The marriage of sci-fi and fantasy is technomancy– or the magical modification or use of tech. It’s a concept I enjoy, because the idea of blending sci-fi and fantasy is fun. However, I prefer leaning far more into the fantasy aspect, with technology influenced by said magic. Therefore, technomancy scratches a very fun itch, and it’s something I’d love to explore in my own works more.
As usual, this article is just sort of a river of thought. I hope my ideas inspire your writing as well!
(1) Destruction
Using technomancy to destroy technology seems like the most straightforward, basic type you would think of aside from ‘hacking’. Overloading a piece of technology until it explodes, either with too much processing or just an overabundance of energy, can really mess up your enemy if they are using anything technology-based against you. Vehicles, computers, you name it, they can be made to go KABOOM.
(2) Creation
To create seems a bit powerful, and might involve some telekinesis as well. Depends on what you are doing with the parts of the technology. If you are combining telekinesis to put it together, then technomancy to make it work, this could be considered creating. Also, however, converting energy in the area around you to power the machine could be a cool concept to utilize.
Programing could be considered ‘creating’, and imagine technomancy or spells that completely streamline that process to do it for you in exactly the manner you’d like. It seems eerily overpowered, but that is something to balance in your lore.
(3) “Hacking”
I think this is the most common thought when it comes to technomancy. The idea of “hacking” isn’t just putting on a ski mask and typing in a computer, however. It’s all about code. Perhaps technomancy can enable you to break code far more easily, or to instantly understand the ‘language’ and locate what you want to mess up. It would be more ‘perception’ based so you could modify whatever the software is doing regardless of whether you recognize the coding or not.
(4) Information Modification
This is the same idea as “hacking”, but perhaps you don’t modify a function, rather information. Imagine you see something on a website and modify what it says, but it applies actively to everyone viewing it right now. Even scarier–it changes things in their mind, as well. That’s a bit overpowered, so if anything, I would make that a temporary effect. Or, you could even have something on a website say one thing to some people, another thing to others, and it could change based on location or powers. There is a ton to do with this!
(5) AI/Sentience Influence (Really Overpowered so be careful)
This one is basically ‘life creation’, just not biological, but technological. If you could breathe life into machines, would you? They might develop and evolve exactly like biological machines… it depends on how your story goes. But if you could use technomancy to grant life to an AI, or make it advance so much faster than it would without it, that could lead to some interesting stories. As I said in the header, though, be careful, it could be super overpowered and leave open some plot holes if you are not careful.
Well, there you have it! I hope you enjoyed this brief exploration of Technomancy ideas. If you want more content like this, be sure to subscribe! I publish writing-related topics and similar frequently!
Des M. Astor 