1--OSC, when he does his 1000 Ideas in an Hour presentations, spends some time talking about the theory that magic in fantasy stories needs to have a price. And he has the members of the audience shout out prices for magic.

I'd like to encourage that kind of discussion here. What prices for magic have you noticed in stories you've read. And what are some other prices of magic that could be used in fantasy stories.

Example: in Lloyd Alexander's PRYDAIN universe, Dallben, the wizard, pays the price of giving up his youth to have the knowledge necessary for wizardry.

If this theory were to be applied to the Harry Potter universe, I'd be inclined to submit that the price is time taken in study and practice. Talent is also required, though, so I don't know if I believe that the magic price theory really applies to the Harry Potter universe. Magic is more inherent in words and objects and people in that universe, and the characters learn how to use magic more than they pay a specific price to make it work.

2--Survivor pointed out in another topic that Clarke's law, which states that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic requires that if someone knows the technology, they don't consider what they do to be magic. It is called "magic" only by those who don't know the technology (or that it is a technology).

This seems applicable to the Harry Potter universe, except that the people who know the technology DO call it magic. I think this works, however, because there are those around them who don't know and who would call it magic if they believed it existed. So rather than refer to what Dumbledore and every non-Muggle does in the Harry Potter universe as "technology" (which is what the Muggles do), the non-Muggles call what they do "magic."

I'd like to discuss ways in which a writer can actually allow characters to refer to an advanced (or not-understood) technology as magic without violating Survivor's completely valid point.

3--There are surely other stories and/or universes where magic is important and where it neither requires a specific price or is considered an advanced technology.

I'd like to see if we can think of examples of such stories and discuss them here.

So, price? technology? or neither?

Who'd like to go first?
 

So what are they? Well, there was a novel called something like "When the magic goes away." There was a short story called "What good is a glass dagger." And I think there were a couple of other shorts, but I cannot recall them.

We come from a technological society. Over the past few hundred years, the belief in magic has faded in our society. For example, when we encounter unexplained phenomena we generally don't blame it on witches in our midst.

So, if somebody in our society found he could move small objects just by thinking about it, he would probably call it telekinesis -- trying to give a scientific name to something that is, in fact, still indistinguishable from magic.

Someone four hundred years ago would call it witchcraft.

Such magic would not be considered technology by those who used it until a rational scientific explanation for the phenomenon had been found.

[This message has been edited by EricJamesStone (edited February 15, 2004).]
 

We don't switch on a light when we enter a room and call that magic (even if a good percentage of us are not sure exactly how it works).

I think it depends on which direction you're coming from. If you come at it as technology (you know there's a scientific explanation for how to do it, and it can be reliably repeated by anyone else who knows how to do it, and it was created by mere human scientists), you're not going to name it magic.

There are hundreds of things we do every day that we take for granted that someone from a less advanced technology would call magic, but we wouldn't call it that.

If you come at it as magic, and then figure out how it was done, you might still call it magic, even if you understood what made it happen--or you might call it trickery or illusion.

As for the telekinesis example--suppose you could create a device that could make something move without your touching it. Would you call that "telekinesis" or "magic" or "remote control?"

If you could do it merely by thinking at it, and sometimes it wouldn't work because you had a headache, or there was too much going on around you to distract you, or whatever, would you call it "magic" then?

One of the little bits of humor in the Harry Potter universe is that the magic doesn't always work. Seamus keeps making things explode by accident, and Nigel can't seem to succeed at all. The relative unrepeatability might be a characteristic of magic in that universe (and in many others, for that matter--it adds to the tension if the magic doesn't always work the way it's supposed to--Murphy's law, and all that).

I think I'm rambling.
 

The threat of being expelled from Hogwarts - losing the ability to learn and do magic is a price. I suppose you could still do the magic you learned, but you are not supposed to - Hagrid had to give it up (not sure why he does not get in trouble when he does use it - maybe a special dispensation). A lot of the limits are school rules, and others are established by the Ministry of Magic. So limits are self-imposed for concealment/safety/survival of those who can use magic. If you do evil, or break the rules/limits, you go to Azkaban - that is shown to be a really bad price. Maybe the general rule is - break the rules and get in trouble. A very accessible idea for children. Even as an adult, I can sympathize. I found the system acceptable as the learning takes so long, and it obviously not easy, and is even dangerous - face terrors in the magical world - that is a price of accepting to learn magic.

And not everyone has the same talent - I think it is important that J.K Rowling does not show Harry to be the best in class - Hermione works very hard and does well. Harry is the one who fights and defeats Voldemort because he has the special connection, and does have skill and whatever, but he is not the best student.

Of course, once you know the rules well enough, and the stakes are high, you can break the rules and win the House Cup in the process.

Harry has a great magical protection from Voldemort - his mother paid a price for it.

In Mercedes Lackey's Valdemar books, the idea of ley lines comes up. A main issue is access to magic, and how it can be redirected. Magical wars resulted from problems that led to magical terrors and the loss of magic. The price of doing magic in her books seems to be a personal one, a painful one, very emotional and psychological and sometimes physical. I'm a bit vague, because I haven't read the ones I'm thinking of in a while.

In the Robert Jordan books (WoT), the price seems to be - for men, go mad, and oh yeah the Aes Sedai will come after you and "still" you, taking away your power which often results in death; for women, put up with abominable treatment from overbearing, arrogant know-it-alls, and someday you can do it to others. Later, the AS have to worry that they will be collared, leashed, and forced to do magic for the Seanchan...

This makes me realize I've been reading a lot more sf with tech than f with magic recently. Guess this is a poor contribution, but at least I wrote something today!
 

The trouble is that in fantasy worlds magic is NOT simply advanced technology. Magic is the art of doing things you should not be able to do for whatever reason and for whatever price. The author invents the reason and the price. Often the reason is shrouded in mystery.

But the idea that magic would not be plausible in a technologically advanced society may be part of the reason that most fantasies are set in Tokienesque middle age worlds. The authors want to make sure that there is no confusion -- that theirs is truly magic and has nothing to do with science or technology.

But what if that sort of magic could be achieved through science? What if someone found a way to unlock something in the human brain that would allow a person to manipulate the world around him much as Harry Potter does? Perhaps the methods would be more grounded, requiring more of concentration and less magical dust and incantations, but the principle is still magical.

If someone can move something with their mind it is telekenesis. If they can start a fire it is pyrokenesis. If they can read minds it is telepathy. If they can disappear from one location and reappear somewhere else it is teleportation. But what do you call it if they can change iron into gold? (yes, alchemy, but that is a rather magical term in its current connotation) What is it when someone calls a thunderstorm? What do you call it when someone can heal an injury with a thought or stop your heart beating in your chest?

Will we take all the magic out of life simply by renaming it? We could, if we gave science fiction names to all the things I listed above. But really, it is an exercise for the author to decide what terms his universe will employ.

I propose that the cost of magic could be sufficiently advanced technology, but that this could still be considered magic. The reason is simple. I believe that magic can exist without mystery surrounding how it actually occurs. Many people do not, and I accept that, but I think there is a divergence and this is the point it stems from.

So, I'm curious....does anyone else believe that magic can exist without a mystery enshrouding it?
 

quote:

---

I'd like to discuss ways in which a writer can actually allow characters to refer to an advanced (or not-understood) technology as magic without violating Survivor's completely valid point.

---

If you follow instructions given on an ancient artifact and create a certain pattern of silicon, add energy to it, try to communicate through it, and a humanoid from another dimension appears in it, you've created a dimensional portal. That's advanced technology.

If you follow instructions given on an ancient artifact and create a pentagram out of sacred sand, set it on fire, and recite certain phrases in Latin, and a humanoid from another dimension appears in it, you've summoned a demon. That's magic.

 

I do think there is an important element here - the most technologically advanced society would be at a loss to understand how things happened through a blink or nose wiggle that did not actually trigger hidden mechanical devices that caused the events or items to happen/appear.

I think of my printer as technology. Sure, to a caveman it might appear magical, but he could be shown how it works, and more importantly, that he has the power to stop it by breaking it, or removing the ink, or unplugging it. It might not be magic if HE has power over it. If my printer breaks, I might be able to fix it, or might need someone else to fix it. Now, if I could wave my hand and all of a sudden it started working again, then what I did is magic. Magic may be unexplainable - you can teach someone how to do it (whether they have the access to power or talent would judge if they could do it), but you can't really explain it. Technology can be explained - the caveman might not understand, but he could see there is a reason and a method.

Sure, Snapes can teach how to make a potion that will make you look like someone else, and why you use this material and not that, but can he really explain how magic works?

And don't tell me it's because Harry has lots of midiclorians (sp?) and turn the force into a simple accident of biology.

[This message has been edited by punahougirl84 (edited February 15, 2004).]
 

quote:

---

So, I'm curious....does anyone else believe that magic can exist without a mystery enshrouding it?

---

I've been in a universe where some people have a natural ability to cast spells, which can hurt an enemy or heal a friend. It is well known to most people in that universe that spellcasters have a certain amount of mana (magical power) which is drained by casting a spell, and which regenerates slowly. The parameters of what magic can and cann't do are very well defined (although new spells are discovered from time to time.)

There is no mystery about how magic works -- it is well-known that the universe was designed with magic in mind.

That universe is a (very addictive) online game called EverQuest. (I used to spend about as much time in EQ each week as at my full-time job.)

If the way the universe works allows certain people to use mental application of power drawn from the universe in order to manipulate reality, I see no reason not to call it magic.
 

I am a firm believer in the phrase: "where much is given, much is required."

An example of technological "magic" is in J. Gregory Keyes, AGE OF UNREASON. Sir Isaac Newton and Ben Franklin come up with "magic" that is based in Science. This may be a good example of technology and magic merging to form a higher plane of both.

Terry Brooks showed us a good example of magic and tecnology existing at the same time in the JERLE SHANNARA series. The fight between Antrax and Walker shows us that Magic and Technology can both be thought of as magic. It just depends on your point of view.

