Should Superman be weak to magic

[Patrick_C]

If no one can explain, no one can understand and it can produce feats no one is able to duplicate, what is the nig problem with calling it "magic"?

I'm reminded of the old Roman anti-monarchist sentiment: "Sure, that guy is the supreme authority of the country, has divine right, can manipulate the Senate as he well pleases... But he isn't a King! of course not! Don't be silly. He's just the First Citizen. Heh... King... As if! We're not barbarian, ya know?"

[Lorendiac]

If no one can explain, no one can understand and it can produce feats no one is able to duplicate, what is the nig problem with calling it "magic"?

I'm reminded of the old Roman anti-monarchist sentiment: "Sure, that guy is the supreme authority of the country, has divine right, can manipulate the Senate as he well pleases... But he isn't a King! of course not! Don't be silly. He's just the First Citizen. Heh... King... As if! We're not barbarian, ya know?"

Arthur C. Clarke said: "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."

Of course, with "technology," the basic assumption is: "Anyone can learn to build it, and/or to operate the fancy device after someone else built it, if he just studies hard enough." In other words, just because gunpowder was invented in China (I think it was, anyway), and must have initially seemed like "magic" to people seeing its effects for the first time, doesn't mean that gunpowder won't work equally well for anyone whose ancestors came from some other region of the globe, such as Sweden. You just need to know how to mix up a batch of the stuff for yourself, and how to handle it properly after you've got it! No matter who you are, if you strike a spark at the right time (or the wrong one), you're going to get some explosive combustion in a hurry!

With "magic" (at least in some writers' conceptions of it), that doesn't apply. A hundred people might all chant the exact same "magic spell," and only one of them might get any visible result. That goes to what you said about "unable to duplicate," thereby making it appear erratic and unreliable and generally mysterious. ("Gosh, I guess the gods just didn't care to give me the same weird abilities which they gave to Doctor Occult. They make these arbitrary decisions without rhyme or reason, don't they?")

Which is my way of explaining why I don't entirely agree with Clarke's point. Any sufficiently advanced technology is something which I, in theory, can learn to use just as well as anyone else, given the opportunity. Advanced magic is something which I probably can't learn to use, no matter how much opportunity I'm given!

[adkal]

Which is my way of explaining why I don't entirely agree with Clarke's point. Any sufficiently advanced technology is something which I, in theory, can learn to use just as well as anyone else, given the opportunity. Advanced magic is something which I probably can't learn to use, no matter how much opportunity I'm given!

Nah, they're along the same lines - I think you're confusing/mixing building/developing with 'using'.

Take (movie) Tony Stark's tech, for example: in the first movie the tech-folk tell Obadiah that they can't duplicate what Tony has done (Ark reactor) and that it would take years to get it to that point, so Obadiah nicks Tony's ready-made one. Tony's intuitive aptitude is greater than Obadiah's, but Obadiah is able to use the tech.

As smart as Black Widow is put forward to be over in the Marvel-movie-verse, she isn't able to make a flying vehicle herself but she can get one to fly.

Similarly, there are tech geniuses who effectively 'conjure' devices and it takes years for other to replicate/duplicate. The intuitive aptitude of the tech-geniuses is greater than those of other tech-minded-folk, but the 'lesser' folk are still able to use the device, even if they can't build it.

In the mage-realm(s), those who have a more intuitive aptitude for magic are drawn to it and are able to do certain things without training, but those with 'no magic' are still able to use certain artifacts - someone with Diana's atom-slicing-sword, for example, would still be able to cut into a car even if they can't (necessarily) split the atom the way Diana has.

[Lorendiac]

Nah, they're along the same lines - I think you're confusing/mixing building/developing with 'using'.

Not "confusing." Deliberately combining is what I was doing; there was nothing "confused" about it, from my point of view!

I felt that any person of reasonable intelligence should be able (at least in theory) to learn to do anything that's ever been done before with "known technology" if he cares to invest the time and effort to thoroughly study what's already known in that area. (Earning himself an engineering degree, for instance.) My point was supposed to be that if there's a field of human endeavor where the "hitting the books and getting lots of practice" approach is not going to work for most of the people who try it, no matter how bright they are and no matter how many thousands of hours they spend trying, then it's not a matter of "science and technology"; it's a matter of "magic."

In principle, I'm perfectly willing to admit that you don't need to be "scientifically gifted" to drive a car or use word processing software after someone else has taken the trouble to design and mass-produce the car or the computer -- and by the same token, you don't need to be "magically gifted" to reap the practical benefits of wielding a magic sword to kill your enemies, or pouring a love potion into a cute girl's drink to make her fall head-over-heels in love with you.

