George Orwell's dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four is a classic example, but it turns up in pop culture a lot in the 1950s.

Q is both a character and the name of a fictional race in Star Trek and he's the embodiment of Authur C. Clark's Third Law.

Jim Butcher's magic system rehashes the classic ideas of Latin spell casting and potion making but done in an appealing way.