Magitek / Literature

• David Anthony Durham's Acacia trilogy there is a race whose technology is powered by human souls.
• Alcatraz Series:
  • The Free Kingdomers use technologies powered by various types of magical sand or glass, collectively known as silimatics. Active technologies such as airplanes (shaped like giant glass dragons!) and elevators are powered by brightsand. Passive technologies include Expander's Glass, which allows for Bigger on the Inside architecture, and Defender's Glass to act as armor.
  • We don't know about silimatics because the Librarians flooded the Hushlands (where we live) with vast quantities of dullsand, the only type of sand that does absolutely nothing even if you make it into glass.
  • Oddly, Free Kingdomer's (inexpert) imitations of Hushlander technology often work better than both genuine Hushlander tech and actual Free Kingdom tech. And the Scrivener's Bones^note  a faction of the Librarians' hybrid tech works better still.
  • Then there's things even the Free Kingdomers consider magical, like Oculatory Lenses. Free Kingdomers will stoutly deny that silimatics are magic: magic is things that only some people can use, therefore silimatics are merely technology.
• In Apparatus Infernum, the setting makes extensive use of magic and technology in concert — in particular, elementals (fire, air, etc) are harnessed to power steam-era technology like trains. The foundation of this magitek is shakier than assumed, however, and becomes directly relevant to the plot in the second book, when the elemental-based tech starts misbehaving and the protagonists have to find out why.
• Babel, or the Necessity of Violence takes place in an alternate 19th-century world where magical enhancements are a Mundane Fantastic (if expensive) element of British life. One important enchantment serves the simple purpose of making steam engines safer and more efficient.
• In The Broken Earth Trilogy, The Lost Technology of the Obelisk Gate originally worked this way, being designed to harvest magic from the earth and supply all of Syl Anagist.
• The scry technology of Cannon Fodder looks a lot like Skype. Alec also has a magic-powered amphibious vehicle.
• Harry Turtledove's The Case of the Toxic Spell Dump is set in an Alternate History 20th century Earth that functions exactly like our own, except all the technology is magical.
• The Dana Drive in Clay's Ark by Octavia Butler is Hand Waved as enabling Faster-Than-Light Travel through "an exotic combination of particle physics and psionics", with the latter drawn from the crew's latent psychic potential. Lampshaded when a crewman admits it took some time for the inventor to convince the scientific community that it wasn't total bunkum.
• In Codex Alera, most of Aleran society runs off of this. Since absolutely everyone (except Tavi) has Elemental Powers, non-magical technology has stagnated at a medieval level while everything else is taken care of by Mundane Utility applications of furycrafting. They have flying cars, a lightbulb-equivalent, refrigeration, and the like through applied magic, to the point where in-universe, scholars have started to deny that their precursors (the Romans) could possibly have built everything they did without furies. It also leads them into technological blind spots, however, such as when the Alerans fight the Canim, who mostly get by on their superhuman strength and toughness coupled with skilled engineering. One of the nastiest Canim weapons turns out to be a simple, if gigantic, crossbow that can easily kill an Aleran soldier through furycraft-enhanced armor and then continue on to kill the man behind him. Tavi and Bernard eventually apply technology and furycrafting to create catapults that launch spheres loaded with tiny fire furies that essentially serve as incendiary cluster bombs, which prove to be the single most devastating weapon in the history of Alera.
• Inverted in Stephen King's The Dark Tower series, where the old ones decided to replace magic with technology to the point of trying to tear down the Dark Tower itself to rebuild it with science.
• The The Death Gate Cycle, series of seven fantasy novels by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman (who co-wrote the original D&D Dragonlance novels). They feature flying ships powered by Rune Magic and elven civilisations using magic for everything from enchanting armor and weapons technology to household appliances.
  • Bonus points for that most of the Magitek of the elves seems to be sentient, no matter how pointless it is — for example an enchanted arrow that loudly protests when it's fired at a dragon.