(Heck, Bilbo Baggins didn't know a thing about "high-level magical theory" when he started his adventures, but it sure didn't take him long to figure out how to use the nifty ring he found. "It slips on over my finger -- I'm invisible! It comes off my finger -- I'm visible again!" That's not exactly rocket science )

Just "making good use" of strange artifacts which other people have created (such as a Ferrari or a love potion) doesn't, in and of itself, mark the difference between "technology" and "magic" in my mind. That's why I said:

Of course, with "technology," the basic assumption is: "Anyone can learn to build it, and/or to operate the fancy device after someone else built it, if he just studies hard enough."

I bolded and enlarged the "and/or," this time around, to stress my original point: "Technology works the same way for everyone, all the time, once they know what they're doing!"

Not just in the sense that they can learn how to flip a switch and thereby turn on the electrical lights in their home, but in the sense that they could also learn to build their own electrical generator from scratch, and their own light bulbs, and so forth, by simply studying the appropriate texts showing what other people have done in the past and have found will work reliably, each and every time, if you know the tricks of the trade!

Take (movie) Tony Stark's tech, for example: in the first movie the tech-folk tell Obadiah that they can't duplicate what Tony has done (Ark reactor) and that it would take years to get it to that point, so Obadiah nicks Tony's ready-made one. Tony's intuitive aptitude is greater than Obadiah's, but Obadiah is able to use the tech.

But those other engineers could have reverse-engineered, and duplicated, Tony's achievement with that ultra-small, ultra-powerful reactor. Eventually. As you said: In practice, it would take years to get it right if they didn't have Tony's active assistance, and thus Obadiah stole the existing prototype because that would save ever so much time -- but it wasn't a matter of "only the Wizard Tony could possibly have built this magical artifact, and only he can build any new copies of it which will work the same way the first one does, and no matter how hard the rest of us try, we can never hope to duplicate his accomplishment, because his magic reactor-making spells just plain won't work for us ordinary mortals!"

It was only a matter of: "I'm greedy, dishonest, and in a hurry, so I'm going to take a shortcut by stealing the only working model!"

But that still makes it "stealing technology that could have been duplicated by other means," rather than "this is the same thing as stealing an utterly uncopyable piece of Heap Big Magic because that's the only way to get it!"

[jimmy]

If science totally held sway then magic would not work- so it is in fact anti-magic.

,

Stop - This phrase - Right Here –

Science must hold “Sway”– otherwise, you have complete chaos and this (or, any) universe would all break down.

That means - Magic is not separate from science but, IS a science (part of / subset of) and therefore, must obey laws even-though, it seems to break those laws.

Magic, is really the great “Scientific Unknown”:

A Technology concept can be so radically advanced or, individual can be so, evolved in their mental abilities (mutated) and knowledge base - that events caused by / things they can do - would seem like “Magic” to the layperson - since they would lack the fundamentals to even hazard a guess, let alone explain it out-right, what is going on.

[DochaDocha]

Arthur C. Clarke's explanation is mostly fine with me, insomuch that I think magic should just be another way to manipulate time, space, matter, and energy. If you cast a spell that turned a prince into a frog, it should fundamentally be similar to a mad scientist's attempt to do the same thing. You mutate cells, you shed excess matter, etc. If you can imagine it in sci-fi, you can probably substitute magic for fake science. Likewise, if it's too hokey, even for the absurdity of sci-fi, then that's probably going overboard if you apply that idea to magic.

Because I'd insist that magic is bound to the same rules as science, then I'm inclined to think Superman should have some natural defenses against magic. I think I mentioned earlier in this thread that if the magic is potent enough, it should work, but if it's pretty weak then Superman should shrug it off.

[Jim Kelly]

Fiction has its own rules. If I write a story and I say that magic is totally different from science and doesn't behave according to the rules of science, then I'm right--because I created the story and what I say goes. The fairy stories of long ago were not written to agree with 21st century science--in those stories magic is magic.

The question to ask is what the writer or writers intend in Superman fictions. This is a bit difficult, because there are many cooks. I'm not sure if they're all given the same bible or what that bible says about magic in Superman stories. The rules might change depending on the story and depending on the writer.

If you want to write your own story--then go ahead and do that. Nobody's stopping anyone from making their own stories with their own rules. But you can't really dictate to others what the rules for their fiction should be. That's what creative license is all about.

[Lorendiac]

Stop - This phrase - Right Here –

Science must hold “Sway”– otherwise, you have complete chaos and this (or, any) universe would all break down.

That means - Magic is not separate from science but, IS a science (part of / subset of) and therefore, must obey laws even-though, it seems to break those laws.

Magic, is really the great “Scientific Unknown”:

A Technology concept can be so radically advanced or, individual can be so, evolved in their mental abilities (mutated) and knowledge base - that events caused by / things they can do - would seem like “Magic” to the layperson - since they would lack the fundamentals to even hazard a guess, let alone explain it out-right, what is going on.

