New answers tagged science-fiction
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This actually exists, this is called Arcanepunk http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arcanepunk. It boasts such things as http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metropolitan_(book), which I must say is an amazing read.
Anyway, this is the more general problem that writers have when choosing what world-building to explain. After all, the writer might often have the mechanism ...
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This isn't the only way to do what you want and the other answers are good, but I felt another perspective might be useful.
Magic and Science are really just two ways of comprehending our world that come primarily from different levels of consciousness. (Explaining that in detail would take many pages, but it's been carefully done.*)
If you look at the ...
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Blending sci-fi and fantasy is actually quite easy, and can produce some excellent results; consider Steampunk for instance.
There are definitely plenty of great examples out there of sci-fi/fantasy blending (across many media): Final Fantasy (particularity FF XII), Dishonoured, China Mieville's Perdido Street Station, The Scar and The Iron Council, Neil ...
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I think you are giving yourself into the temptation of explaining. Sometimes you just don't need to know how - or at least doesn't know for sure how - just need to make it works and be believable in your world.
Take your real life laptop as example. It has a thousands of microchips compacted into a single CPU but, what is a microchip? What is a diode? What ...
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Why does apparent technology have to actually be technology? Can't it be either mundane or magical instead, even if in our world we would call it science or tech?
Strength and speed can be enhanced through medicine (and its cousin, magical potions). Hoverboards with mechanical motors/propellors/jet-packs/whatever aren't the only way to fly on a device; ...
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You can always make them relics of the ancient civilisation (Morrowind), or some stuff left by travelers from another planet (Roadside Picnic). People in your world can be smart enough to use them and to understand more or less of their technology, what leads to experiments.
A sidenote: I think that blending sci-fi and fantasy shouldn't be considered as a ...
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Show the guy who modified it leading a training session to teach others how to use it. This gives you plenty of opportunities to have the students ask the questions that the reader will want to know the answer to. A whole room full of cabbageheads, so to speak, although for good reason. Needn't be a huge number, but the people who are being trained should ...
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Show it breaking or failing to work as intended. You can describe the steps to get it working again as well as explaining why.
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