  • The interface of magic versus technology seems to be flipped between humans and elves; this is explained by the fact that elves are inherently magical, but are weak on the mechanical side — to compensate for this weakness, they poured all their development of magical abilities into enhancing the mechanical and physical world. Humans are inherently mechanically/physically inclined, they compensate for their magical weak spot by pouring all their magical development into the natural things, like the elements, and controlling dragons. Magnify this single-minded focus of development over hundreds of years, and you get humans whose magic controls the elements (even though humans are by nature mechanically inclined) and elves whose magic enhances mechanical objects (even though elves are by nature more nature/element inclined).
• Over the course of the books, the Discworld moves more and more toward this. We have inventions from cameras powered by a tiny imp painting a picture, all the way up to the High Energy Magic Building at Unseen University, where Hex, a magical AI, lives. Magitek is used alongside Clock Punk technology — as of Raising Steam, clockpunk combined with very early Age of Steam; it hasn't gone full Steampunk ... yet.
  • Hex is used mainly as a vehicle for computer puns, e.g. it's got an anthill inside, it doesn't work when it's not FTB (fluffy teddy bear) enabled, etc. According to The Art of Discworld, "the wizard built something sufficiently computerlike that computerness entered it".
  • Magitek is also subverted in Interesting Times, where one character assumes that the watches are powered by demons. In fact, demons were used, but turned out to be unreliable, so the watchmakers moved on to clockwork.
  • A notable non-magical technology is the "clacks towers"—a continent-wide network of semaphore towers that is often used to parody telephones and the internet. Explored in detail in The Fifth Elephant and Going Postal. The clacks companies do, however, employ lots of gargoyles as signal-watchers, as they're extremely good at sitting still and watching the same thing all day long.
  • Leonard of Quirm, a genius inventor, seems to be advancing Clock Punk technology on the Disc.
  • Lampshaded by resident wizard-nerd Ponder Stibbons at one point, explicitly referencing the quote at the top of the page—when he can't explain the technology behind his latest invention to another wizard, he chalks it up to "sufficiently advanced magic."
• In The Divine Cities, Magitek has been ubiquitous on the Continent during the Divine era, what with miracles being used for absolutely everything, up to and including disposing of solid waste. After the death of the Divinities, most of the miracles stopped working, hence the extremely hard fall of the Continent. Saypur, meanwhile, had always had to make do without said Magitek, explaining her rapid technological ascendancy.
• The devices used in the Doctor Who splinter universe Faction Paradox by the titular Faction are mockeries of technology powered by voodoo. The Homeworld and the Faction are still sitting to see if they can get a coherent opinion.
  • Defied in the backstory of the Time Lords, where Rassilon rewrote the laws of physics to eliminate magic from the universe, because he didn't like it. Not that it doesn't occassionally show up, often originated from other universes.
• In Doom Valley Prep School, the world seems to have many magical items that are the equivalent of technology. Magic mirrors act like videophones, the main character wishes she could afford a pen that can write down what it hears, teleporting is a common way to travel long distance, a golem caravan is used like a bus inside a city, and more things are mentioned or heavily implied.
• Used to limited extent in Dora Wilk Series. Thorn produces electricity by magic, and phonelines are managed the same way (explaining partly why phones of the normal world don't work in Thorn and vice-versa). She states that they are probably the cleanest society in the worlds.
• Dragaera uses this like crazy. One of the main side-effects of the Interregnum was that the Imperial Orb was changed to make magic a lot more powerful. This jarred Dragaeran society out of its artificially-imposed Medieval Stasis as sorcerers had a field day figuring out all the new things they could do. In particular, teleportation completely changed the dynamics of trade and travel, psychic communication is used in a way reminiscent of cell phones, magical genetic tests are possible to do quickly and covertly, and magical lighting is the norm. Additionally, it became possible to revive someone recently killed from the dead if his central nervous system is still intact, meaning that often, Death Is Cheap. The Imperial Orb acts as a video camera, a literal magical database, and a public utility.
