in the Stone," used all three methods.
He had a natural gift of prophecy and clairvoyance, he had been given a 
familiar and charged by Heaven or Fate or someone with the powers necessary to
transform Arthur and do the other more spectacular tricks, and, because of his 
gift of prophecy, he had a lot of hi-tech trinkets which Arthur thought 
magical, but which the reader recognizes as household items of the 19th and 
20th centuries.

The Spirit Masters do what I think any of us would call magic, because the 
spirits they call on are so strictly supernatural.

Those with The Gift, if they appeared among us, would certainly remind us of 
magic, but the cooler temperments among us might decide that psychic powers 
are real and these are just unusually gifted psychics, a hitherto undiscovered 
part of nature.  They might hope that, with enough research, we could build 
machines that would let anyone do what the Gifted do by themselves.  The 
Gifted are less emphatically magical. 

Those with Secret Lore look even less magical.  It's the secrecy.  The 
implication is that anyone who discovers those secrets can do the same tricks. 
In fact, if you have ever conceived of science or technology, you would soon 
decide that their "magic" was just special effects we haven't yet figured out. 
In fact, this is exactly Clarke's "sufficiently advanced technology."

So I would say that the appearance of magic derives from the appearance of 
inaccessibility.  If the magic power comes from the gods, that is about as 
inaccessible as it gets.  If the magic power comes from study and skill, I 
have only to invest the same amount of study and skill (or maybe just a little 
effort at espionage) to have the power myself.

Earl Wajenberg

    re: .10
    
    Television hardly qualifies as before your very eyes. :-)
    
    How'd he end up behind the curtain hanging in front of the staircase
    on the other side?
    
    And I'd still like to know how he managed to get rid of the Statue
    of Liberty and a 747. :-)
    
    Dave W.

    Re .10:  Oooh, that takes all the fun out of it! :-)
    
    Re .4:  A recent article in _Science News_ reports that the National
    Science Foundation surveyed 2000 persons by telephone: only one in five
    claimed to know how the telephone works... 
    
    
    John B.

    re:.10
    
    I guesses the pearl and the disappearing woman bits without resorting
    to slomo (I have the show on tape, too), but hadn't figured out
    how he walked through the Great Wall. I knew it had something to
    do with making the audience believe he had left the platform without
    his actually having done so, but I disn't figure out the specifics.
    
    --- jerry

re: .12

Good exposition!  Splitting magic up into spirit control, paranormal 
powers, and secret lore makes the whole issue much clearer.  I doubt 
if anyone would mistake spirit control for technology, although 
Maxwell had a dandy demon-powered refrigerator.  Paranormal powers 
are under active (if ill-respected) scientific investigation
(even hard-heads like John W. Campbell fell for them), and secret 
lore is definitely on the border.

A word more about this last point.  One of the distinguishing 
features of people who are trying to actually do something is how 
open they are about what's going on.  Science and technology thrive 
when everyone shares information.  On the other hand, people who are 
just trying to impress do their best to keep everything secret.  If 
your special knowledge is the source of your power/influence/income, 
then you'll do everything possible to keep it to yourself.  Magic spells
don't get put into the public library.

A good example of how harmful that can be is the Chinese water clock.
In the tenth century a Chinese inventor built the world's most 
accurate clock for the emperor.  It could regulate the flow of water 
so carefully that it could keep time to within a minute per day.  It 
was an enormous mechanism, several stories high, and was quite 
complex mechanically.  And yet, when the inventor died, the clock 
fell into disrepair.  No others were built in its place.  It remained 
for the monks in backwards medieval Europe to discover the escapement 
mechanism, the fundamental basis of mechanical clocks to this day.

The Chinese were way ahead of the monks in mechanical sophistication, 
but they never made the breakthrough.  Why not?  Because their work 
was kept secret by the emperor.  When the inventor died, his 
knowledge died with him.  Each new inventor had to start from scratch.
The emperor kept it secret for a curious reason: clocks were used for 
tracking the stars, which were used for astrology, which was the sole 
perogative of the emperor.  If everybody had a clock, anybody could 
predict the future, and the monarch would be another one of the masses.
The emperor held on to his magic powers by suppressing his 
subordinates' technologies!  Sounds like certain managers.