I think it is very Plausible to have magic and technology emerging simultaneously in a world.

I might think of it in this manner:
Magic is the Norm, and things are created and controlled by it. Someone gets tired of always expending effort to do a task with magic, so he invents a machine to do it for him. Now he has used technology to make his life easier.

With his machine, now he doesn't have to stand there and recite a magic spell or use components, like bat dung, which smells, or concentrate on a spell to continue his work, he can turn on his machine and let it go.
This allows him some time to relax and enjoy a book, or study up on the chain lightning spell he has been wanting to learn. And, most importantly it doesn't make him age prematurely, lose his hair, grow boils etc... to get the job done, if indeed magic evokes a cost from you.
And after all of this his friends mught be thinking that his technological machine is magic, because magic wouldn't be called magic, just a trait or "KNACK" to coin a phrase.

I hope that made sense.

[This message has been edited by TruHero (edited February 15, 2004).]
 

Magic is the norm, but there are people born without it. They are banished or killed. The ones who are banished form a society apart from the magic users called Technologists. It has been a long time since I read that one but it did show magic as an everyday occurance, and technology as evil.
 

First of all, when Harry and his classmates do various magical spells and things, and when they learn them, while they understand these things as being 'magic', they specify individual spells as belonging to subdivided classes. While these classes are still named using archaic terminology, the terminology is still basically descriptive. And it is in those areas where their understanding of magic is most tenuous that they refer to things simply as magic.

But think about it for a moment, you who've read the books, how many new (or quite old) terms have been introduced and defined in the course of your reading?

Complex vocabulary is one of the hallmarks of a technology. The difference is that once you ask certain questions that would seem to be quite important, such as whether or not magic is genetic (from what I know of the series, it seems that magical abilities--and possibly also vulnerability to magic--are a recessive trait, or perhaps a series of recessives), the magic users themselves don't know...and simply call it inborn magicalness or whatever. So while the performance and effective control of magic requires technology (knowledge and technique), the origin of magical power is...magical, because none of the characters really knows whence it comes.

Well, enough about Harry Potter. I might read the books if Rowlings tells the true history of the Black Plague...and how the muggles very nearly obliterated the wizards over that affair. Till then, I will suffer my own ignorance of affairs at Hogwarts.

I think that a lot of this confusion we suffer is because we mistake the meaning of the word "technology", which simply means a systematic knowledge of methods. Insofar as you learn magical techniques, it is technology. Insofar as you cannot learn the origin or sources of magic, there is no technology.

Because of this, I base all my 'magic' use on people figuring out limited uses of artifacts which are beyond their comprehension. Whether the artifact in question is singular (like a ubiquitous psionic energy field that responds to individuals with a certain mental/genetic/linguistic pattern) or multiple (as various advanced implements for healing, killing, communications, etc.), this makes it easy for me to figure out what the limits and costs of magic will be.

I think that the most interesting question, though, isn't what magic costs but what magic causes.

For instance, the idea that sacrificing things that were very valuable to you would cause people to gain magical power. Obviously, the more willing you were to make the sacrifice without extreme duress...the less magical power the sacrifice would bring. But the more duress applied....

Think of the implication for a conquering army. If they threaten distruction or loss that anyone in the besieged nation found unbearable...then that person would instead make that sacrifice serve their own desire for vengeace. It changes the dynamic of warfare considerably, if those who will lose the most have the opportunity to gain great power as a result. And when you change the fundamental nature of war, you change everything. What are the new methods of enforcing law, forming alliances, selecting the nobility? What are the new conceptions of honor, fidelity, integrity? In a world where the greatest power accrues to those that have lost all personal honor, destroyed those they swore to love faithfully, and sold their own hearts for power...do such words still have meaning?

Then show me...OSC did a good job of this in Hart's Hope, not just with Queen Beauty, who was all powerful because she was utterly evil. He also showed us this in the hero, who sacrifices everything to kill the woman he loves...and suffers then total betrayal...and in the end must die by his father's hand.

For Palicroval is King.
 

Any sufficiently understood magic is indistinguishable from technology.
 

quote:

---

In Harry Potter, there are limits or rules that you must follow, which are the price paid to do magic - many are more from the view of kids than adults, though. It is backwards from the "do magic, pay a price" idea.

---

The thing that bothered me when reading the book was that, as a reader, I could not feel oriented in what the rules that govern the world are.

Let me explain:

Initially I was under the impression that magic was relatively simple, a replacement of common technology today, but nothing especially supernormal, however, as the adventure continues the level of "powerful magic," increases significantly.

This is not unusual, especially since the story is told from the points of view of children whose skills increase, interestingly enough, though, the world seems to increase in skill as well.

All right that's excusable, but still while reading something subconsciously nagged me and it took me a long to realize what it was.

The most blatent example of what I am referring to is the sloppy use of time travel, an element I wish did not even exist in the book. I have read and can fathom excellent time-travel thrillers that do not contradict themselves and such is the focusing element of the entire story, it would seem, however, that time travel magic is more of a handicap for the author.

The author has the unfortunate habit of inventing a new "magic," to deal with a situation or problem. Something the redears have not been introduced to before and are never effect by again. This is a poor "plot-device," in that the author does little else but "explain," their way out, I believe.

Example: The main conflict of the book is the battle between good and evil magic, the predictably evil but daunting villain, fititngly stereotypical, and the ever conscious but unskilled good hero who leads the opposing side. Rather basic but still enjoyable plotline, however the entire substance would be eliminated by having the mileau maintain consistant rules, which any good mileau does.

My example is this: After Voldemort kills people time travel could prevent it, eliminate him, and the conflict is dismissed before the story begins.

The author's defense mechanism for this is to say, "They respect natural events and consider such an abuse of time-travel," of course for the sake of saving lives I doubt such sentiments would prevent the ue of the time travel, and so the reason is weak at best. More to the point any society so rigid in that pattern of thinking would enevr trust a school-girl with such an item, regardless of how responsible she may appear.

So you see my problem is not the unbelievably paradoxic applications of time-travel, I can dismiss such in that the story is juvenile fantasy, but the way the author administrates the rules is bothersome.

And that is why I tend to refer to the Harry Potter series as a poor example of using magic, fun, and certainly economically successful, but bare-boned the story has little real substance to offer because of such abuses.

I will now step down from my soap-box, but I'd like to hear your opinions on the subject as well. Perhaps there was something I missed.

First, I agree that Harry Potter is one of the poorest examples of using magic that I have ever read. I only excuse it because it is fun, escapist, and juvenille in intent and audience.

But I never had a problem with time travel. Actually, she never adequately explains her rules for time travel at all! She says you can go back in time and kill your past or future self, which is one of the weirdest ideas I've ever heard when it comes to time travel. Usually this either causes a paradox that destroys the universe, gets you stuck in an infinite time loop, or at the very least causes an alternate reality. The point is, though, that she could slip in a rule that would be consistent with what she said before but also shows us exactly why we could not simply go back in time and save someone from dying.

And that brings me to the biggest problem with the series...I don't honestly believe that J.K. Rowling has completely thought out her millieu. She's writing her sixth book (I hope) and I don't think she's done anything as simple as to write out a class schedule for her characters! I notice this because it amazes me that when Harry Potter is not in a teacher's class, that teacher has that time block free. Don't they teach other classes? I've tried to map it out and I get confused, it doesn't actually add up.

But the biggest abuse of magic that I found in the series is one that does not just occur in juvenille fiction...it occurs in adult fantasy literature ALL THE TIME! I excuse it in this book because it is juvenille and because for a lot of reasons, I still love the books. But warning...don't do this:

In the fourth book we are introduced to the concept of a port key. As you say, Alias, she introduces it when it becomes relevant to the plot, although since the kids are learning bit by bit, year by year, I don't have such a problem with that. What I do have a problem with is that anything can be a port key...an old boot, a tire, a trophy, perhaps a book or quill? So why did Harry have to go through this elaborate scheme to get to a port key when the bad guy could have handed him a pencil and sent him to Lord Valdemort about a thousand times?

Biggest abuse of magic I ever see....failing to maximize the magic based on the rules you did set forth. This is why magic has to be limited by something, because when all you limit it by is the stupidity or ignorance of the characters then you have a bomb. If I had a magical power I garuntee I would know it inside and out, an d would have thought of a hundred creative ways to employ it. So should your characters.
 

I agree with everything you said above, except the time-issue, again. Though I would first point out how well you explained something I found annoying in the series and even more annoying when trying to convert my annoyance to words, thanks for doing that for me.

Now back to the time issue:
You said,

quote:

---

The point is, though, that she could slip in a rule that would be consistent with what she said...

---

quote:

---

what she said before but also shows us exactly why we could not simply go back in time and save someone from dying.

---

If the reason is that going back in time could do more harm than good, I could buy that. But to really stand by that reason she could only apply magic in either the use of an antagonist, or the protagonists must have a damn good reason for taking a risk that effects everybody.

If that was the reason, Hermione wouldn't have the luxury of traveling back in time on a daily basis.

Also the over-friendly environment, similar to what you said, makes characters superficial enough to deny themselves opportunities to get ahead. Call me a cynic but I would expect the Ministry to not let Hermione use that powerful of magic, because it could potentially jeopardize their motives.

The entire introduction of time-travel seems to me to be a convenient way to explain away the pickle she, the author, created for herself.

