Your colonial character discovers a rifle that never needs reloading, lights that never burn out, radios that ignore the curvature of the earth. What does he think he’s found? This is the premise I’m exploring in my colonial fiction; technology so advanced it looks like magic to people who’ve only seen electricity in lightning bolts. Honestly, it’s my way of thinking about AI and what happens when incomprehensible technology drops into a society that isn’t ready for it.

Here’s what I find fascinating about the colonial period.

Society wasn’t held captive by Science yet. We didn’t think we had it all figured out. Or that we could figure it all out. People believed in divine intervention, miraculous healing, witchcraft. The boundary between natural and supernatural was fuzzy.

Drop a solar-powered flashlight into that world, and it’s not advanced technology. It’s a divine artifact. Or demonic. it depends on who finds it. Isn’t it always about the eye of the beholder?

I’ve spent decades reading about colonial life. Visiting museums. Understanding their technological limitations. A musket takes thirty seconds to reload. Less if you’re skilled. Candles that burn out and leave soot everywhere. Communication that travels at the Speed of Hoof. A home cooked meal over an open fire.

Their entire worldview assumed scarcity and limitation.

In my story, characters discover what appears to be advanced, maybe alien, technology in an ancient temple. Weapons, communication devices, lights. Heck, even blankets.

To us, some of these devices seem historical. Outdated, even. Some will seem fantastic.

To colonial Americans? This technology is incomprehensible. It doesn’t fit their understanding of how the world works.

Can they reverse-engineer it? Can they manufacture more? They can only use what they find and try to understand what it means. How useful is a modern rifle if you can’t reload the spent ammunition?

This creates a different kind of power dynamic than normal technological advancement. It’s not about innovation or industrial capacity. It’s about who controls access to the inexplicable.

I had a nightmare as a teenager. This was the mid-1980s. I was being chased by something. Someone. I don’t know what. But something in the dream seemed off. I realized that it was wrong because I wasn’t in reality. It was a dream. “If this is a dream, then I have a gun in my hand.” I looked down and saw an M1911 pistol. I turned and shot my pursuer. Knowing now it was a dream, I dropped the pistol and flew. Fifteen years before The Matrix.

That’s the feeling I want to capture. The moment when limitations you’ve accepted your entire life suddenly disappear. When the impossible becomes possible.

But here’s the thing about gaining superpowers. They don’t just change what you can do. They change who you are.

We’re living through our own version of this right now. Aren’t we? AI capabilities that seemed impossible five years ago are becoming routine. We’re discovering tools that ignore limitations we thought were fundamental. And we have no idea what the second order effects are. Nor do we seem to care.

Like my colonial characters, we can’t fully understand how these tools work. We can use them, but we can’t replicate them from first principles.

And like them, we’re struggling with questions of power and control. Who gets access? How do we prevent misuse? What happens to existing social structures?

The real story isn’t the technology itself. It’s how people respond to it.

Some see divine providence. Others see demonic corruption. Some want to share the power. Others want to hoard it.

But here’s the thing: the technology doesn’t solve problems. It reveals character.

In my colonial setting, that means wrestling with questions that feel very modern. Who deserves power? How do you maintain social stability when the rules suddenly change? What happens when individuals gain capabilities that were previously reserved for institutions?

These aren’t just historical questions. They’re the questions we’re facing with AI today.

Colonial Americans might actually be better equipped for incomprehensible technology than we are.

They already believed in forces beyond human understanding. They accepted that some knowledge was beyond them. They had frameworks for dealing with the mysterious and powerful.

We’ve been trained to think everything should be explainable. Controllable. Predictable. Schools teach us to believe “if it can’t be explained by the laws of Science, then it’s myth.”

When technology outpaces our ability to understand it, we get anxious. They might just accept it as another mystery in a world full of mysteries. God’s divine hand reaching out.

I’m using historical fiction to explore contemporary fears.

What happens when technology becomes indistinguishable from magic? How do societies adapt when fundamental assumptions about power and capability get overturned?

The colonial setting lets me explore these questions without getting caught up in current political debates about AI regulation or tech company power.

But the underlying questions are the same. How do we maintain human agency when our tools become incomprehensible? How do we prevent concentration of power in the hands of those who control access to the miraculous?

I don’t have answers. But I think the questions are worth exploring.