super vs powers

[marycatelli]

What makes a superpower super?

If the powers only recently appeared, it would be anything a human can do -- fly, shoot energy beams, survive grenades without a cut -- that couldn't be done before the appearance. (Plus that minimizes the alternate history need.)

But in the abstract, perhaps it's anything a human can do that violates the laws of thermodynamics: the energy to fly, or in the beams, or to stop the shrapnel dead, appears to appear from nowhere. That would work even with a long history of powers.

On the other hand, what would that do to the development of physics? It would have to compartmentalize the powers that only humans can do vs. the rest of the world as sharply as pre-moderns split up the stuff under the moon and over the moon, the latter being absolutely regular in a way never found below it. And it wouldn't be safely far away past the moon.

Perhaps ancients would have called them superlunary powers.

Comments

[madfilkentist]

Some superpowers, such as extremely sensitive hearing or the ability to see microscopic objects, don't obviously violate the laws of thermodynamics.

[marycatelli]

Perhaps they won't be considered superpowers. . . or perhaps they will complicate life still further by making optics more difficult.

Or perhaps they won't exist.