I see her, in the third book, creating a lot of interest from the reader by having peculiar events like:
-Hermione being in more places than one
-How they save the Hippogriff who is dead
-how....etc, the list goes on,

So she capitalizes on the interest in the reader who expects something good and is handed a dividend of poorly applied magic as the excuse for how it all "worked out,"

This was my impression. But perhaps I am a picky reader...

quote:

---

The type of design problem under consideration here is particularly intractable because there exists a series of approximate conceptual models of increasing fidelity and complexity. Faced with situations like these many systems designers will claim to be applying Occam's razor when they opt to base their solution on the simplest conceptual model. But, a solution based on an approximation is only as good as the approximation. The only way to improve such a solution, if it is insufficient, is to replace the low fidelity conceptual model with one of higher fidelity. The worst type of problem is one that has many plausible conceptual models each of slightly higher fidelity and complexity than the last. The slavish misapplication of the principle of parsimony will condemn our systems designer to step through each successively higher complexity model until they finally reach one with the required fidelity.

Occams Razor - When faced with several explanations of a phenomenon One should always choose the simplest, the one that requires the fewest leaps of logic
This leads to a tentative conclusion: Occam's Razor is no good for selecting between alternative models if the alternatives are approximations with differing fidelity. A simple low fidelity model cannot be compared with a complex high fidelity one.

An old joke comes to mind. An engineer, a physicist, a mathematician and a biologist were asked to define Pi: The engineer said About 3, the physicist said 3.14159 +- 0.00001, the mathematician said The circumference of a circle divided by its diameter and the biologist said What is Pi. Choosing the least complex, lowest fidelity model is not always the right answer! Too many systems designers think there is virtue in always assuming Pi should be about three.

From Virtual Travelog...because I like quoting stuff

---

I think that writers do this a lot, they pick out a 'simple' plot device to get the dramatic effect desired, then realize that the 'simple' model lacks essential characteristics...like anything to prevent the good/bad guys from using said device to prevent the whole story from happening in the first place!

Of course, John slightly misleads the careless reader when he says, "The only way to improve such a solution, if it is insufficient, is to replace the low fidelity conceptual model with one of higher fidelity." This is true, but it requires a corollary. Any solution that does not replace a lower fidelity conceptual model with a higher fidelity will not be an improvement!

Fidelity is an interesting term to use when we are talking about a magical system, which has no analog in the real world, right? Well...wrong!

Our concept of magic grew out of the experience of primitive peoples being introduced to technologies they didn't understand. Historically, this is the only source for the idea that magic exists. Which means, in the end, that a 'high fidelity model' of a magical system must always be based on this real world model of magic.

In the real world, "Magic" is always the perception of a technology that the audience doesn't fully understand. In any convincing fictional world, the same must hold true.
 

So if I get your meaning, a fireball spell is technology?
Or is it technology because I somehow understand it. But before I understood it, it was magic?
I think it is either one way or the other, it can't be both things. And this isn't even adding in the idea of wild or chaos magic.

I think in a fantasy setting, magic (in that writers world) is determined by that writer. Rules governing magic will be set up and the players in book will play by those rules. If the writer deviates from those rules it is a mistake. This is why D&D was so successful, rules were set and the many worlds grew up around those rules.

Magic is not governed by science. Maybe it is so in our world, but not so much in a Fantasy world. I think this is where the Sci-Fi world and the Fantasy world collide. Science fiction always has a basis in science fact. Fantasy doesn't care about facts, magic isn't based in fact, that is why it is called Fantasy.
 

I can agree that magic could be percieved as a strange form of science, but to me magic is a power manipulated by someone or something. Technology is commonly grouped with things, be they a car, or a space ship, or laser weapon, they all have something in common...the item. Magic on the other hand can be used without a created item. Yes, you could make a magic system that required items, and it has been done, but I will refer back to my original point; accepted magic is based on a person or creature.

As for the price, that depends on the magic system created. I think one of the points OSC was making is that a magic system with no price would give everyone with magic ability superiority over anyone who does not. In most role playing games the magic systems are designed to balance out the power of magic by imposing limitation on how much it can be used. DnD required a mage to learn the spells over and over, forgetting the spell the moment it was cast. The mage also could only remember a certain number based on their level, or ability. Other systems have used magic points to give it more flexibility while still keeping the mage from being a killing machine without limits.

Overall I think a world were magic is common and lacking any serious limitations for normal use is fine. The trick is to not let the story be drowned in too much magic. It is hard to have conflict and a sense of danger if you have people all around that can cure you with magic.

The Darksword series did a good job of making the magic a problem from the viewpoint of the main character. Since the main character was lacking magic he had no familiarity with it, it also formed a source of motivation for him.

LDS
 

quote:

---

In the real world, "Magic" is always the perception of a technology that the audience doesn't fully understand. In any convincing fictional world, the same must hold true.

---

There's really no such thing as centrifugal force; the scientific explanation for what appears to be a force exerting pressure away from the axis of rotation is that it is actually the object's inertia, and that force is actually being applied toward the axis in order to keep the object from continuing in a straight line.

I've been aware of this fact for decades. Yet I still use the phrase "centrifugal force" to describe the phenomenon.

If you came up with a plausible scientific theory that explained why when certain people wave a piece of wood in a certain way and recite a pseudo-Latin phrase, force is applied to the object from beneath causing it to rise, people would still call it "magic," because casting spells with a wand is so associated with the word "magic" that trying to replace it with something else would be futile.
 

Look, when I wave a wand and make somebody levitate, I tell the audience it's magic. But really, if I want to be able to actually pull this off, I have to know how it's really done, and what technique I use to accomplish it.

So, for the audience it's magic, but I have to learn the technology by which the thing is actually accomplished (unless we're going to do that stage thing where I'm volunteer #1 and I'm waving a wand to levitate volunteer #2--and the actual magician is pretending to ignore us or telling jokes or something).

That is the essence of magic, the man behind the curtain, the one to whom none of it is "magic" at all. Yes, magical in that it's a lot of fun, and isn't it interesting that people can be fooled into thinking they've seen something they know very well to be impossible and all that, but if I want to do magic, I don't rely on some kind of mystic energy I don't understand, which is called 'magic' power.

And lest you all jump in and claim that this has nothing to do with writing fantasy...think for a moment about what separates all the magicians, shamen, wizards and witches (Wicca, which by the way is simply old English for Illuminati--think on that a moment) and all such from modern stage magicians. I assure you it has very little to do with technique.

When we lift the curtain and show others how the trick is performed, we're revealing a technology. When we hide our methods and rely on the audience being amazed by a trick they don't know how to replicate, that's called magic.

Actually, my dear Eric, you've been misled as to the meaning of "centrifugal force" if you think that there is no actual force causing things to move away from the center of a spinning object. But the confusion is understandable. We say that there is "really" no such thing as centrifugal force when we know quite well that it is simply too complicated to explain easily. Let me try (and no doubt illustrate the point). Let us assume that I'm going to begin spinning an array of beads...which are not attached to each other in any way, they are all free-floating (I'm in space). Before I begin applying a centripetal force, I have to apply a force that is at a right angle to the shortest line from the axis of motion to each individual bead. For the sake of simplicity, I will apply this as an impulse rather than a force, then begin applying the correct centripetal force immediatly. Each bead moves in a circle around the axis, and I am only applying centripetal force, see? But what happened to get the beads moving?

Ah, that initial impulse at the tangent of each bead's motion...it had a force component, and a time component. At first I was pushing those beads at the tangent to their intended orbit...but the instant passed when they actually started moving along that line...and they were then all being pushed by a force which consisted of a large component in the direction of the intended path of motion and a component that was pushing them directly outward, away from the axis.

So we see that the initial push to get our system moving did involve a centrifugal force after all...one that we can't really eliminate if we want to get something spinning. Think about test tubes in a centrifuge (a better example because you have a longer acceleration). It is not just a figure of speech that we are exerting a force that powerfully accelerates the material in the test tubes away from the central axis of the centrifuge. Or consider a washing machine in the spin cycle...it is actually flinging water (which was resting quite contentedly in your clothes) outwards against the outer tub. There is a force being applied....

However, once we stop accelerating the spinning motion...we are no longer applying a centrifugal force. At that point, we are only applying the centripetal force needed to hold the centrifugal energy which we have already and necessarily put into the system in check. So when we look at a system that is already spinning, we say, 'there is no centrifugal force here, the actual force is centripetal'.

Sadly, I have no idea how this relates to a discussion of magic....
 

Survivor, I believe that your entire argument is based on a certain definition of terms that you hold true. To you technology = something you understand and magic = something you do not understand. They are therefore polar opposites and can exist together only in that they are defined from a certain person's point of view. So that from one person's point of view something can be "magic" and from another the same thing can be "technology".

This is where my disagreement lies. I do not believe in your definitions of these concepts. I've looked up the terms in the dictionary to try to find some measured way of approaching it, but to be honest, it was useless in this case. The fact is that even the definitions of the words will be based on culture and perception.

To me, magic is mind over matter. Anytime a sentient being uses force of will to cause something to happen, this is magic. It doesn't mattter if you tell me they have some genetic ability to do this, it doesn't matter if you tell me there are microscopic organisms called miticlorions (sp?) that are actually the force behind the power. The thing that distinguishes real magic from what a state magician does it trickery and slight of hand...a stage magician does not actually use mind over matter.

So you see, to me magic is magic. A rose by any other name would still smell as sweet, yes?

Finally, yes, sufficiently advanced technology will certainly be confused with magic by those that do not understand. But it is not magic, it is simply *confused* with magic.

So there we have it, a war over word definitions.
 

As for whether one person's magic is just another's misunderstood technology, it again depends upon the story. I've read tales in which magic was a raw element that certain people were simply able to tap into and use. There were no techniques involves, no proper arrangement of motions or language required, just an innate ability to channel power. Blanket statements (as usual) don't work when talking about fantasy...authors come up with their own definitions and internal logic when it comes to magical elements. As a reader, all I ask for is consistency within the story; set up your rules and then stick to them, and I'll go along for the ride.

[This message has been edited by Hildy9595 (edited February 18, 2004).]
 

If someone is actually casting a spell that causes something to levitate, that's real magic. Even if he knows the scientific reason why casting a spell works, it's still magic.