• The Dresden Files doesn't play too much with it, as magic and technology don't interact well. However there are plenty of loopholes and Wizards use what they can. Badass Normals using the right ammo can be deadly to most magical foes. One of the best examples might be using magic to grab an old Soviet Satellite and doing a Colony Drop. Although Odin can integrate magic with technology, since he's a god.
• Eclipse has Augury, which mixes magic and technology in addition to the elements. One of the more notable devices produced from Augury is a bottle of wine that refills itself once its wave-like engravings flare up.
• In The Edge Chronicles, while the ships do not work exactly like aircraft, they are close enough to be comparable, and powered by a flying rock. Stormphrax is also important for several uses.
• Geoffrey A. Landis's first story, Elemental, took place in a future in which magic has been discovered to be a form of physics, and (for example), thamauturges use pentacles to control antimatter.
• In Harry Turtledove's Every Inch A King windworkers produce winds that allow ships to sail against the natural wind, items are cheaply mass produced using the law of sympathy, crystal balls replace telegraphy, etc.
• Falling With Folded Wings: The System removes all human technology when it teleports them to the planet, warning them that high-level energy users will render technology irrelevant. While the humans do work to improve themselves through the System, they also try to find ways to re-invent technology combined with energy.
• Feral: The Story of a Half-Orc has Char, the main character who uses magic to create carbon sheets, creates a blunderbuss that can be ignited by a fire rune, and jetpacks powered by magic. He's been compared to Tony Stark by fans.
• The Flaw In All Magic: Most technology uses ancryst, crystals which move away from any magical field. This is much more energy-efficient and cheaper than using single-purpose magic; a levitation spell, for example, would cost far more than lining a tunnel with generic magical fields and letting the natural reaction of the ancryst crystals propel a platform.
• In addition to Magic, Inc., there is Robert A. Heinlein's 1963 novel Glory Road, where magic is treated like Real Life treats technology. Although walking the Glory Road actually takes you into parallel universes with slightly different laws. Some you can't stop in for more than a short time without dying.
• In John Scalzi's The God Engines they have starships that harness the power of defeated deities to travel between the stars, also specially trained crew members who function as living hyperspace radios.
• The Godslayer Chronicles by James Clemens AKA James Rollins has magic powered by Humors, the bodily fluids of the gods. Sweat specifically has the power to grant Blessings to nonliving objects. All manner of magically powered technology exists, ranging from magically imbued weapons to speed boats and airships.
• Grimoire's Soul: One form grimoires can take is a computer tablet just as capable of casting spells as anything else.
• There are some examples in J. K. Rowling's Harry Potter franchise. Especially noticeable within the realm of the live-action films. This is used to the point where technology is referred to as a Muggle substitute for magic (in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix). Examples of magic being used as technology don't occur much in the story itself, but it is clear from the dialogue that this is how it is used in the larger world the books take place in. Wizards don't seem to understand the Muggle concepts of "light bulbs" or "telephones" for example. The self-writing quills are word processors that suit the personal tastes and writing style of the writer: see Rita Skeeter's acid quill for that one. Then there are self-stirring cauldrons, sneakoscopes (alarms), wireless radios, apparating, broomsticks, the flying carpets, floo network, and portkeys (transportation), and the Portrait Galleries that often act like a vast, sentient internet for anyone that happens to be able to persuade them. Lovegood's antique printing press too—if the Quibbler has it, why not the Daily Prophet and every wizarding publisher in existence?
  • In terms of Magitek as "combination of technology and magic", Arthur's flying car is a notable example, and there's also the entire Misuse of Muggle Artifacts Office, which shows that such things are possible but illegal in the wizarding world. This is simply a matter of maintaining The Masquerade: combining Muggle technology with magic makes it far more likely for the object to end up in Muggle hands, thus revealing the existence of magic.
