Magic realism?

Science fiction has long had a close relationship with fantasy. By strict definition science fiction cannot be fantasy, because science fiction is an attempt to portray what could happen, given the appropriate scientific or social parameters, while fantasy explores what is beyond the realms of science, such as magic, and therefore cannot happen – at least, not in our world.

But therein lies the rub. Writing in 1962, Arthur C. Clarke set down three laws about technological advance. His third law states concisely: ‘Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic’. In a later speech given to the American Institute of Architects in May 1967, Clarke amplified on this third law, making the point that ‘the really exciting developments of the future are precisely those we can't imagine’. This allows anything that appears magical set either in the far future or on an alien world to be presented as advanced science. This was exactly what Clark Ashton Smith had done in the 1930s in his stories for Weird Tales set in Zothique, in the last days of Earth, or on Atlantis. Henry Kuttner had used the same approach for some of his adventure stories in Startling Stories, as had Jack Vance in The Dying Earth (Hillman, 1950), and it was Vance who best represented this approach in his planetary adventure stories in Galaxy.

There were further factors to consider. Campbell's interest in alternative sciences and particularly in the powers of the mind had seen the growth of transcendental science fiction in Astounding in the 1940s. Campbell had, of course, also been the editor of Unknown, undoubtedly the best of all fantasy magazines, and he had applied the same unified scientific structure to the stories he published there as he had to those in Astounding. In other words, even if you create a fantastic world, it has to operate within its own rules. Heinlein had produced the definitive story along those lines for Unknown, ‘The Devil Makes the Law’ (September 1940; better known as Magic, Inc.), and it was also the guiding principle in L. Sprague de Camp and Fletcher Pratt's Harold Shea stories.