Oolite Bulletins

Would Mace Windy from the Star Wars series count? Or is it out because it’s a space-opera? Or because he’s from the prequels?

GearsNSuch wrote: ↑Mon Nov 25, 2019 12:58 pm

Would Mace Windy from the Star Wars series count? Or is it out because it’s a space-opera? Or because he’s from the prequels?

He's bald, it's scifi … that makes five! Over to you …

(The other comic-book one I was thinking about was Charles Xavier/Professor X, from the X-Men. Another could be Owen Krysler, the Judge Child, from Judge Dredd; like Professor X, he's another bald = psychic character.)

GearsNSuch wrote: ↑Mon Nov 25, 2019 12:58 pm

Mace Windy

Cofund you, autocorrect!

How about five characters that are over 0% but less than 50% cyborg. This includes prosthetics, brain implants, and the like. No on that’s mostly mechanical, though.

Steve Austin, the Six Million Dollar Man (at today's prices, he'd be lucky to get a bionic toe)
Seven of Nine, from Star Trek: Voyager

Honor Harrington - she can't use the regeneration technology of her setting so has to use prosthetics instead. Left eye and left arm are prosthetics, and she has a gun in the arm.

Bill the Galactic Hero Robert Heinlein. at least once he had a mechanical foot. as a recruiting sergent in book 2 or 3 , he stops to tighten a nut.....

(Unconsciously counting on his fingers, more and more astonished)

Well, that makes four!

OK, let's have Mean Machine Angel from the Judge Dredd comics. Various cyborg bits including a dial on his forehead controlling his anger level.

And that would be five! Off to you.

Okay... Let's have five SF stories, films, TV shows or whatever, in which sufficiently advanced technology is deliberately masquerading as magic. It can be the main plot, or just something one of the characters does.

No conjurors - e.g., this is a full-time pretense that magic is real (or that a character is magical), not just putting on a stage show.

No double bluffs, e.g. no characters using magic to pretend that they're using science to pretend to do magic.

I will accept worlds in which there is some form of magic, provided that isn't what the characters are doing - E.g., if characters stumble across a world with working magic and have to pretend to have magical powers as a disguise. Hope this is clear.

And the usual rule, only one entry from any given canon, e.g. if someone finds a character in Marvel comics doing this, all other Marvel comics, films, etc are then ruled out.

In the Stargate franchise, technology-as-magic/divine power is the Goa'uld schtick.

Would you accept the Wizard of Oz? I don't know if you'd class either the original, or the recent Emerald City reboot, as "SF" …

I'll accept Stargate and The Wizard of Oz - for the latter, I said "I will accept worlds in which there is some form of magic, provided that isn't what the characters are doing" which I think applies to the Professor / Wizard pretty well.

Three to go.

The Practice Effect by David Brin,

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

Thingss do not degrade if used, instead get better at the current usage. It is normally accepted as "everyday feature/magic". Main hero (normal educated and skilled human) is considered big mage, as he is able to do good things directly from raw materials, without improving phase and those thinks does not degrade from non-usage.

Spoiler:
in the end it discovered, that all "magical" effects was done by old ancessors, who modified the whole world on "nano leveles" to make things better

Mark Twain's A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court - the main character, Hank, uses gunpowder (and a lightning rod) to pose as a greater magician than Merlin.

OK, both of those are good - one to go.