I thought my point about centrifugal force was very clear: we still use the term to describe a phenomenon that is clearly understood under the laws of physics to be something different. (I'm talking here about the continuous apparent force, not the initial impulse.) If someone cam e up with a scientific explanation for what people currently would consider real (as opposed to stage) magic, we would still call it magic.
 

When you're going to say "magic means mind over matter", then be aware that we all constantly use our minds to make matter do stuff, by a mechanism that is poorly understood at best. Most materialists simply write off the question and say that there is no such thing as 'mind' at all, it is all simply the matter doing stuff. I frankly find this unintelligible...it makes a hell of a lot more sense to say that there is no such thing as matter, only illusions of such within the mind.

Eric, I believe I made my point clearer than your response would indicate...modern stage magicians are doing basically the same thing that all 'magic' users in our history have done...that is, they impress people using technology that the audiance doesn't fully understand.

This is the thing we have always called by the name 'magic', a person hiding the technique for doing something behind a curtain. Yes, in the imaginations of the dupe, it may so be that they believed this 'magic' was some kind of telekinetic or psionic energy, but it never was.

And when we look at what is necessary for magic to remain magic, it depends absolutely on the audience not knowing how it is done. But the magician has to know! If there does not exist an actual technique that accomplishes the trick, then the trick is not accomplished and there is no magic.

I will say that this is one thing that Jordan gets right (we probably spend too much time bashing the guy), only the most ignorant people in his milieu really think that 'The Power' is magic.

Good...no, wait, I have a good new expression...Holy Shat!, I've gotten pulled into a quibble over the definition of words, when anyone could just whip out a dictionary (as Christine was about to do before she realized that by the dictionary, I'm right), and settle the meaning of the words.

That isn't the point. The point is that for the actual, skilled user of 'magic', the use of magic follows the rules of behaving like the use of an advanced technology. The conscious magic user has to learn techniques and terminology (well, maybe you don't need a specific terminology, you only need terminology to communicate with others). It is really no different from how we all learn to drive a car or use a computer...just imagine for a moment that you tried to teach someone to drive using only the word 'car' for every part of the car.

Okay, first you need to turn the car...that starts the car, no, that...you turn the car to control the car, to start the car you turn the car...here, let me do it.

Or a computer.

Okay, to computer the computer push the computer...no, no, (*&^!, you're computering my computer, get away from there!

I still have no idea what centrifugal force has to do with this argument...the only time I've heard centifugal force used by people who really understand it is to refer to the actual centrifugal force, not the 'apparent' centrifugal force. For instance, the simple reaction force an object exerts against a centripetal force will always be centifugal (in our world's geometry, in any case). Just like a table exerts an upwards force on a book sitting on top of the table.

So far as I know, the only common and incorrect application of the term is when we state that some force is pushing the...okay, let me start all over.

When you have a load being accelerated centripetally while traveling in a circle, the force on the load must be centripetal...dang it, that's a tautalogy.

Look, when you have an object with mass moving in a circle at a constant speed even though the velocity is changing at a constant rate, there must be a centripetal force acting on that object. In this case, laymen often state that there is centrifugal force on the object, when in fact there is not centrifugal force currently acting on the object (though of course a centrifugal force was required to get the object moving). However, any object with mass will exert a centrifugal force against whatever centripetal force is keeping it moving in a circle. For example, if I have a ball on a string, and I swing it around my head, the string exerts a centripetal force on the ball, while the ball exerts a centrifugal force on the string. This is why I can't swing a heavy ball with a weak string (okay, there are other reasons, but this is on of them).

Experienced engineers (that I know) never confuse the force the ball exerts on the string with the force the string exerts on the ball, even though they are necessarily equal...they are also necessarily opposite. To an engineer, it is about as sensible as confusing black with white (artists are allowed to do this...engineers are not).

It is not that there is no centrifugal force, it is that centrifugal forces are only acting on the load mass when the system is being accelerated initially. After that, the centrifugal force is exerted by the load mass against the centipetal force. If you are on a certain class of carnival ride, you experience centripetal, not centrifugal, force (unless it is designed so that another passenger is squishing you...I've been on a couple of rides like that). But the ride is affected by a centrifugal force exerted by your body, see?

You feel the centripetal, force, not the centrifugal force...but both exist. When an engineer speaks of the centrifugal forces acting on the load, this can only mean the forces applied to get it in motion. But when he speaks of the centrifugal force exerted by the load on the system, he isn't talking about something that doesn't exist.

This is one of those educational over-corrections that is so common as a great source of error. We pound people so hard with the idea that centrifugal force doesn't act on the load, and then everyone think it doesn't exist. Well I, for one, say, "Enough with the pounding!"

I'm not opposed to using the word "magic". I'm just opposed to using it to describe everything to do with your magical system...see my comment about teaching someone to drive a car or use a computer using nothing but the word "car" or "computer". In just the same way, it wouldn't work for learning magic...because when you learn something, you must treat it as a 'technology', that is, a group of methods and techniques.

Please, tell me that even if you don't agree, you understand what I just said. I don't even really care if you're lying. Just say, "Ahhaa!"
 

I just think you are disecting this subject WAAAAY too much.

Are you an engineer of some sort?

There are too many facets of magic to just categorize it as one thing. Too many angles to play it from to label it in technological terms. Is it a genetic ability or talent? Is it an object or combination of elements? Is it ordained by a higher power? Is it the spoken word or symbols? I have read books that use all of these examples of magic.

A few of these could fit into your category "A GROUP OF METHODS AND TECHNIQUES" but your definition doesn't cover all of these.

I can't think of anything I would want to read that had magic described the way you have. You just made it sterile, clinical... boring. Fantasy has to have mystery in order for it to work well and be interesting.
MAGIC = MYSTERY if you remove mystery from the equation it no longer works. If it is a technology, that means that anybody could learn to do it. That wouldn't be any fun... for anybody. Magic needs some mystery to make it what it is. It needs no other definition, it is what it is, MAGIC.

 

quote:

---

Eric, I believe I made my point clearer than your response would indicate...modern stage magicians are doing basically the same thing that all 'magic' users in our history have done...that is, they impress people using technology that the audiance doesn't fully understand.

---

Modern stage magicians depend on tricking the audience. Someone who could do the things stage magicians pretend to do would not have to trick the audience.

If you cannot understand the difference between a magician who uses mirrors and misdirection to make it appear a wooden staff has turned into a live snake, and a magician who actually transforms a wooden staff into a live snake, then there's no point in discussing this subject with you.

quote:

---

I'm not opposed to using the word "magic". I'm just opposed to using it to describe everything to do with your magical system...see my comment about teaching someone to drive a car or use a computer using nothing but the word "car" or "computer". In just the same way, it wouldn't work for learning magic...because when you learn something, you must treat it as a 'technology', that is, a group of methods and techniques.

---

quote:

---

In the real world, "Magic" is always the perception of a technology that the audience doesn't fully understand.

---

My position is that, if a woman in Salem, Massachusetts in 1692 discovered that she could make a neighbor's cow get sick and die by wiggling her fingers at it, she would call her power "witchcraft." (Not out loud, obviously.)

Obviously, people who are studying magic will use specialized terms for different aspects of the "technology" of magic. But they would still consider the field as a whole to be "magic." (Or witchcraft, sorcery, etc.)

[This message has been edited by EricJamesStone (edited February 19, 2004).]
 

quote:

---

Alias, maybe you should give the third book another look. If I'm understanding you correctly, you believe that she wrote herself into a corner and used time travel to work her way out? No, she had the time travel thing planned throughout the book.

---

All right, in retrospect I can agree with this. She clearly intended to use the device and planned for it throughout the book. However, I am still under the belief that she had resorted to it, though in earlier stages than I had previously thought, as a method of forcing the plot to a certain design.

There were things she wanted to happen in the story that she couldn't have happen in her already present mileau, to which she modified the world by introducing this new element, time travel. I still consider this sloppy, to brute-force the world setup off its natural course to force-fit something else. I think an author should hold true to the world he/she created in the first book instead of introducing overhwelming changes in the reader's perspective of the world later on.

Especially when this "new," element could have been so key and critical to the events that the plot is basing its foundation.

ie: Harry's parents' deaths, reign of terror of Voldemort, etc. Time-travel magic could have easily prevented this. The counter argument, that I am seeing, is that time travel is so dangerous and risky that they had "legislated," not to "abuse" the magic for such things. All right I can buy that, except it introduces a catch 22:

If magical time-travel is so dangerous and so protected, naturally it would have to be protected incredibly, and the ministry could recognize this, they would also be intelligent enough not to give the power to a teenage girl, or anyone for that matter.

You see, even if she was somehow trustworthy, forced to use the magic for "X" purpose only by magic, or some such nonesense explanation, the item could easily be stolen from her and abused by someone else, criminial or otherwise.
Simply implausible.

quote:

---

She just didn't have a really good time travel setup in my opinion. For that matter, time travel is almost never done well in scifi or fantasy so really, didn't care that much.

---

quote:

---

In the real world, "Magic" is always the perception of a technology that the audience doesn't fully understand. In any convincing fictional world, the same must hold true.

---

quote:

---

Huh. And here I always thought of magic as just... well.. Magic. Thanks for ruining it for me. So if I get your meaning, a fireball spell is technology?

---

quote:

---

Overall I think a world were magic is common and lacking any serious limitations for normal use is fine. The trick is to not let the story be drowned in too much magic. It is hard to have conflict and a sense of danger if you have people all around that can cure you with magic.

---

quote:

---

Survivor, I believe that your entire argument is based on a certain definition of terms that you hold true. To you technology = something you understand and magic = something you do not understand.

---

quote:

---

To me, magic is mind over matter. Anytime a sentient being uses force of will to cause something to happen, this is magic.

---

[This message has been edited by Alias (edited February 19, 2004).]
 

Magic is something that defies the natural laws of the universe.

For instance, take Newton's Second Law of Motion. Force = Mass X Acceleration

If you can accelerate an object (Flying carpet, broomstick) without appling a force, it's magic.

