The Sword and Laser discussion

I wrote in another threat how I get really annoyed when writers use the advanced technology quote to excuse magic instead of just saying it's magic and making things less complicated now I wanted to talk about the opposite of this trope. What are some good books that have involve magic that looks like technology or combines magic and technology? The Harry Potter books have flying cars and in the Percy Jackson books have advanced robots that are powered and created by magic. In Marvel comics Dr Doom uses a combination of magic and advanced technology to create weapons. Any other examples?

Anything in the Hard Fantasy category counts.

That’s where the magic system has definite rules, which anyone can understand. The first one I encountered was Master of the Five Magics back in 1980. But people like Brandon Sanderson are explicitly treating their magic systems like an alternative to science.

He’s even come up with his own three laws to echo Arthur C. Clarke’s versions. Explanations here: https://coppermind.net/wiki/Sanderson...

1. An author's ability to solve conflict with magic is DIRECTLY PROPORTIONAL to how well the reader understands said magic.

2. Limitations > Power. The limitations of a magic system are more interesting than its capabilities. What the magic can't do is more interesting than what it can.

3. Expand on what you have already, before you add something new.

Clarke’s Three Laws

1. When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, they are almost certainly right. When they state that something is impossible, they are very probably wrong.

2. The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.

3. Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

Shadow Corps

This book that I just finished is an example of Magic and Technology being merged together. I think it was well done. They explain that certain things are magic and that certain things are in fact technology. The don't overly explain things, but they make sure that you can tell what is what. Hell, they even have something like the infinity gauntlet in here.

There was another book I was reading where the main character comes from a world that no magic exist to a world that science for the most part doesn't exist and they fuse the two of them together to create a techno magic...kinda like Shadowrun.

The Kate Daniels books kind of go there. Though those books have technology and magic being the two ends of a pendulum, but because of where the world is in that swing, magic and technology have to work together. And so you have cars that have both a combustion engine and a magical one.

Random thought, the Invisible Library has an ersatz Sherlock Holmes and invokes technology, magic or both depending on the world and its proximity to Chaos or Order.

Steampunk seems to do this magic/tech mix often, some good ones of the top of my head are The Alchemy of Stone and Boneshaker

The Machineries of Empire series by Yoon Ha Lee fits the bill, I reckon.