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Difference between Psionics and Magic.

Corporate King

Corporate King

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What are the general differences between Psionics and Magic in fiction? Especially when both powers are present in the same world.
 
Hmm, in fiction, psionic tend to be always an inborn ability, and manifested through a pure mental exertion.

Magic, although different across various fictions, may be usable by anyone with knowledge and training, and manifested through a spell formula alongside/rather than the caster's pure will only.
 
I'm sure if you go back far enough you'll find them drawing on the same historical sources, but they often do have a different kind of "feel" to them, for sure.
There was a phase when psionics was really popular in science fiction, and it turns out that the editor of one of the most influential sci-fi magazines was big into ESP and everyone knew it. So of course authors wrote it into the stories they submitted to get a better chance at being published. An honestly upsetting number of classical sci-fi tropes got ingrained that way, actually.

Anyway, psionics sort of had this "untapped human potential" thing going on, where you could learn to communicate across vast distances or move things with your mind, etc by learning to meditate and flex your brain muscle. Magic is hard to quantify; you've got Brandon Sanderson-esque "alternative physics", you've got turbocharged ritual thinking, god-powers, and funny hats and dog Latin all called "magic".
 
The only hard and fast rule is that psionics are inherently lamer than magic.

Why?

*leans in close*

When's the last time you saw a rad psion airbrushed on the side of a van.
 
Psionics tend to cover the powers of the mind more often than not, so telekinesis, telepathy, mental domination and such performed via sheer willpower without use of reagents or rituals tend to fall under this category. It is usually something inherent to the individual and not something that can be learned.

Magic on the other hand is a far broader principle involving usually rituals, focuses such as wands or staffs and use of reagents like bats eyes or toad legs etc. In many setting magic may depend on talent or an inherent spark but it is accessible to a far broader base than psionics.
 
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Magic is more honest about itself, whereas psionics try to attach themselves to science fiction like a limpet for no particular reason.
 
Funnily, the default state of psionics in D&D 3.5 was that it is magic. It has more Power of the Mind than ritual compared to arcane or divine magic, and some quirky differences in how you use it and its visuals, but it still draws upon and interacts with the same basic force.
 
If we're being honest Psionics is just an extremely specific from of magic that happens to have a pseudosciencey aesthetic. If you're told someone is "Psionic" you expect telekinesis, telepathy, and/or some kind of extranormal perception, but if the same person was introduced as a wizard, none of those capacities would seem out of place.
 
In past literature, sci-fi and fantasy was very much intertwined. There was basically no difference between the two genres. I'm not sure what caused the split, but I reckon LOTR had a hand in it.

Psionics is a funny thing. There used to be a real belief in the early 20th century that it was a thing. You can see it in early RPGs too, with Dungeons and Dragons just dropping random spaceships and video games like Might and Magic giving you laser rifles. It's not that psionics attached itself to sci-fi, it originated with sci-fi.

Wizards of the Hyborian age summoned magic from the stars or from devils, DnD clerics gain their powers from their faith, psionics gain its powers from the self. A great strength of psionics is that you can basically shove it in any modern setting and well, not explain it. One of my favorite new espers is Anya from Spy x Family. She can basically read minds, it's never given why she can (though future manga chapters may explain the origin), and it's a magic that exists to further the story's themes and comedy. It would make a lot less sense if Anya was a wizard, but a girl with psychic powers is much more in line with the series Cold War setting.

Psionics also is 'scientific'. It isn't, it's all mumbo jumbo nonsense, but it's a lot easier to explain that humans are evolving than it is to acknowledge an unseen power with magic. It can be neatly slotted into your sci-fi world without much explanation the same way magic exists in your fantasy world. The fireball throwing wizards and mindreading psionics have the same DNA. That isn't to say a wizard can't read minds or psionics can't light people on fire, but they're the same product in a different branding. They're not opposites, they're siblings.

TL;DR: Psionics are based, actually.
 
Honestly, I really miss the days of fantasy settings were less stratified, and magic and positive were treated as not interchangeable but as something sort of expected.

A learned wizard or powerful dragon was just as likely to have psionic powers as magic ones, because really the two are not that different
 
Red Orion said:
Honestly, I really miss the days of fantasy settings were less stratified, and magic and positive were treated as not interchangeable but as something sort of expected.

A learned wizard or powerful dragon was just as likely to have psionic powers as magic ones, because really the two are not that different
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Well Doctor Strange can do pretty much everything that Professor X can do... but a lot more, as well.
 
Psionics is basically magic packaged to make it more compatible with the genre conventions of science fiction; it's a way for science fiction to have magic while still remaining firmly in the literary genre of science fiction.

