What is a good way to foreshadow that magic is actually very advanced technology?
In a story I'm working on, humanity had sometime in the past reached a very advanced technological level (far higher than ours), but then had a devastating global war, and afterwards technology had been banned.
Now at the time of my story, those events are long gone, and have passed into the realms of legends. All abilities that technology provided, as far as they are referenced in those legends, are ascribed to magic. The society that evolved is about medieval level.
However there are (very rare) occurrences where old “magical” (that is, technological) artifacts (mostly weapons) are found, some of which actually still functional (in particular, that happens to the protagonist).
Now later in the story it will be revealed that this magic is in fact ancient technology, but I'd like to foreshadow it from the very beginning.
So far I've described the magical (technological) artifact the protagonist found as shiny, and the effect of the artifact (which is causing hallucinations, making people fight against each other thinking they fight monsters) is triggered by some sort of knobs.
I also tried to hint at it with tales about what magic could do, but anything I can think of is stuff that's either unsurprising for magic, or so obviously technological that it wouldn't be foreshadowing any more.
Are there any other good ways to hint at magic actually being very advanced technology?
2 answers
The fact that you use "knobs" that turn is enough, in my opinion.
Another way would be to have a naturally scientific (logic based) mind actually fix an older artifact and get it working again. It would have to be a simple mechanical fix, but in the process of examining one of these found artifacts that doesn't work, she notices that a string (wire) looks broken.
It is just a minor power-supply problem, and though she doesn't understand electricity or anything else, she does understand medicine. She holds the two ends of the wire together and the device reacts: Lighting up intermittently, perhaps.
She does a better job of holding metal to metal, and the lights become constant. She decides to let the metal string "heal" by binding and gluing the broken ends together, metal to metal, and the device is operational.
She messes with the buttons and "magic" happens, like the stone in her fireplace slumps. It isn't a liquid, it isn't hot, but she can shape it or scoop it out like clay. Whatever. It stays that way. Until she presses the other button, then the shaped stone becomes just as solid as it was before.
To her, it is still magic, but to anybody reading this scene, that is unmistakably technology.
That might be too strong, but if so, I would also clue in to "tech" the moment I read "knobs". Knobs and buttons and such are mechanical, anything mechanical that performs a function screams "tech" to me.
And it isn't terrible for the reader to know something that none of the characters know; then part of the game is reading to see how and when the characters figure this out, and what it means about their history or origin. So there is still a mystery there.
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Magic vs advanced technology is a common enough question in fiction that your readers will already be primed to wonder. I agree with Amadeus that the reference to "knobs" is, in and of itself, enough to tip the reader off. Magic wands don't have buttons.
What you want though is not just the reader thinking advanced technology but considering where the tech comes from. Is it from an older society? aliens? a parallel but unknown community (like the fairy world in Artemis Fowl)?
So reference the "devastating global war." You might even talk about how someone invented something but it got taken away.
You don't need much here. Let the reader have the thrill of figuring it out.
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