Well, this raises questions of just what we mean by "science" in the first place.

I mentioned the example of gunpowder earlier. My point was that any person of normal intelligence is capable of memorizing the formula for black powder, and then mixing up a barrel of it on his own time from the basic ingredients of sulfur, saltpeter, and charcoal, if he knows exactly what he's doing. And after he's prepared the stuff, he can use it in an old-fashioned musket, or set a fuse and arrange for the entire barrel to blow up at once in order to clear some pesky rocks out of his way, or whatever it is he feels like doing. The relevant laws of chemistry and physics work the same way for everybody!

On the other hand, imagine a world where the only way to make "gunpowder" was to cast a magic spell. It involved taking a barrelful of an inert substance (or mixture of substances) and chanting a spell over it while making certain ritual gestures. And suppose it was established that there were only about a thousand people in the known world who could actually do this and end up with a load of gunpowder as a result! Everyone else could mimic the exact words and the exact gestures, but absolutely nothing would happen to the contents of the barrel, because the gods (or whatever cosmic forces were running things) simply did not see fit to give most mortals the mystical ability to transmute raw materials into gunpowder. To me, that would be a sharp example of the difference between "magic" and "science." Science is supposed to work by consistent rules for anyone who tries to duplicate a certain process and gets each step exactly right; magic is far more arbitrary and won't work for most people no matter how cleverly and diligently they try!

P.S. On the other hand, a classic SF novel, Lord Kalvan of Otherwhen (by H. Beam Piper) had the hero -- a Pennysylvania State Trooper -- suddenly end up in a parallel world (medieval technology was as far as they'd gotten) where a certain secretive "priesthood" basically claimed that my second scenario was correct -- "only those of us who have been blessed with divine authority can create the magical substance known as gunpowder, and we charge an arm and a leg for it!" But of course the hero was able to share, with his new friends in a local castle, the revelation that the first scenario was actually correct: It was all just a matter of knowing the secret ingredients and the correct process to use, and once you knew how, anyone could whip up a nice big batch of fresh gunpowder! (He naturally was denounced by the relevant priesthood as a dangerous heretic who must have sold his soul to a demon in order to gain a new magic spell which would allow him to appear to replicate the Sacred Process of Making Gunpowder.) But the way I look at it -- if he had suddenly discovered that no matter how hard he tried, he couldn't make "real gunpowder," but the local priests could, then that would have proved that he had now entered a world where "science" didn't work the way it was supposed to, and "magic" was going strong!

[Jon Clark]

Stop - This phrase - Right Here –

Science must hold “Sway”– otherwise, you have complete chaos and this (or, any) universe would all break down.

That means - Magic is not separate from science but, IS a science (part of / subset of) and therefore, must obey laws even-though, it seems to break those laws.

Magic, is really the great “Scientific Unknown”:

A Technology concept can be so radically advanced or, individual can be so, evolved in their mental abilities (mutated) and knowledge base - that events caused by / things they can do - would seem like “Magic” to the layperson - since they would lack the fundamentals to even hazard a guess, let alone explain it out-right, what is going on.

Using magic to create an object from "nothing". Not transmuting the air or other matter to make the object. Not transporting an existing object from another location so it appears to be created when it was simply transported invisibly. Rather, actually causing the matter making up some object to spontaneously come into existence is impossible according to the laws of science. It's not some technique waiting to be discovered.

Having a magic word which allows you to do the impossible. Again not talking having an object activated by a command word- so not including someone using voice activated future tech. I'm describing someone like Zatanna who can say "Pots retaw" and cause Niagara Falls to hang in midair- but who could not do so if rendered mute in someway. Something like that makes no scientific sense. She says it and the water stops but she can't teach me to use the same technique and neither of us can stop water without using the phrase. It fails the simple scientific rule that the process can be replicated in a lab by an impartial observer.

And to get back to the Superman part- if you can make a piece of paper penetrate Superman's skin when he is at full power without altering either the paper or Superman (so another piece of paper or even an adamantium blade is no more effective than usual and that same piece of paper can't pierce batman's skin) ... well that doesn't seem to fall under the purview of science to me.

[JackDaw]

I think best stance is that Superman can be affected by magic, but it shouldn't be a weakness.

What I mean by that is that if a magician is strong enough to turn other DC heroes into stone...then Superman should be turned into stone along with the rest of them. But if a hedge wizard isn't strong enough to overcome a GL's will power and mind control a GL...then Superman (whose will is as strong as a Gl's) should not be effected either.