So the difference is that in psionics the intercessionary and wizardy aspects of magic get downplayed; the idea of magic involving dealing with gods or spirits is downplayed, the idea of spells and rituals is downplayed, etc.. Instead, psionics has a psuedoscientific presentation; these people aren't wizards, they're just people with unusual natural abilities, like an autistic savant except instead of being able to do complex math in their head really well they can read your mind, and their abilities are explained in sciencey-sounding terms. Psionics even still lets you have classic wizards if you want, but they're treated like how a skeptic might treat mystic martial artists: "yeah, that person can break a brick with their hand and move objects with their mind, but it's nothing numinous, they're just a powerful telekinetic who's also in great shape and knows how hit objects in a way that directs maximum force on their weakest points, it's totally scientifically explainable and all the mysticism they surround it with is at best a series of allegorical insights and helpful mental discipline techniques and at worst cruft reflecting their discipline having been developed by scientifically ignorant primitives and obfuscating nonsense to make ignorant people think it's more special than it really is."

Magic is Moses parting the Red Sea while shouting "Behold His mighty hand!" and the whole thing being taken at more-or-less face value. Psionics is the same scene but you invent some psuedoscientific technobabble about how Moses was actually able to do that because he was born with a rare mutation on chromosome 19 and the ignorant superstitious primitives of his time mistook his natural abilities for divine favor.
 
Memphet'ran said:
Psionics is basically magic packaged to make it more compatible with the genre conventions of science fiction; it's a way for science fiction to have magic while still remaining firmly in the literary genre of science fiction.

So the difference is that in psionics the intercessionary and wizardy aspects of magic get downplayed; the idea of magic involving dealing with gods or spirits is downplayed, the idea of spells and rituals is downplayed, etc.. Instead, psionics has a psuedoscientific presentation; these people aren't wizards, they're just people with unusual natural abilities, like an autistic savant except instead of being able to do complex math in their head really well they can read your mind, and their abilities are explained in sciencey-sounding terms. Psionics even still lets you have classic wizards if you want, but they're treated like how a skeptic might treat mystic martial artists: "yeah, that person can break a brick with their hand and move objects with their mind, but it's nothing numinous, they're just a powerful telekinetic who's also in great shape and knows how hit objects in a way that directs maximum force on their weakest points, it's totally scientifically explainable and all the mysticism they surround it with is at best a series of allegorical insights and helpful mental discipline techniques and at worst cruft reflecting their discipline having been developed by scientifically ignorant primitives and obfuscating nonsense to make ignorant people think it's more special than it really is."

Magic is Moses parting the Red Sea while shouting "Behold His mighty hand!" and the whole thing being taken at more-or-less face value. Psionics is the same scene but you invent some psuedoscientific technobabble about how Moses was actually able to do that because he was born with a rare mutation on chromosome 19 and the ignorant superstitious primitives of his time mistook his natural abilities for divine favor.
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That's not really how it worked - because as other people mentioned in the thread, back when "psionics" first became a thing, people legitimately believed that there was some scientific basis to it. Princeton didn't have, essentially, a psionics research laboratory (which was only relatively recently closed back in 2007) for no reason.

Fundamentally, the reason psionics in science fiction is generally treated as science fiction rather than as fantasy magic is because during the time many of the foundational works of modern science fiction were written, it was treated as future science rather than as fantasy magic. Basically, right now it's just grandfathered-in legacy code, but that doesn't make it just repackaged magic.

More interestingly, psionics was often transhumanism-before-transhumanism, the idea that people in the future would be different and have "higher powerlevels" as it were than people today, and I think there's a very interesting correlation with how genetic modification and cybernetics are often taking the narrative position that psionics would have held back then.
 
Cobalt-60 said:
Also the matter of scale. Magic can alter whole worlds; psionics never gets more dramatic than heads exploding.
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In 40k alone, you have Eisenhorn popping a dudes eyes out and Librarians killing people with heart attacks. In Rimworld, the most powerful spell (psionics are literally psycasters) is one that drives everyone on the map berserk at the cost of a three day coma. There's also other psionics with things like cyrokinesis, pyrokinesis, telekinesis, or whateverkinesis.

Psionics and fantasy magic have always been, literary siblings.
 
Practically speaking, nothing. They're both made up forces that can accomplish whatever the writer wants, the name doesn't change that. Now, in terms of writing, there is a big difference. Since psychic powers were, at one point, hypothesized to be real, and remain popular in pseudo-science to this day, they tend to pop up more often in sci-fi works, whereas magic, or, at least, magic that is outright called "magic" tends to be restrained to fantasy. There are very few works that have spaceships and wizards, is my point. Now, it should be noted, some settings that don't feel as bound by the sci-fi/fantasy line tend to include BOTH, and, in such universes, there is typically some form of distinction made. For instance, in the Marvel Universe, magic can, in theory, be learned by anyone, while psychics are almost always either mutants or aliens. In addition, magic in the Marvel Universe is drawn from many sources, while psychics tend to be less varied. Meanwhile, over at DC, in general, psychic powers are scientific and scientifically-studied, while magic functions on more a conceptual and narrative level then psychical, and can defy normal laws as a result. Psychic blasts won't hurt Superman, but magic spells might, because it's more-or-less bypassing her durability and just sorta DECLARING that he is hurt, like a command console of the universe.
 
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