  • Wizards use radio, and even the Death Eater regime doesn’t stop the practice so they must be partially magical. Given the previously mentioned ban on enchanted muggle objects, it seems to imply a wizard had a hand in inventing radio. ^note Given that phonogrpahs are also used in the movies, there is a fan theory that Thomas Edison was a wizard who first prototyped his ideas with magic before finding mundane ways to make them work to sell to muggles. It would make the fact that light bulbs never caught on the wizard world a little suspect.
• David Weber has a tendency to treat magic as just another form of technology in his books. Witness the Hell's Gate series which has the magical equivalent of computers and genetic engineering, which is used to create dragons of course.
  • Especially since in the Bazhell series' background the old empire that fell 1,000 years before was explicitly Magitek. Dwarfs are championed by the author due to his hatred of the anti-technology stance of much of fantasy. The old way of making steel depended on the support of wizards. The new one uses Bessemer Converters. Steam engines are being discovered and shock absorbers are now being used on wagons.
• Both averted and played straight in Mercedes Lackey's Heralds of Valdemar series: Valdemar does almost everything manually; the Eastern Empire, on the other hand, does almost everything by magic. When magic becomes unreliable, Valdemar carries on mostly unaffected, while the Empire must declare martial law and impose strict rationing.
• A Hero's War: It turns out that magic in the world of Firma is Turing-complete. Commoditised magic plays a big role in the industrial revolution kickstarted by Cato, allowing them to essentially skip steam power entirely, and even largely replacing electricity. Cato's apartment doubles as a test bed for the latest innovations in magical appliances, and has many of the conveniences that 21st century Western society would expect; refrigeration, lighting, cooking without flame, etc.
• Michael Swanwick's series starting with The Iron Dragon's Daughter treats magic as a form of technology — the iron dragons of the title are made in factories.
• In The Iron Teeth web serial, mages use staffs that are complex mechanical devices to help channel the power of their spell crystals. The Endless Heavens guild has also been mentioned to have built a mechanical elevator powered by magic.
• Journey to Chaos: All of Tariatla's technology is built using a mage's scientific understanding of the world. For instance, air conditioning uses wind magic and, instead of "cellphones", everyone's walking around with "scries" that do the same thing.
• The Commonwealth in Patrick Rothfuss' The Kingkiller Chronicle uses a lot of this. Other nations do too but to a lesser extent because the main source of magitek is The University, located in the Commonwealth.
• The Last Horizon: Normally, magic and technology work in tandem, but don't mix. Aethertech is called a "manifest miracle," and is capable of such things as instantaneous communication across the entire universe or accessing all possible databases to discover information on a subject. The Zenith technology is the first and greatest example of Aethertech.
• The Laundry Files is built on the premise that magic is a branch of applied mathematics where NP=P, and computers are machines for doing lots of calculations very quickly. The end result is such inventions as light-bending "hands of glory" optimized to use pigeon's feet, and if properly aligned can make lasers. Also video cameras that can convert carbon to silicon (Gorgon's Stare), which tends to make things explode. Please note that while special skills that anyone can learn are needed to construct these devices and the accurate aiming and firing of a Hand of Glory/laser is described as taking some experience, all the Gorgon's Stare requires is to look through a pair of special lenses and press a button. This is actually more dangerous than it sounds: anyone with a computer and some programming talent can summon demons, or out-and-out Eldritch Abominations. By accident. Series protagonist Bob Howard was forcibly recruited because it turned out his latest project would have inadvertently summoned Nyarlathotep. Yes, THAT Nyarlathotep.
• Legacy of the Dragokin: Final Shield is a technological device that runs on electricity but produces a magical effect. Rufus initially had trouble figuring out how it worked until he noticed its resembalance to a completely technological device.
• Legends & Lattes: The coffee machine might have some gnomish magic in it, though it also burns oil for heat. Pendrick the bard's "thaumic lute" is clearly an electric guitar that uses magic for its amplification, with which he invents something very like rock music.