/jlr

Actually, I can think of one case where magic and technology were
pretty clearly confused: the cargo cults. During WW II, the US set up
air bases in parts of the South Pacific that were so remote that their
inhabitants had hardly ever seen Westerners before.  The Americans
gave freely from their advanced technology: food that stayed fresh
until you opened the can, pieces of cloth that fit snugly around the
body but still let you move freely, and knives that never seemed to
lose their sharpness. I mean, these people COULD FLY THROUGH THE AIR,
and they never seemed to run out of their wonderful supplies.  The
Americans left after the war, but the natives hoped and prayed for
them to come back.  They built bamboo models of airplanes to bring
back the great god of Cargo. They would carry pointed sticks like
rifles and march in drill formations. This persisted even into the
1970s. Kind of pathetic really. 

/jlr

Something that irritates me about the magic/technology business is 
how many times post-holocaust barbarians come across some functioning 
piece of ancient machinery which they treat as a god or weapon.  
Look, I'm lucky if my computer stays up for a couple of months, never 
mind a couple of centuries.  Imagine trying to keep a VAX running for 
even ten years unattended.  The first thing to go would be the disks; 
the bearings would start to wear, the platters would start to wobble, 
and then boom! Head crash and no more mass storage.  The machine 
keeps running on main memory for a while until soft errors from alpha 
particles (no shortage of them after WW III) wipe out key sections.
It could still execute out of ROM, but eventually enough dust accumulates
(the filters clogged up long ago) to start shorting out pins.  Even 
if the machine stays clean and dry and cool, the chips themselves will 
eventually fail because of trace contaminants in the packages or in 
the silicon.

VAXes aren't designed to run for decades, nor is much else.  About 
the only things that are really designed to last for centuries are dams.
Not many moving parts in them.  Barbarians might be impressed by 
them, but are no more likely to worship them than people worshipped 
Roman aqueducts in the Dark Ages.

/jlr

    Re .18:
    
    Though I also looathe these post-holocaust stories about neobarbarians
    worshipping technology, I could imagine a scenario where it might
    work:
    
    If WWIII holds off long enough, it'll all be in silicon.  No moving
    parts.
    
    ----------------------------------------------
    Another possibility was spelled out chillingly in Leiber's _Gather,
    Darkness_: the priests knew better (save perhaps the Fanatics),
    but the (effectively Medieval) laity didn't.
    
    Steve Kallis, Jr.
    

 		It's all in the mind
   
>To distinguish magic from technology, you must first define both.  In 
>particular, you would have to define "magic," and probably the words "natural" 
>and "supernatural."

	Clarke's idea that technology can be easily confused with magic
is indisputable.  Given what 'inquiring minds want to know' in a culture 
that sends men into space it should not be difficult to find someone to
convince that electricity is mearly channeled Salamanders or some such rot.

	The problem with his statement, and what makes it so popular with
fictional authors, is that it suggests that 'magic' is a phenomenon.
It clearly is not.  Magic does not exist, and cannot exist without such
restrictive definitions as to entirely loose its fictional character.

	David Humes's remarks concerning miracles apply to magic as well.
A miracle or magical event must occur in the natural world, or we will
not observe it.  Anything which occurs in the natural world, no matter
how improbable, or how contrary to 'natural law' is a natural event.
The fact that the 'impossible' happens - that objects start floating
towards the heavens for instance - does not mean that something
'supra' natural has occured, but rather that we have encountered an event
whose causes we do not understand.  Only if we rigorously understood
ALL 'natural' phenonema could we distinguish the 'supra' natural.  

	I hardly believe that manipulating demons could qualify as
'supernatural' - if it could be done.  In that case demons would exist
in nature.  If a strict system of formal rules for demon control could
be developed, and if they had a high degree of reliability, I would
have no greater difficulty in believing in demon technology than that
matter is somehow composed of charming quarks.  We take so many things
for granted that we do not observe and can barely comprehend that the
only clear distiction between 'natural' and 'supernatural' that makes
sense is that 'natural' is what happens and 'supernatural' is what
we read about in fantasy and science fiction and does not happen.  

	Magic is properly understood as an attitude towards an event which
is not explainable.  It is an attitude which will rarely, if ever, be found
in people with even a rudement of scientific training - because the thought
processes of those with such training are largely incompatable with the
awe and mystery that surround 'magic'.  If we encounter unexplainable
phenomena, we seek an explanation.

	

    re .20:
    
    Here we are with definitional problems again.
    
    Let's take a good science-fictional example (the best, in fact),
    the Lord D'Arcy series.
    
    Here we have practicing magicians ("Sorcerers").  Tghe stuff they
    call "magic" _is_ a science, using symbol manipulation, etc., to
    work.  It can be called something else, but the practitioners call
    it "magic."  Those who study "magic" seriously (e.g., certain
    occultists) indicate they believe it is based on rigorous laws (keeping
    "natural" out of it for the moment [:-)]).
    
