How could a fantasy world evolve into the future?

[Raptori]

Magic is really just a lack of understanding as to how something works. A wizard or sorcerer is one who has the knowledge of how something works and is able to do it.

If People who lived in the 1300s were to visit New York or London today they would have no understanding of what makes anything work and would believe them to be magical cities run by powerful sorcerers. I'd imagine if we visited those same cities 1-2 thousand years from now we might think the same thing.

As scientists(present day sorcerers) keep working to uncover the magic of physics then we may, one day, be able to conjure fireballs seemingly out of thin air and launch them at genetically created monsters that have escaped from the local experiment laboratory.

To get to your initial question, for Magic such as telekenesis or elemental control etc., to never have been lost from ancient times would mean that people already had the knowledge to do this and passed it down through the generations or they were inherently/instinctually magical without the need to study how to make these things happen. This would mean they were magical because of some genetic mutation which would be similar to the X-men world.

In the roughly 4 thousand years of recorded history we has humans haven't evolved much. Since evolution of living things is based on mutations i'd imagine that magical people would be the same kind of magical for thousands of years. Thier technological advances would be the most measurable and noteable because the magical species variable.

I think the X-men universe would be the best example, that I can think of, for your scenario.

I kinda both agree and disagree with this. I think you're referring to Arthur C Clarke's third law, "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic" - while that is true, I don't think it necessarily follows that all magic is therefore just advanced technology, or even an advanced understanding of the mechanics of the world. To me, magic is something inherently outside the laws of physics - if you're using physics to generate fireballs then to me it's not magic, it's sci-fi.

I do very much agree with you that it'd have been around as long as the species - anatomically modern humans have been around for at least 200,000 years, with the precursors for the several hundred thousand years before that being only very slightly different. I always think that magic should be so inherent in the world that it's something all species posess, since there's really nothing special about humans that should give them magic, but there I digress

On the other hand, I do think it makes sense to work out what influence magic would have had on the development of the human societies - I just think it has to begin earlier. If magic is powerful - such as allowing people to hurl fireballs at each other when they're angry - that would naturally have huge repercussions right from the dawn of time and cause a butterfly effect that would most likely create a completely different society to ours. In my world magic is so subtle and omnipresent that it's used subconsciously by every living being - but can be consciously manipulated to differing degrees (too much detail there to explain briefly though) - which makes it easier to justify a society similar to ours.

That's the problem I have with a lot of generic fantasy - all the different elements (voodoo gods, elves, dwarves, typical humans, etc) are just put in the world together without any thought of how they interacted throughout the hundreds of thousands of years of history to reach the point at which the story begins. Working out how they interact with each other from that starting point to create the future of the world is better than a lot of stuff that I've seen, but it still neglects the majority of interaction between these aspects of the world, which to me usually results in a world that feels flimsy and weak. Obviously then there's the possible solution of making the world a recent creation, but that can be just as complex and difficult as coming up with thousands of years of history - just look at how in-depth Brandon Sanderson's univers appears to be.



That was increasingly off-topic so I think I'll leave it there before I go on any more tangents

[Slylok]

I kinda both agree and disagree with this. I think you're referring to Arthur C Clarke's third law, "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic" - while that is true, I don't think it necessarily follows that all magic is therefore just advanced technology, or even an advanced understanding of the mechanics of the world. To me, magic is something inherently outside the laws of physics - if you're using physics to generate fireballs then to me it's not magic, it's sci-fi.

I agree with that

So if the species of humans in this world is inherently magic, whether it's due to science or supernatural powers, I think, the evolution of the world would largely depend on what percentage of the species is magical and how long of an evolutionary period were talking about. A world where everyone had the ability to perform magic would advance technologically much different than a world where 50% or less were magical.

Would there be a need for guns in a world where everyone had telekenetic powers or would a pouch of small round metal balls be enough? If half the population could control fire how would the fire department be different? Likewise with powers of rejuvination and hospitals.

[Raptori]

I agree with that

So if the species of humans in this world is inherently magic, whether it's due to science or supernatural powers, I think, the evolution of the world would largely depend on what percentage of the species is magical and how long of an evolutionary period were talking about. A world where everyone had the ability to perform magic would advance technologically much different than a world where 50% or less were magical.

Would there be a need for guns in a world where everyone had telekenetic powers or would a pouch of small round metal balls be enough? If half the population could control fire how would the fire department be different? Likewise with powers of rejuvination and hospitals.

Yeah definitely - and having the magic limited to a certain subsection of the population would probably guarantee huge discrimination and other ethical problems, particularly if it's passed on genetically.

In Mistborn, a small section of the population can push or pull against metal objects, meaning that they can shoot a coin at someone as if it's a bullet. However, guns (once developed) can still easily kill them, because bullets move at such a ridiculously high speed that they have no time to push it away from them. Though I guess guns were probably developed initially because mistborn/mistings became uncommon, making even primitive guns quite effective - so the question of how common magic is can also have a big effect on whether technology is developed at all. If the number of people immune to slow bullets is very high, it's unlikely for people to bother trying to develop better guns, so the guns that can kill the people who have the magic don't get developed.