• Randall Garrett's Lord Darcy series is a great example of this trope. In this world, magic is studied with as much emphasis on higher math and theory as any science. The stories are murder mysteries, with Lord Darcy and Master Sean O Lochlainn solving crimes using the former's deductive abilities, and the latter's expertise in forensic magic. Fortunately, Master Sean likes explaining how his forensic techniques work.
• The Machineries of Empire: Exotic technology in the Hexarchate relies on the High Calendar, a phenomenon of mathematical technobabble, ritual observance, and anomalous technology that enables outright supernatural effects, from Faster-Than-Light Travel to an unwholesome variety of Fantastic Nukes. However, Exotic technology fails in regions where Calendrical observances are sufficiently disrupted, so the Hexarchate keeps old-fashioned "invariate" technology as backup.
• Magic, Metahumans, Martians and Mushroom Clouds: An Alternate Cold War:
  • The Japanese attempted to combine science and magic during WWII, with limited success. The best they had to show for it was the Manchurian Gold virus, which turns people into zombies.
  • The spaceship that crashes in Roswell is found to use demon-summoning rituals to power at least some of its actions.
• In The Magical Revolution of the Reincarnated Princess, the protagonist is unable to use magic, so settles for creating magical inventions based on her memories of modern technology and other things from her past life. An example of one such invention is a kettle that uses a fire stone to keep the water within warm.
• Magicnet proposes that many magical incantations work, but they don't work well enough or reliably enough for this to be statistically verifiable. Then along came computers, which could cast those incantations millions of times in quick succession until the desired result occurred. All the major spellcasters in the book are also hackers.
• Magik Online takes place in a universe where magic and technology are integrated into a whole. The very title is an example, a website allowing users to download and purchase powers like a supernatural Amazon.
• Manifestation: One of the characters develops a type of Technomancy that allows her to use magic to repair damaged machines, power the machines with mana instead of electricity, and enhance the capabilities of machines.
• The Mortal Instruments has the flying motorcycles the vampires ride, which are powered by "demon energies". Also, those who look closely will notice that Magnus Bane's television is not actually plugged in. The Shadowhunters have Magitek home conveniences in Idris.
• In Naím y el mago fugitivo (Naím and the runaway magician), by Argentine author Sebastián Lalaurette, magic is a Magitek: magicians (called Rumotim) have to extract it first from nature, and then they can use it. Every spell requires a certain quantity of magic. Then Rumotim Ramiro Grimor discovers a way to make magic grow, allowing every magician to dispose of virtually unlimited quantities of it, and it looks like everything's going to hell. Fortunately there are antimagicians as well.
• In the later books in the Old Kingdom series, Prince Sameth is finding workarounds for the 'technology fails in presence of magic' problem by creating magical versions of nifty Ancelstierran technology.
• Somewhere between a Shout-Out and a Homage to Magic, Inc. is Poul Anderson's 1971 novel Operation Chaos and its sequel Operation Luna.
• In the Mediochre Q Seth Series, technomancy is the art of incorporating enchantments into technological components so that they can do more.
• Tik-Tok from L. Frank Baum's Oz books (first appearing in Ozma of Oz) is arguably a prototype for Magitek, being described as something that could only be made in a "fairyland" like Oz.
• Piers Anthony's works:
  • Incarnations of Immortality is based on a society much like our own, only Fate, Time and Death (among others) are incarnated in humans (sometimes against the will of said humans), magic is real, and in the future timeline technology and magic merge to a large degree. (Justified in that "magic" is said to be based on a "fifth fundamental force", making it essentially an application of physics in that universe). At one point, the series states plainly that anything magic can accomplish, technology can do too, and vice versa.
  • The Xanth series has Com Pewter, a piece of bizarre, self-aware, occasionally malicious electronics that can alter reality within its area of influence.
• Rainbow Magic: Several of the fairies have magic that's designed to help specific technology run perfectly (e.g. Destiny the Pop/Rock Star Fairy's magical microphone makes sure that the sound and lighting systems at concerts work).