If you can hit something with a force that has no mass(telekinetic blast), it's magic.

By the same token, humans can't usually breathe sea water or float on a breeze, because these actions defy several natural laws. If you can do these things by waving a stick or by sheer will, that's magic.

If you perform an action that has a consistent, but unrelated reaction, that could also be magic.

Example: I shake some chicken bones and a drop of my blood in a shoe box. This causes all the glass withing six yards to shatter explosively.

Some laws may govern these action/reaction relationships, but they are outside of the natural laws of the universe.

"Supernatural" could be defined as something that shouldn't happen, but does happen.
 

quote:

---

Magic is something that defies the natural laws of the universe.

---

Well, the reason why I would never come up with anything close to that definition of magic is that I believe the following to be true:

If the natural laws of the universe do not permit something to happen, it cannot happen.

If something does happen, then the natural laws of the universe permit it.

Therefore, any story in which the characters use magic must take place in a universe with natural laws that allow magic.

Of course, if you add the qualify natural laws by adding "as we understand them," then your definition of magic fit pretty squarely into what we've been discussing.
 

For instance, if someone tricks me into thinking that a staff turned into a snake, that's magic, if the staff actually turns into a snake, that's a miracle.

We really could save a lot of discussion if people would just look some of these terms up in a good dictionary...
 

- An event that appears inexplicable by the laws of nature and so is held to be supernatural in origin or an act of God

Magic:

- The art that purports to control or forecast natural events, effects, or forces by invoking the supernatural.

Miracles are generally associated with religion and god. Magic is not. If I turn your staff into a snake, you will only perceive it as an act of god (a miracle) if you are part of a society that credits acts like those to a god. If you've learned instead that wizards do those things, and the act of doing it is called magic, then you will see it as magic.

I agree with Christine. "Real" magic is some sort of power that is used by the mind to control matter/nature. This is not the same as a lesser developed society perceiving advanced technology as magic. They are two completely different things.

[This message has been edited by marius (edited February 19, 2004).]
 

Have to admit, I don't worry too much as long as an author's system doesn't slap me with mistakes or contradictions. Many books that use magic are not ABOUT the magic anyway - Harry's books are about Harry, who just happens to be able to do magic and isn't that cool... I'm not worried about him being able to do whatever with a port key - I'm worried about him creating a better life for himself in spite of the odds. I'd love for him to get his parents back, but I would have trouble believing that will happen. I don't think the author is thinking Harry has to pay a price to do magic - Harry has to grow up, control his own life, build self-esteem, vanquish the foe...

In fact, what bothered me most in the 5th book was the cutting (won't do details so won't spoil things). As a teacher of young adolescents, I've seen it, and however it happens, someone reports it. I don't care what reasons were given, I had issues with that. And I don't think it was a price for doing magic. I also don't like how he becomes whiney... my least favorite book so far.

But I guess I still read for fun, and haven't been writing long enough yet to tear books apart as I read them, analyzing every little thing until I can't just enjoy a good story - but now I'm going to have to go back and reread about the time travel thing and the port keys - guess I was reading wrong not to notice something wrong.

Quantum Leap was so wrong (yes, time travel thread, but oh well), but I still enjoyed the show - I think it was about making things better, and not about time travel. Bad device and premise? Yeah, but I still liked the stories. And I hate that the mc never got to go home. Guess he paid a price too.

[This message has been edited by punahougirl84 (edited February 19, 2004).]
 

The use of technology requires that an action is performed through some kind of artifact.

For instance, if I reach out and push something and it moves, you wouldn't say that any form of technology has been used. I just pushed it.

If I switch on a motor and it moves, then technology has been used. The difference is that the motor has been built with the purpose of making things move.

The same distinction can be applied to magic. Most fantasy stories, therefore, use magic that is inherently non-technological, because the power to perform it comes entirely from within the person who is performing it (same as pushing an object to move it).

Sometimes an artifact of some kind is used to perform magic, though. Usually the artifact amplifies a natural ability, although not always (e.g., the ring in The Hobbit / L.O.T.R. makes its wearer invisible whether or not that wearer has any natural magical capability and without any conscious effort on behalf of the wearer). It is hard to state whether this is technology or not, but I feel that it probably _doesn't_ count (at least in most cases), because usually the description of the way such artifacts are made (when any is given) relies on magic of the absolutely non-technological kind to give the artifact its magical properties.

Does that make sense?
 

It isn't that you've all decided on a completely unsupported and novel definition of magic (though there is that).

It's that you desperately want to stay in the audience. You simply don't want to be shown how magic works...because then it wouldn't be magic to you anymore.

Thanks to TruHero for showing me the light. Yes, I live in a world completely devoid of magic. Miracles can be performed by advanced technology, and you can acknowledge this and still experience miracle (which I like better than magic anyway). Magic is always an illusion, dependent on ignorance. Once you truly understand what magic is...it no longer exists for you. And for reasons beyond my imagining, most people would rather remain ignorant exactly because it means they can then live in a magical world.

From your point of view, I've lost some kind of precious thing called "magic"; from my point of view that thing never existed, it is only an illusion.
 

quote:

---

Magic is always an illusion, dependent on ignorance.

---

They might call it sorcery, thaumaturgy, witchcraft, wizardry, charms, spells, voodoo, enchantment, alchemy, black arts, summoning, divination, prophecy, hex, jinx, incantation, runes, conjury, augury, occultism, Saidar/Saidin, The One Power -- even miracle -- but it's magical power, and within the setting of the story, it is a real power. Those who understand how to use magical power do not consider it an illusion.

Your definition of magic applies to the real world we live in, but does not apply to the worlds of fantasy fiction.
 

quote:

---

No, that's the definition of miracle, not magic.
For instance, if someone tricks me into thinking that a staff turned into a snake, that's magic, if the staff actually turns into a snake, that's a miracle.

---

But Kathleen's original post said:

quote:

---

Let's discuss some theories of how magic is used in fantasy stories.

---

Note that we are not discussing how magic works in the "real world."

Survivor's point seems to be that magic does not exist. It's all just technological tricks to fool the rubes.

For most fantasy worlds, this doesn't hold water. In Harry Potter, Magic is only allowed to those born with the genetic ability and is accomplished by saying a few latinesqe words and wiggling a wand.

If Potter's magic was all a tech trick, a muggle could be taught to use it. Rowling doesn't allow this in her universe.

I suppose you could postulate that there is some relation between a recessive human gene, latinesque words, and sticks embedded with animal parts, that is tecnological in nature, but you're getting into the realm of baloneyium.

I offer the concept that method does not make technology. Technology is something that takes advantage of and stays within the realms of science (known and unknown.) Magic is something that bends or ignores the laws of science (known or unknown.)

A caveman might believe that a microwave oven is magic, but he can be taught to operate it. But the inventor of the microwave oven knows why it works.

Harry Potter knows HOW to create light from his wand, but he doesn't understand WHY it works. Maybe no one does. Maybe the method was passed down from a god. Maybe an ancient wizard stumbled upon the process.

Going back to Clarke's Law:

quote:

---

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

---

This doesn't say "all magic is technology." It says "to an observer there is no difference between magic and advanced tech."

So, let's assume Survivor and Robin Hood were observing the microwave wielding caveman and wand waving Harry Potter.

Survivor is going to think, "Big Deal! The caveman's nuking an egg. I use that at home. But, I don't know how that Potter kid is doing that. It must be a trick. Let me see that wand. Hmmm. No light bulb. No power source. No heat. I don't get it."

Robin Hood is likely to think, "A box that beeps and cooks eggs without fire and a stick that glows like a candle, but gives no heat. What strange magic is this?"

The caveman might think, "Ugh! Magic Box make Og strong. If Og hit boy with Magic Box
and take Magic Stick, he will be stronger."

Harry may be thinking, "I could cook an egg faster with an Ovumus Thermogenicus. Why is Og looking at me that way?"

To sum up my example:
Survivor: Tech and Magic(but, I don't believe it)
Robin Hood: Magic and Magic
Caveman: Magic and Magic
Harry Potter: Tech and Magic(and I know how to do it)
 

I wouldn't have a problem defining magic, as used in fantasy fiction, as the ability to perform miracles at will.
 

quote:

---

Note that we are not discussing how magic works in the "real world."
Survivor's point seems to be that magic does not exist. It's all just technological tricks to fool the rubes.
For most fantasy worlds, this doesn't hold water. In Harry Potter, Magic is only allowed to those born with the genetic ability and is accomplished by saying a few latinesqe words and wiggling a wand.

---

That magic is a talent that coincides with the natural universe but the majority of everyone and everything can't tap into it, use it, etc, but magic still works with physical laws. This is justifiable because "magic's" effects are generally involved around effecting the physical world.

What I mean is,
"Arathoz throws his life energy into the spell and felt the hot fingers of flame jet from his staff, and soar toward his adversary..."

The magic is that he did something any one of us, or any normal person, could not do. But for all we know his art is based on the manipulation of microscopic elements that create a fire, after all, fire can be created in the real physical world.

quote:

---

If Potter's magic was all a tech trick, a muggle could be taught to use it. Rowling doesn't allow this in her universe.

---

quote:

---

A caveman might believe that a microwave oven is magic, but he can be taught to operate it. But the inventor of the microwave oven knows why it works.

Harry Potter knows HOW to create light from his wand, but he doesn't understand WHY it works. Maybe no one does. Maybe the method was passed down from a god. Maybe an ancient wizard stumbled upon the process.

---

You sort of imply that any magical user, were magic any form of technology, would need to invent it in order to ever actually use it. I do not think this is necessary.

I still believe that magic in fiction is composed of one of two categories.

1. total fantasy: flies in the face of reason, it operates by transcending the physical realm and therefore is not bound by any physical principles.

2. science: magic is a science or art that is directly linked to the workings of the physical world but is very hazy and/or difficult to manipulate, or comprehend, but is natural nonetheless.

