Roadmap to Magic · 30 books, their magic, and the machines that caught up

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

Arthur C. Clarke, third law, Profiles of the Future (1973 edition)

A note from Andor

I started this because most of us don't notice how remarkable the technology around us already is. We romanticize magic and fantasy, but the world we actually live in is, in many ways, better than the storybooks.

Building these spells taught me two things.

Magic is often impractical. Opening the Marauder's Map means saying "I solemnly swear that I am up to no good" out loud, every time. A tap or a glance does it silently. Many of the spells we envy are clumsier than the tools in our pockets.

Some magic is limited for good reason. A live map of everyone's whereabouts is easy to build today. Secret surveillance is a real and harmful thing, which is why rules exist to protect us from it. The map here shows only made-up wanderers.

I love fantasy and science fiction, and this isn't meant to diminish those worlds. It's meant to help us appreciate our own, which we tend to look at with more skepticism than wonder.

— Andor

Writers have spent two centuries imagining what wands, stones and starships could do. Engineers have quietly been checking items off the list. A self-writing quill is a dictation app. Tom Riddle's diary is a chatbot. Teleportation is still a spell.

The verdicts

Add to the roadmap

Suggest a book

Name a fantasy or science-fiction book that's missing. Anton, Andor's AI agent, reads up on it, writes down its magic and how close today's technology gets, and adds it to the roadmap. It takes about a minute.