• Reborn as a Vending Machine, I Now Wander the Dungeon: While characters are confused by the presence of a vending machine, with minimum prompts they quickly get used to it as it's mentioned that magical tools aren't uncommon.
• Release That Witch: Downplayed through most of the story. Rather than creating technology powered by magic, Roland employs the magical abilities of the various witches he allies with to help in the creation of mundane real world technology like firearms, steam engines, bikes, central heating, plumbing systems and so forth. It's eventually revealed that ancient witches and the current Demons developed actual magic-based technology, like Powers as Programs magic stones.
• The Reunion With Twelve Fascinating Goddesses has technology powered by Spirits, including motorbikes and a telephone equivalent.
• Riddle of the Seven Realms: Palodad, an ancient demon, has constructed a huge mechanical computer from the millions of demons, great or tiny, that have fallen under his control. Arrayed in cages and linked by shackles and rods, they stick out their tongues, stand on one leg, flip upside-down, or otherwise change their poses to indicate 1s or 0s; glowing imps pasted to metal plates serve as "screens" for input and output.
• Jack Chalker's Dancing Gods trilogy had its characters Trapped in Another World where magic was real, but followed very specific rules and mathematically precise patterns, such that every high-ranking wizard also had to be a genius mathematician. One of the major subplots follows how much this system is screwed up by the introduction of technology smuggled from Earth; even a pocket calculator could turn a mediocre magician into a powerhouse, and more powerful computers can be programmed to work out new spells at high speeds. Also, in one plot where a powerful wizard came to "our world," he discovered that creating magic spells was analogous to computer programming, which allowed him to bring magic to our world.
• The Salvagers trilogy is saturated in it: everything from robots and spaceships to racecars and holograms have a magical component. Most technology uses it as a power source; when Boots sees Orna's mech with his chestplate off, she describes his insides as “burning with arcane fire.” Instead of guns, the characters wield “slingers” that shoot violent spells at people. Large warships have “spell discs” for casting combat magic and defense satellites attack by repeatedly casting explosive magical marks. Magitek is so ubiquitous the characters don't even have any non-magical means of hacking a computer in a vault guarded by magic detectors.
• In Sepulchre, mineral corporation Magma provides psychic Felix Kline with a room whose high tech mapping displays utilise his insights.
• The Secret Histories books feature this prominently. The Drood Powered Armor is one example. So are many of Eddie Drood's gadgets. Many other factions use technology enhanced by magic OR magic standardized by technology.
• All over the place in Shadow of the Conqueror by Shad M. Brooks, which has magical guns, cars, skyscrapers, and airships, all powered by sunstone and darkstone.
• Melissa Scott's Silence Leigh trilogy has starships powered by alchemy and guided by astrology.
• A Song of Ice and Fire gives us examples of straight-up magic, straight-up science... and this. The Wall is an Ancient Artifact using lost construction methods and has a decidedly magical nature to it, for all it's maintained through straight-forward engineering. Other Lost Technology also has varying degrees of "magicness" to it: Valyrian steel, Winterfell's heating system, the House of Black and White, the dragonglass "light bulb"... the list is probably a lot longer. Some tech that is not lost also shares the semi-magical nature of that of the past: poisons that use magic as well as chemical processes and the "investigations" of the Mad Doctor Qyburn are just two examples. And, what with the The Magic Comes Back, more may continue to be found or rediscovered.
• The Stormlight Archive: Fabrials are steampunk-type devices which run on Stormlight, and use captured spren for a variety of purposes. For example, they've invented practical quantum entanglement to make one gem (when activated) move another gem hundreds of miles away. Attach a quill to it and you've got a crude long-distance communication device. At the start of the story, the world is going through a fabrial renaissance, and while they are still primitive in many ways, they are making leaps and strides. They even believe they may be able to make more of the ancient Shardblades and Shardplate, Lost Technology once used by the Knights Radiant, though they haven't made much actual progress on that front. This is because the Blades were actually the Knights' voluntarily bonded spren, and were not technology at all. Later on other applications of fabrials are discovered, such as creating elevators, refrigerators/heaters, and even wearable painkillers, which can be reversed to instantly paralyze someone with pain.
