Sufficiently Advanced Technology: Fictional Magic Users in Technologically Advanced Societies

While many fantasy stories are set entirely on different worlds or in alternate universes, authors who write about wizards, witches, and magicians living in contemporary Western societies must address the interaction – or lack thereof – between magic and technology. By examining the unique relationships that the central magical characters in J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series, Jim Butcher’s Dresden Files, Joss Whedon’s Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and Diana Wynne Jones’ Chrestomanci novels have with the technologies that are intimately connected to contemporary life in Little Winging, Chicago, Sunnydale, and Stallery, we can reach a better understanding of these characters’ roles in their societies, as well as their stories’ attitudes toward our own technologically-obsessed society.