And certainly if a magician simply creates or moves a ordinary everyday object...say a speeding bullet... then Superman should be as immune to it as he usually is. I don't buy the idea of a bullet bouncing off the Martian Manhunter, but hurting Superman because its a "magic" bullet and Superman has a special weakness against it. (Again if the bullet is special enough to go through a GL's shield and take out the Martian Manhunter and other near invulnerable heroes...then it would also effect Superman.)

[Lorendiac]

I think best stance is that Superman can be affected by magic, but it shouldn't be a weakness.

What I mean by that is that if a magician is strong enough to turn other DC heroes into stone...then Superman should be turned into stone along with the rest of them. But if a hedge wizard isn't strong enough to overcome a GL's will power and mind control a GL...then Superman (whose will is as strong as a Gl's) should not be effected either.

And certainly if a magician simply creates or moves a ordinary everyday object...say a speeding bullet... then Superman should be as immune to it as he usually is. I don't buy the idea of a bullet bouncing off the Martian Manhunter, but hurting Superman because its a "magic" bullet and Superman has a special weakness against it. (Again if the bullet is special enough to go through a GL's shield and take out the Martian Manhunter and other near invulnerable heroes...then it would also effect Superman.)

I've seen discussions of this sort of thing before. I have not made a deep study of all the times when Superman was "wounded by magic," but I've seen other fans assert that sometimes it seems to work this way: "If a sword is a magic item, then it seems it can cut Superman's flesh about as easily as it would cut an ordinary man's flesh. Superman doesn't start screaming in agony at the first small cut, and doesn't get instantly weakened as if a Green Kryptonite blade had touched his body and starting draining his powers; he simply is up against a weapon that basically ignores his traditional 'invulnerability.' But he still has all his other powers working fine as he tries to find the best way to fight the guy who's swinging a magic sword at him."

[JackDaw]

I've seen discussions of this sort of thing before. I have not made a deep study of all the times when Superman was "wounded by magic," but I've seen other fans assert that sometimes it seems to work this way: "If a sword is a magic item, then it seems it can cut Superman's flesh about as easily as it would cut an ordinary man's flesh. Superman doesn't start screaming in agony at the first small cut, and doesn't get instantly weakened as if a Green Kryptonite blade had touched his body and starting draining his powers; he simply is up against a weapon that basically ignores his traditional 'invulnerability.' But he still has all his other powers working fine as he tries to find the best way to fight the guy who's swinging a magic sword at him."

Yes, that sounds about right.

Of course... in theory...sword users only chance should be to make first strike against Superman a lethal one.., strike hard before Superman knows its a magic sword. Once he knows it can hurt him...Superman just uses super speed to avoid being hit, or just flies out of reach and uses breath or vision powers to win.

Mind you...how many fights should Superman win by using his super speed to avoid being hit at all? Vast majority... but we all like a few dozen panels of an all out brawl rather than than "logical" use of known powers.

[Slaughter]

Best definitions of both magic and science I ever saw in fiction were from the CRPG Arcanum (great game):

Science uses the laws of physics, Magic warps them.
Magic should be about doing things Science can't ever do - like talking with the dead, or make time run backwards. Or making a piece of paper become hard enough to piece Superman's skin. Or cursing someone so that they hit their foot on a rock each time they look at a pretty woman' behind (that's just evil). Or changing the speed of radioactive decay.
Magic is rare (whereas Science tends to become massificated), can't be replicated (except by another wizard with the same knowlodge and power) in a lab by someone else and laughs at the laws of physics.
This should also mean Science and Magic disrupt each other.

That would put 5-Dimensionals as magic-users, althrough it seems 5D people can pull their stunts simply because they come from higher realities, so they can manipulate physics from the outside (what's the Earth's gravity? Its whatever Mr. Mxyztplk thinks is hilarious today) when they feel like it. Its why 5D often has a meta tinge to it.

[jimishim12]

MAgic can be science if it's taken apart by beings who in nature can understand it on a natural level and mental level. Anyone with the intelligence that is capable applying the perceived data into information of rewriting the laws of physics and limitations and basically going on from there can use Science as magic. Aliens like Brainiac can learn to create or invent scientific supernatural effects given he knows how magic on a basis works, Dr. Doom can do this, so can the 5d imps.

[jimmy]

MAgic can be science if it's taken apart by beings who in nature can understand it on a natural level and mental level. Anyone with the intelligence that is capable applying the perceived data into information of rewriting the laws of physics and limitations and basically going on from there can use Science as magic. Aliens like Brainiac can learn to create or invent scientific supernatural effects given he knows how magic on a basis works, Dr. Doom can do this, so can the 5d imps.

This here ^

The Science of Magic is like - undiscovered or, lost chapters in the laws of physics that have yet to read, let alone understood. Once the understanding is known - then the magic reveals itself!

Without getting into a real deep discussion of particle physics but, knowing how things operate on a subatomic level and beyond (quarks) is really where the true mysteries are and the magic is.