• A Symphony of Eternity has magitek applied on a galactic scale. We have three galactic superpowers powered by energy crystals, along with interstellar portals powered by the planets themselves, plus armies made out of magic powered tanks and artillery fighting alongside Greek Phalanxes and Roman legion loke units. Space fighters and bombers fly alongside Pegasus riders and soldiers in powersuits with wings on their backs. Technology, like magic in our world, has been mostly forgotten — so much so that when someone who knows technology, called a technosorcerer, appears it makes one of the Imperial Governors afraid that it could cause local rebels to wage full-fledged revolt.
• Some Tom Holt books have Magitek, such as the magic mirror that runs Mirrors '95 in Snow White And The Seven Samurai or the various devices in the Portable Door series. Djinn Rummy mentions genies who have gone into business running technological devices, making these Magitek in the truest sense.
• Tough Magic has a good bit, with cyps (cars), railcars (trains), temirs (videophones), golems (robots)...
• In the Towers Trilogy, the City runs on magitek, a result of magic being used to repair and replace the post-apocalyptic remnants of technological infrastructure.
• Turtledove also wrote a series following the course of a World War II analogue with behemoths in the place of tanks, dragons instead of planes, enchanted "sticks" that worked a lot like guns, a magical Manhattan Project, and so on.
• In The Witchlands, people use Firewitched pistols, explosives and lamps, create Theadstones that can serve as communication devices and alarms, have Wordwitched contracts that work like Wiki articles and so on.
• Simon Hawke's The Wizard of 4th Street and its sequels have a 22nd century where magic has been reawakened and revolutionized technology and society: electrical generators powered by renewable magic, levitating cars with "thaumaturgic batteries", and sentient animated objects of all kinds.
• The Wheel of Time series has artifacts from the Age of Legends called ter'angreal which each use the One Power to do a specific thing, including changing the weather, storing a library, and what is implied to be some sort of sex toy. A great many require a channeler to work, but a few do not. In the Age of Legends, something called "standing flows" allowed even the former to be usable by Muggles.
• Wizard of Yurt: Though most of the technology is just like that of Medieval Europe, magical lights, telephones and air carts (which seem akin to flying cars) exist as well.
• The Wiz Biz series of novels by Rick Cook (comprised of Wizard's Bane; The Wizardry Compiled; The Wizardry Cursed; The Wizardry Consulted), about a Silicon Valley programmer transported into a world where magic exists and where reality, he finds out, is programmable.
• The Young Wizards teens' series by Diane Duane has magic users receive wizarding manuals customized in form to their preferences. This has increasingly meant computers (specifically, Apples—ever tried porting magic to XP?) instead of the traditional books. Early starters get desktop machines while the recent arrivals can brandish iPods◊ that draw their power from the nearest star, automatically receive updates, come with the iSpell feature for keeping track of your magic and play good music.
  • Granted, the classic Spell Book format doesn't act much different from a computer. They're self-updating, voice activated, come with search, record and messaging functions, and capable of making holographic displays. The difference is mainly cosmetic.
  • Nita has a spell which manifests as a particle beam rifle.
  • Quite possibly the ultimate example in the series: On Dairene's first adventure as a wizard, she wound up creating a race of sentient robots with the help of her manual (at the time, a desktop computer). Every single one of them is a wizard, with built-in manual functions. And the surface of their planet is one big, naturally-occurring supercomputer that is also a wizard.
• As Rimuru builds up Tempest in That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime, he uses magic to replicate modern conveniences such as inscribing a heat generating magical circle on a faucets to have heated water on tap. There's also the dwarf kingdom Dwargon's secret project of developing a magical combat golem, essentially a robot, made out of enchanted metals.

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