    "Magic" as outside-natural-laws is something a primitive might believe
    in; we use "magic" as a term in that context for "miraculous."
    
    And a sufficiently advanced technology _will_ be indistinguishable
    to us from "magic," as just defined.
    
    Steve Kallis, Jr.
    

    Re .20
    
    I don't understand your statement that magic "cannot exit without
    such restrictive definitions as to lose its fictional character."
    Please elucidate.
    
    We are all free to frame our own definitions, of course, but you
    have defined "nature" as "everything," and that doesn't seem useful
    to me.  At least, that is what I infer from "Anything which occurs
    in the natural world is a natural event," and "the only clear
    distinction between `natural' and `supernatural' that makes sense
    is that `natural' is what happens and `supernatural' is what we
    read about in fantasy and science fiction and does not happen."

    It seems to me much more useful to define nature as a system and
    so defining supernatural as the quality of things and events
    interupting that system from outside.  Of course, we don't know
    exactly where the limits of that system are, which is what prompts
    Clarke's aphorism.  Also, many people feel that this system of material
    bodies in space-time IS all that exists, but that is usually taken
    as a matter of experimental fact, not of definitions and first
    principles.

    Earl Wajenberg

    Re .22:
    
    If you define nature as a system, what system are you going to define
    it as?  If you define it as everything we can see or touch or that
    affects or is affected by what we can see or touch or might see or
    might touch (i.e., the universe and its laws), then there will be no
    magic.  If you define nature as anything else (e.g., the objects and
    laws we think we know now) and eventually find something outside
    nature, the line you have drawn between nature and whatever else is
    artificial; there is no more reason for the stuff outside your nature
    to be called magic than there is to draw a circle around your house and
    call everything outside of it magic.  Of what use is an artificial
    definition? 
    
    
    				-- edp

    re: .21/.22 in re .20:
    
    Gee.  You 2 said almost everything I was gonna, and more.
    
    "Magic does not exist..."   Please show data.   
    
    Magic in D'arcy's world is "properly understood" technology.  They 
    do not think of it as "magic", even though that's the label.  Magic 
    has its own laws (thank you, Mr. Kallis) which do not adhere to our 
    Laws (yet?).  
    
    Our history is full of Magic.  Like UFOs (which don't exist either),
    there is so much "data" logic indicates the "where there's smoke.."
    rule.  True, many myths (past & present) were discovered to have
    basis in fact.
    
    Is identifying the location of a speed trap before you get to it 
    magic?  I know 2 people who can do it.  Do they detect the radar 
    (natural) or sense (magic) the cop/car being there?
    
    How about saying that Magic is a technology using a different set
    of natural laws?  We call it "magic" because these laws are not
    understood.  Come to think of it, that's how "technology" historically
    works!                           
    
    Now, what was the original question again?
    
    							Don

    re .24:
    
    "Magic has its own laws ... that do not adhere to our laws (yet?)."
    
    Actually, some of the "laws" of magic are very straightforward and
    indeed were touched upon in the Lord D'Arcy continuum.  One of these
    is the "law of similarity."  In it, it's said that "similar actions
    produce similar results."  Primitive tribes, for instance, may sprinkle
    water on the ground to induce rain: a primitive form of an application
    of the law of similarity.
    
    In our known world, we employ a special-case version of that law:
    the law of identicality: identical actions produce identical results.
     It is that law (unrecognized by most) that allows us to repeat
    experiments and achieve consistent results.
    
    If magic works, and the law of similarity works, then the law of
    identicality would be a special case of it, just as the Pythagorean
    Theorem is a special case of thwe Law of Cosines.  If the law of
    similarity _doesn't_ work, it's like trying to extrapolate beyond
    the accuracy of some figures.
    
    I have an open mind on the _possibility_ of some form of symbolic
    technology that would fit the classic description by occultists
    (as opposed to fairy-tale tellers) as magic, but if it reallyy exists,
    it's in a very rudimentary form, to be sure!
    
    Styeve Kallis, Jr.
    

>    I don't understand your statement that magic "cannot exist without
>    such restrictive definitions as to lose its fictional character."    

>    We are all free to frame our own definitions, of course, but you
>    have defined "nature" as "everything," and that doesn't seem useful
>    to me.  

>    It seems to me much more useful to define nature as a system and
>    so defining supernatural as the quality of things and events
>    interupting that system from outside.  Of course, we don't know
>    exactly where the limits of that system are, which is what prompts
>    Clarke's aphorism.  

	Let me make it perfectly clear that I am not an anti-magician.  I
enjoy reading and speculation about magic.