I believe that writers use both whether or not they realize it. The Star Wars example of magic is much more like the second example but I would argue that Harry Potter magic is much more like the first, as it has no foundation or explanation of any kind.

I think one must appeal to the selected type of the author and respect magic however they have set it up, in order to enjoy the story.

The definition "rivets and steel" doesn't work too well...by that definition, nothing in Star Trek is technology, because...no rivets and no steel. Also, no strong attachment to known science.

I'll go back to what I've said before, and kind of highlight it.

quote:

---

I think that a lot of this confusion we suffer is because we mistake the meaning of the word "technology", which simply means a systematic knowledge of methods. Insofar as you learn magical techniques, it is technology. Insofar as you cannot learn the origin or sources of magic, there is no technology.

---

You might all say, correctly, that we're here quibbling over the meaning of a word. I've noticed that myself. But I'm not the one who started quibbling.

When I said that in a persuasive fantasy world, the magic has to function as technology...I was staying on the subject of how good fantasy uses magic. When everyone jumped on me for destroying the magic...well, somebody was quibbling over a word (and one they didn't bother to look up first).

I was making a point about fantasy writing...namely, the author has to work out how magic actually works in the story, what rules it follows. And convincing characters in a fantasy have to know what is and is not possible...otherwise there can't be any dramatic tension.

My main point was what I consider both interesting and difficult (to and for the writer of fantasy). If the author wants an interesting story, then the magic users must be limited in their abilities. There have to be rules. Otherwise, there can never be any dramatic tension, because any problem can be solved by waving a wand or exerting sheer mental power.

And that means the writer has to treat it as a technology...it can't be mysterious to the writer why magic works...because then it will simply be a Deus Ex device used over and over again...ruining any chance you have of making a good story.

It is true, some people will read just because they like your prose...I could read pages and pages of some people's prose without caring a whit whether they went anywhere with the story...but most readers aren't anything like that.
 

I think what you were referring to earlier was more like this, at least this is the way it was coming across.

PRESTIDIGITATION:
Performance of or skill in performing magic or conjuring tricks with the hands; sleight of hand.
A show of skill or deceitful cleverness.

This has to do with MAGIC, but would be more commonly thought of as stage magic. Which in my opinion, and some of the others that have posted, is different from MAGIC in a fictional Fantasy setting. In the DRAGONLANCE series for instance, Raistlin started out his "career" as a stage magician, doing sleight-of-hand tricks. He later graduated to using actual MAGIC, based on a unique power. In those books there was a definate separation between sleight-of-hand and the use of actual magic.
I'm basing this on some of the things you said in earlier posts:

quote:

---

the man behind the curtain, the one to whom none of it is "magic" at all. Yes, magical in that it's a lot of fun, and isn't it interesting that people can be fooled into thinking they've seen something they know very well to be impossible and all that, but if I want to do magic, I don't rely on some kind of mystic energy I don't understand, which is called 'magic' power.

AND

When we lift the curtain and show others how the trick is performed, we're revealing a technology. When we hide our methods and rely on the audience being amazed by a trick they don't know how to replicate, that's called magic.

AND

modern stage magicians are doing basically the same thing that all 'magic' users in our history have done...that is, they impress people using technology that the audiance doesn't fully understand.

AND

This is the thing we have always called by the name 'magic', a person hiding the technique for doing something behind a curtain. Yes, in the imaginations of the dupe, it may so be that they believed this 'magic' was some kind of telekinetic or psionic energy, but it never was.

---

Those kind of comments were throwing me off earlier.

This quote, I agree with:

quote:

---

My main point was what I consider both interesting and difficult (to and for the writer of fantasy). If the author wants an interesting story, then the magic users must be limited in their abilities. There have to be rules. Otherwise, there can never be any dramatic tension, because any problem can be solved by waving a wand or exerting sheer mental power.

---

Which is very similar to what I said earlier:

quote:

---

I think in a fantasy setting, magic (in that writers world) is determined by that writer. Rules governing magic will be set up and the players in book will play by those rules. If the writer deviates from those rules it is a mistake. This is why D&D was so successful, rules were set and the many worlds grew up around those rules.

---

One problem for me is that I don't see what the fundamental difference is between doing something using an obscure or arcane technology and doing it with some kind of arcane power. A power that comes from superior knowledge of how the universe works, after all, is only different in kind from superior knowledge of how the human mind and eye work...they both have to be real knowledge about real things in order for them to be meaningfully 'superior' enough to allow magic to occur.

Most hand tricks you can see through quickly enough...but the fact of the matter is that it takes a bit extra in the dexterity department to be a master prestidigitator, dexterity that I will never really be able to achieve. Even when I can see through the trick, I can't replicate it. So in a sense, it remains magic in the sense that despite my theoretical knowledge of how the trick is performed, I don't have the practical skill to duplicate it.

Conversely, if my character uses 'real' magic in a fantasy setting, then a good bit of what makes it magic is that most other people don't know how it is done. This could be because my character has a naturally occuring ability (like being extra dexterous or perhaps having a better sense of some kind of 'magic' energy), but it doesn't need to be the case. But there is more to it than that. After all, a good many members of the animal kingdom have abilities that are quite extraordinary--at least by human standards. I lack the natural ability to shoot boiling acid out of my nether regions, or produce light (from the same area), or fly, or outrun a gazelle, or generate electrical shocks (except on accident). Nor could any other human do these things a thousand or even a hundred years ago. But we never thought of the animals that could do these things as being particularly 'magical'...it was simply a fact of nature (granted, where the natural world itself was considered entirely magical, so were these abilities, but in such societies, such things as getting pregnant, or having a menstrual cycle, or being able to spit, were also considered magical). A necessary part of what makes my ability 'magical' (to others) is that I know how to hide the fact that it is a natural ability...or even hide what type of ability I'm actually using.

There is an exception if my character happens to be...an exception That is to say, if my character has a unique ability, then the tendency will be for others to regard it as magical, whether or not my character is deliberately trying to play up the magic angle. It could be a totally natural mutation...think of a character that has a mutated gene so that his sweat smells really bad...to dogs. Dogs can't track him, because trying to follow his scent makes them dizzy, they can't attack him because he smells like the worst thing they've ever encountered, any time he walks up and there's a dog around, that dog acts like it's being tortured until it can get away from him.

But only dogs (and perhaps other carnivores) can smell this. All other humans see is that normally ferocious animals are scared spitless of this guy for no apparent reason. Maybe they know enough about how dogs smell things to realize that he just smells bad to dogs...or maybe they decide he's got some kind of mojo.

Let's extend a parallel to psi energy (presuming such a thing exists, and I think the fact we exists is strong, though not compelling, evidence this is the case). If psi energy exists, then it is almost certainly a 'natural' phenomenon, in that normal humans must have a certain level of psi energy (defined here as the force that allows a mind to affect the material world). If someone learned to use psi energy to affect objects directly without the intermediary process of generating signals in the brain that then are ampliphied and transmitted down...okay, I'll just say without the intermediary of the brain and body, then this would initially seem supernatural to us...until we developed an understanding of the natural principles behind it.

If our psi energy user were a 'witch' (or someone who simply learned to do this) then the technology already exists as a technology...the ability is not 'supernatural' in any sense except in the sense it is beyond the understanding of nature that everyone else possesses. Our witch would be a magician in the same sense as a prestidigitator, though instead of using finger dexterity this magic would use a psi "dexterity".

If the ability were the result of a fluke (rather than training), then the same case would apply as Mr. stealthy stink above. A sufficiently advanced technology (and I don't think ours is up to this particular job, though I could be wrong) could study the phenomenon and learn how it works...just the same way we've uncovered and controlled the previously completely mysterious force that drives lightning. A society insufficiently advanced to be able to study the phenomenon would have to regard it as magic (whatever the poor sod with the psi fluke might think).

In either case, it is the ability of the larger society to understand and control the power manifested that will determine whether it is generally called science or 'magic'. And among practitioners, it is the desire to either keep the technique arcane or disseminate knowledge of it that determines which words they will use. In the case of Hogwarts (or the Isle of Roke, if you prefer something a bit more literary), both factors play a role, and the whole body of knowledge is often (and realistically) referred to as magic, while more specific language is used in instructing initiates in the particular disciplines.

Anyway, I suspect that this has become another post too long for anyone to read in its entirety. Attending a convention for three days when I should have been sleeping has impaired my ability to bring a post to a close in a timely manner, it seems. But I will stop here, at the least.
 

If someone 2000 years ago proved that he could move objects about with just by thinking about them, people would call it magic, and say thay he was using magic power to do it. And if he could teach other people to do it, so that pretty soon it was something nearly everybody could do, then everyone at the time would think it was great that they could do magic and that they had magic power.

The labels that people would use depend on their culture.

In a way, Clarke's Law is wrong. To someone who views the universe from a strictly scientific/technological paradigm, no technology can be so advanced that it is indistinguishable from magic. "That can't be magic, because magic doesn't exist," the person will say. "Therefore it must be highly advanced technology."
 

quote:

---

If psi energy exists, then it is almost certainly a 'natural' phenomenon, in that normal humans must have a certain level of psi energy (defined here as the force that allows a mind to affect the material world).

---

Affect implies that something is impacted on an emotional level.

Effect implies something is impacted by a physical or any other means, over all change

[This message has been edited by Alias (edited February 22, 2004).]
 

quote:

---

The labels that people would use depend on their culture.

---

Thank you Eric, I've been trying to put that into words for some time now. I agree 100%.
 

I didn't mean someone would have to cause the world to come into existence before I believed they had psionic powers.

Affect is here used as a verb, not a noun. Used as a noun, "to cause an affect on the world" your point would be acknowledged. I just happen to find the phrase "to cause an effect on the world" more cumbersome than "to affect the world" (plus, I love using both verb and noun form to confuse you all )

By the way, 2000 years ago, English and the word "magic" as we know it didn't exist. The original Latin word they would probably have used instead would have been nearly identical in meaning to our modern word, technology.

So yes, they would have used a different word because they spoke a different language.

I don't see what that has to do with the case. The word would have meant, "a set of methods and techniques."

And if you don't believe me, look up whence the words for magic, witch, wizard, and so forth actually came.
 

quote:

---

[Middle English wicche, from Old English wicce, witch, and wicca, wizard, sorcerer. See weg- in Indo-European Roots.]

---

quote:

---

[Middle English wisard : wise, wise; see wise1 + -ard, pejorative suff.; see -ard.]

---

Now, here's the really interesting one. As Survivor pointed out, 2000 years ago there was no English. The prevailing culture at the time (at least in Europe) was the Roman Empire, so the word used for the idea of "magic" would probably have been Latin. The etymology of "magic" (emphasis mine)

quote:

---

[Middle English magik, from Old French magique, from Late Latin magica, from Latin magic, from Greek magik, from feminine of magikos, of the Magi, magical, from magos, magician, magus. See magus.]

---

And please, Survivor, don't try to argue that the ancient Romans had no concept of magic; the stories of their gods (borrowed/stolen fromn the Greeks) are filled with magic.

(All word origins found via http://dictionary.com)
 

Survivor's opinion, as I understand it, is that ONE possible price for magic use in a fantasy universe is the demystification of the magic itself. Magic becomes a technology whose mundane secrets are horded by the few in order to take advantage of the many.

Survivor, may we concede your point then move on to other possibilities?
 

First of all, Superman is TOO POWERFUL! He can hear anything. (And conveniently enough this does not pose any interference problems, he can just seem to know what he needs to hear. The origin of his magical abilities is cheesy and the story keeps changing. They added his powers one at a time. He didn't used to be able to fly, for example. And his limitations are almost nonexistant. So he can't see through lead? Oh no! Of course because he believes in "Truth, justice, and the American Way" he tells everyone about his weakness so the bad guy can exploit him. That was his only real limitation. That and Kryptonite, the weakest cop out of a limitation I've ever seen.

BUT...he's the most popular superhero ever. So what does that tell us? I'm not sure, maybe you can figure it out.

Actually, the other problem I had with the movie was the EXTREME black and white nature of the hero and villain, but that's for another thread.
 

However, instead, I went straight to the source, this according to Merriam-Webster:

quote:

---

Main Entry: 1ef·fect Pronunciation: i-'fekt, e-, E-
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle English, from Middle French & Latin; Middle French, from Latin effectus, from efficere to bring about, from ex- + facere to make, do -- more at DO <dictionary?book=Dictionary&va=do>
1 a : PURPORT <dictionary?book=Dictionary&va=purport>, INTENT <dictionary?book=Dictionary&va=intent> b : basic meaning : ESSENCE <dictionary?book=Dictionary&va=essence>
2 : something that inevitably follows an antecedent (as a cause or agent)
3 : an outward sign : APPEARANCE <dictionary?book=Dictionary&va=appearance>
4 : ACCOMPLISHMENT <dictionary?book=Dictionary&va=accomplishment>, FULFILLMENT <dictionary?book=Dictionary&va=fulfillment>
5 : power to bring about a result : INFLUENCE <dictionary?book=Dictionary&va=influence> <the content itself of television ... is therefore less important than its effect -- Current Biography>
6 plural : movable property : GOODS <dictionary?book=Dictionary&va=goods> <personal effects>
7 a : a distinctive impression <the color gives the effect of being warm> b : the creation of a desired impression <her tears were purely for effect> c (1) : something designed to produce a distinctive or desired impression -- usually used in plural (2) plural : SPECIAL EFFECTS <dictionary?book=Dictionary&va=special+effects>
8 : the quality or state of being operative : OPERATION <dictionary?book=Dictionary&va=operation> <the law goes into effect next week>
- in effect : in substance : VIRTUALLY <dictionary?book=Dictionary&va=virtually> <the ... committee agreed to what was in effect a reduction in the hourly wage -- Current Biography>
- to the effect : with the meaning <issued a statement to the effect that he would resign>

---

quote:

---

Main Entry: 1af·fect Pronunciation: 'a-"fekt
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle English, from Latin affectus, from afficere
1 obsolete : FEELING <dictionary?book=Dictionary&va=feeling>, AFFECTION <dictionary?book=Dictionary&va=affection>
2 : the conscious subjective aspect of an emotion considered apart from bodily changes

---

To "affect," the world would be to effect the peoples' opinions and attitudes rather than any physical or metaphysical influence.

But, regardless, say what you'd like. I make more mistakes than you, I am sure. But I am not unwilling to admit that.

[This message has been edited by Alias (edited February 23, 2004).]

[This message has been edited by Alias (edited February 23, 2004).]
 

Christine, you had read and replied to my post before my computer had finished reloading the page for me to review it myself.

That aside I apologize for the interruption and would love to continue the affect/effect debate in the other thread.

So, back to magic...

[This message has been edited by Alias (edited February 23, 2004).]
 

The magic of the classical world was entirely based on rituals, talismans (created by rituals) and the use of power existing in the natural world. Anyone could use any magic, if they learned how it was done.

Method. Artifact. Natural forces.

I really shouldn't have to string this together for you all. I think you're all just disagreeing for the heck of it.

Nexus is half right. I think that if a person learns to use magic, then it is demystified for that individual. It is no longer 'magic'. It may still be art, indeed, must seem a greater art to those that know the real difficulties of performing magic. Real magic isn't as easy as snapping your fingers and saying 'abracadabra'. And a necessary cost of teaching magic openly is that magic loses some of its power over the human imagination.

But if you're going to be a writer...and that's what we're discussing here, you need to demystify the magic of your own work. It cannot be magic to you, or you'll flub it because you won't know what you're doing.
 

quote:

---

I really shouldn't have to string this together for you all. I think you're all just disagreeing for the heck of it.

---

Oops. Did I just type that out loud?

Still, we've made some progress here, Survivor, in that you are now using the phrase "real magic" in a context that indicates you are not thinking of it as an oxymoron.

quote:

---

But if you're going to be a writer...and that's what we're discussing here, you need to demystify the magic of your own work. It cannot be magic to you, or you'll flub it because you won't know what you're doing.

---

[Y]ou need to demystify the magic of your own work. [Magic] cannot be [a mystery] to you, or you'll flub it because you won't know what you're doing.
 

The writer of Fantasy fiction must also believe in the magic, otherwise it would come across as false. Just as an S.F. writer must believe that inter-galactic travel is possible,or FTL travel or a myriad of other "possibilies" in that genre.

As a writer you must be true to your story, its characters and the laws that govern that world. If "magic" is to be, well.. magical, you must have some belief in it, or you are going to fail at getting your reader to believe it.

The only exception would be, that you want the "technology"(for lack of a better word) of the magic to be widely known in that story. But that is a scenario that the writer would also have to buy into wholly or fail miserably.

You must believe in what you write, it is a truism for all genres. Someone told me recently that you have to be a stickler for realism in your genre. In this case, magic would be a realism in Fantasy fiction.

People can spot a fake at fifty paces, even without the Lenses of True-seeing. If you as a writer, de-bunk magic for yourself, all you write about magic will be BUNK!
 

quote:

---

I think that if a person learns to use magic, then it is demystified for that individual. It is no longer 'magic'.

---

I don't think I agree with that. I think one of the defining facts of magic is that even those who use it cannot explain how it works... that is what separates it from being a science.

 

quote:

---

If "magic" is to be, well.. magical, you must have some belief in it, or you are going to fail at getting your reader to believe it.

---

Belief is an integral part of magick. But I wander. The thread is entitled 'Price or Technology.' Since technology is the application of knowledge (according to Merriam-Webster) magick is technology. However, magick comes with a price. No magick (except in obviously fake storybooks) can be done without some cost. In minor spells, potions, etc. the only cost is time and resources, but as things that become more and more unnatural, the cost becomes greater. For example, a simple love potion requires little, since it could happen naturally, whereas a rite designed to cure a dying cat that faces certain death from disease requires much more from the spellcaster.

I agree with Jules with his opinion of the above quote. Since magick is technology, then it only follows, according to that logic, that if a person learns to use technology, then it is demystified for that individual and is no longer 'technology'. This makes no sense.
 

quote:

---

The writer of Fantasy fiction must also believe in the magic, otherwise it would come across as false. Just as an S.F. writer must believe that inter-galactic travel is possible,or FTL travel or a myriad of other "possibilies" in that genre.

---

As writers of science fiction and fantasy fiction, we do not ask our readers to believe what we say about FTL travel or magic. All we ask is that they suspend their disbelief about such things so they can enjoy the story.

It does not matter whether the author believes that forming a pentagram with the blood of a goat and chanting certain phrases in Latin will summon a demon. What matters is that the writer not make it hard for the reader to maintain suspension of disbelief. (Fred began chanting in Latin, "Demono Comeo Hereo Nowo.")

Knowing how your magical system works helps you to write about it believably, but that does not mean you have to believe in it.
 

I am sure Fahrion does not mean that you should actually belive in something you made up out of your head the way I believe that when I type this message and his "Submit Reply" that it will be posted to the message board and you can read it. I *know* that will happen.

On the other hand, when I am writing my novel, I envision the characters as if they were real. I make the scenes come alive inside my own mind. The magical system works there, as does the scientific system. (In my current novel both exist.) For the duration of my writing session, and for that matter, any time I am thinking about the story, the magic does work. The technology does work. The characters are real.

I think this is actually suspended disbelief rather than belief, because it feels like the same sense in which I believe a novel or short story I am reading. The best novels and short stories feel real to me for a time, even after I close the book. I sometimes dream about my favorite books, the characters continuing the story inside my own head at night because it was that real. But I don't really *believe* in them. I have simply managed to suspend my disbelief so well that they were integrated into my life for a short time.