	However, the entire point of Clarke's aphorism is that the dictinction
between 'magic' and 'technology' is relative, that it rests on perception and
attitude.  I doubt that Clarke ( who is hardly known for his fantasy novels )
is suggesting that there actually exists something called 'magic' which
could be confounded with an advanced technology.  Rather he is suggesting that
when explanations are absent, or understanding limited, people are apt to
attribute phenomena to the supernatural.  He could easily have substituted
miracles for magic and the aphorism would be unchanged.

	Now, as to the problems with definition.  'Nature' can take on a
variety of meanings depending on the context.  However, when the context is 
that of what is 'in nature' vs what is 'not in nature' we are dealing
with metaphysics.  In this context I believe the term should be construed to
mean 'everything in the observable or inferential universe'.  This may not
be useful for a given point-of-view say that of defining something as 
being 'unnatural' or 'super natural' but alternatives have problems too.

	To define nature as a system is nice and reassuring, but I think
the boundry problems are rather severe.  That is, to suggest something is
a system you need to identify components, identify relationships, and
particularly identify what is external to the system.  Now when the
system you attempt to limit is 'nature' or the 'universe' you run into
some pretty thorny problems.  I rather tend towards the views of Duns Scotas
the medievalist who suggested that it is rather arrogant of us to go
around describing the attributes of God.  In the same way I don't see how
empiricism or the scientific method or any epistemological system is
going to enable us to say with confidence 'This is what is or can be' and
anything else must be super natural.

	Does that mean that we cannot construct definitions of magic that
are sufficient, consistent, and useful.  Obvoiusly not.  But any such
definition is going to ruin the aphorism.  Certainly we can call
innate 'powers' such as ESP or Telekinesis 'magic' and have the sanction
of history.  Clearly manipulating Symbols or creatures to achieve our
ends can be seen as 'magic'.  But, if we define what magic is - then when
confonted with a new technology  we are unlikely to accept it as 'magic'
unless we are led to do so by charlatans.  And of course, all of this
requires that we believe that our definitions actually have some reality.

	
			

	

    I disagree about the inutility of defining nature as a system, but
    that is pretty remote from the topic.  It is certainly true that
    Clarke's aphorism is only concerned with appearances.
    
    However, within the realm of appearance, magic in fiction or fake-
    magic in fiction is often portrayed as an interuption from outside
    the normal world, if not from outside a metaphysically defined
    "nature."
    
    This is always the case, I think, with the Spirit Master kind of
    magic, whether it is presented as real or presented as fake.  The
    spirit is a stranger in the mundane world and, in that sense at least,
    an interuption.
    
    The Secret Lore kind of magic is NOT presented to the reader as
    an interuption from outside, of course, and may not appear so to
    the other characters.  The mythical and fictional figures that Harold 
    Shea encounters in the "Incompleat Enchanter" stories vary in their
    reactions.  There's the "Magic? Oh, sure, magic.  I (do it myself)
    / (don't do it myself but see it all the time)."  In which case
    they really regard magic as we regard technology, but call it "magic"
    because that's the traditional word for that sort of thing.
    
    But others regard Shea as having Arcane Powers or as being a Spirit Master.
    The Arcane Powers kind of magic is the most ambiguous.  In "God
    Stalk" by Hodgell, the people with the powers are the Kencyr.  They
    have arcane powers because God gave them long ago in another continuum.
    The Kencyr are definitely magic from outside the world.
    
    On the other hand, the witches in James Schimdt's "Witches of Karres"
    have as their arcane power the ability to manipulate "klatha" 
    ( = numen or mana), which is a naturally-occuring form of energy
    unknown to most people except the witches and some of their contacts.  
    We have here a mingling of the Arcane Power and Secret Lore kinds of
    magic.  Klatha technology is Secret Lore but knowing the secret is
    only of academic interest if you don't have the Arcane Power necessary
    to sense and manipulate klatha.
    
    On the other hand, the witches must cope with the Worm World and
    with "vatches," both aliens to our own universe.  If these things
    are not strictly supernatural demons, they are certainly meant to
    suggest them.  In fact, this may be Clarke's Law coming in at two
    levels and in two directions.  Schmidt suggests demons while giving
    them a scientific tinge as "aliens from another dimension" (Clarke's
    Law in reverse, practiced on the reader), while within the book
    most of the galaxy regards the Worm Worlders as genuine demons,
    while the witches know the "demons" are just aliens from another
    dimension (Clarke's Law straight, applied to the population of the
    galaxy).
    
    Earl Wajenberg

    sorry to be so late...
    
    Anybody read Chalker's SOUL RIDER series. This is a good example
    of where Magic and Technology get confused (as well as SF vs F)?
    
    sm