So to make a long story short (too late) you are both right.
 

Sorry. I guess after reading that line I didn't read the rest of your message carefully enough, because I see now that some of the things you said imply that you didn't mean it literally.
 

And they actually pull it of a fair amount of the time, too.

Sorry for any confusion about this, but when I said "real magic", I meant magic as actually practiced in the real world. To me, the fact that stage magicians know what their doing and how doesn't make their magic any less 'real'. Magic that can't work in the real world (the kind we find in most Fantasy) isn't real magic, it is pretend magic.

That's what I usually mean by "real", as opposed to 'pretend'.

But I agree with you about the suspension of disbelief vs. actual belief thing...Fahrion's little post actually kind of creeped me out grinning to hide my unease

Throughout human history (and outside it as well) people have really performed magic. And how did they do it? They kept the method secret, arcane, mystical. That is what makes magic...well, magic. That is always what has made 'magic' magic.

Everytime we demystify the methods, artifacts, and natural forces used to perform a marvel, we turn it from magic into technology...but it was already technology to us, the wonder workers. When people first trapped lightning in a jar, it was a potent form of magic...the use of arcane knowledge and devices to capture the power of the gods. When we started explaining to all comers how to do it themselves...it stopped being magic. That doesn't mean that Franklin and those sorts had any actual idea how lightning worked or what it really was...they had no idea. But once everyone knew how it was done, it wasn't magic anymore.

To wield magical power, you must keep the technique arcane, unknown to the masses. But that doesn't mean that you can get away with not knowing the technique yourself. This is so painfully obvious I am almost ashamed to say it (as Screwtape would say ).
 

Real magic is what stage magicians do.

Magicians know the technology of what they do. Magicians do what they do using the technology relevant to their disciple. There is no real mystery in it; even when they see another magician perform something they've never seen, they generally have a good idea of how it might be done.

Computer engineers know the technology of what they do. But we do not call them "technologists" -- that is far too broad a term. They are called computer engineers. And we do not simply call what they do with their technology "technology," because we have a more specific label for it: computer engineering.

Meteorologists know the technology of what they do. But we do not call them "technologists," we call them meteorologists. And what they do with their technology is "meteorology," not just "technology."

I could give more examples, but I'm sure you get the idea.

As I said earlier, magicians know the technology of what they do. But to use the general label of "technologists" for them would be ridiculous. We have a specific label for people involved with that sort of technology: we call them magicians. And we also have a label for what they do with their technology: magic.

To say that magicians are not doing magic -- even though they understand it technologically -- is like saying computer engineers are not doing computer engineering, they're just doing technology.

If the label "magic" does not apply to what magicians do with their technology, then what is the proper label?
 

What makes 'magic' magic is that the technology is arcane.

It is that simple. Modern stage magicians might use all sorts of different technologies to perform their tricks, but it is magic because they hide their methods from the audience. If they didn't hide the method, then it wouldn't be magic.

That is the heart of what I'm saying. Magic is arcane technology, if the technology is no longer arcane, it is not magic. I think this argument started because I said that about someone's milieu...it had a demystified psionic technology which everyone still called magic. This has never happened in the whole of human history. Once everyone knows (or so they think) how the trick is down, nobody calls it magic anymore.

Of course, they might still treat it like magic, but that is another argument entirely
 

If someone learned a manner through which all humans could move objects with their mind, they would either call it levitation or telekinesis. (In today's scifi culture, it would probably be the lat ter, but in tomorrow's culture, if this really could happen, they might even come up with a third term we haven't thought of yet.) If all humans could hop from one place to another in the blink of an eye we'd probably call it teleportation. If everyone could change the chemical composition of something to turn it into something else I'm not sure what the scifi name for it is, perhaps we'd go to the Harry Potter books and call it transfiguration, or perhaps someone will have a better idea. Pyrokinesis, telepathy, empathy, telkinesis, metamophasis (?): all these terms could be applied to the individual things that all humans could be taught to do with his or her mind. They would be demystified, and part of the point of my story is that some even find it boring and mundane.

But....what about if a human could be taught to do all of the above? Would we call these things, as a group, technology? I don't think so, especially not if we did them through unlocking a potential in our own brains we never knew we had. I think we would lump them together and call them magic. (or maybe magick). And frankly, though everyone could do it, only a few would REALLY understand it -- the neuroscientists who study the brain. Everyone else would be like our internet generation, wavering in varying levels of ignorance. ("I don't have a modem. Can you please send me the internet on a 3.5" floppy disk?" Sorry, heard that one yesterday and couldn't resist.)

I could be wrong, but as I doubt this will ever really happen, you'll have difficulty proving it. In the meantime I will take advantage of my artistic license to use whatever words I want to.
 

You speak of 'demystification', but I doubt that much of this 'demystification' can occur. Nor can everyone perform magick, or want to, when the costs of this are exposed.
 

Armed with our new concept of magic, let's look at the price of magic in some well known fiction. (I'll try to keep the spoilers out.)

In OSC's "Seventh Son," Alvin Maker has to pay a price for his innate magical abilities. A force, which first manifests as the Hatrack River, tries to destroy him at every opportunity.

The price Frodo paid in "The Lord of the Rings" was to a constant battle against the corruption of his mind and soul.

In Piers Anthony's Xanth series, each person is born with one unique magical talent. I'm not sure of the price for this one. Perhaps your role in life is pre-determined, because that ability can never be changed or removed.

Does anyone agree/disagree with these examples? Do you have any other examples?
 

quote:

---

That is the heart of what I'm saying. Magic is arcane technology, if the technology is no longer arcane, it is not magic. . . . Once everyone knows (or so they think) how the trick is [done], nobody calls it magic anymore.

---

And once again, you are letting your cultural bias show. You come from a society in which just about everything is explained from a technological/scientific perspective, so the labels you would choose for explaining a phenomenon that you previously did not understand would be technological/scientific.

If I concentrate on a rock and cause it to rise into the air by tapping into energy from the environment and forcing it to do what I want, you would call it telekinesis.

People from 1692 Salem, Massachusetts, would call it witchcraft.

Even if I demonstrated that it was a simple skill that could be learned by anybody, you would still call it telekinesis, and they would still call it witchcraft.

Now, let's assume that the history of Salem, Massachusetts went a little differently once I taught the residents to levitate objects. Instead of hanging the entire town population as witches, they decide that witchcraft isn't such a bad thing after all. They set up the Salem School of Witchcraft, and the town does a thriving business of teaching out-of-towners how to do witchcraft.

Pretty soon, one of the teachers discovers that it is possible to start fires using the same energy source that can be used for lifting things. This is a wonderful development, making flint & steel obsolete. The demand for schooling in witchcraft goes up.

Over the years, more ways to use witchcraft are discovered. Salem builds a College of Advanced Witchcraft studies.

Soon there are specialized names for various subdisciplines of witchcraft: levitation, pyromancy, animation.

By the late 1800s, someone has used animation to create a horseless carriage.

In 1969, a highly advanced levitation spell is able to lift a man to the Moon and bring him back safely.

And in 2004, Survivor argues that the word "magic" only applies to arcane witchcraft. If the witchcraft is no longer arcane, it is not magic.
 

Plenty of 'tricks' that rely on natural principles used to be magic, were eventually demystified, and stopped being 'magic'.

The witchcraft of England and Salem depended heavily on a very old trick, the secret society. Basically, you get together a secret group who has meetings out in the forest periodically to set agenda's and membership and so forth. But in order to keep everyone else from catching on and figuring out who's in the group, you have codes and signs and so forth.

When a member of the group wants to get something done, he or she uses a ritual that indicates what ought to be done and to whom it ought to be done. Then another member of the secret group arranges for it to happen while the requesting member has an alibi. There were two reasons for this. The most obvious (and probably original) reason is because most of the requests were for bad stuff to happen to an enemy...and it was so that the instigators could 'prove' they couldn't have had anything to do with it. The secondary reason is that if you can do stuff when you aren't there, then you can exert some measure of control over people that are actually well beyond your reach, because they have no way of knowing whether or not you can get them.

This is why our culture typically regarded magic as a bad thing, because the most common form of 'magic' in a significant portion of our history was carried out by a criminal conspiracy bent on hurting people.

But enough of that. The Puritans were quite resistant to calling any useful technology magic. When the Indians gave them maize and other completely new foods and showed them how to cultivate it (and many of the cultivation methods were totally unlike anything the Puritans had experienced), they didn't call it magic. Maybe they should have, it isn't like they knew how it worked, but they didn't.

If I went back to that time and showed them various pieces of useful technology, they would resist calling it magic. To them, magic meant arcane methods of hurting people.

But that's really a side discussion. My point is that I can make an argument based on the 'facts' of a story I make up out of my own head just as easily as anyone.

Look, if I levitate a rock using my mental powers, and all the people in Salem see this...what would be wacky? I know, they all think that I'm the Second Coming and start worshipping me. We go around, I doing my levitating trick and they all worshipping me, and convince everyone else in the world that I'm God.

In 2004 (I've figured out some other tricks since then), I tell you all to not call what I do 'magic' and you all obey me because, after all, I happen to be God.

The above story doesn't prove anything except that I can blaspheme with the best if I like. The powers I would be using to rule you all would still be magic, because I'd be hiding the true method by which I accomplish all my tricks.

Anyway, I've got to disagree with some of the 'prices of magic' that Nexus has brought up.

Alvin Maker pays various prices for all his talents...but mostly he suffers from consequences, consequences that care little whether he's accomplishing his feats by innate 'magical' abilities or by learned technology. And while I haven't read all those books, I seem to recall that the term 'magic' is rarely used and is generally a pejorative in that series.

Frodo doesn't pay that price for using magic, he pays that price simply by being near the ring of power. In ordinary terms we would call it temptation. Sauron is the one who paid a price to make the ring, and its seductive effect on mortals is part of his design, not part of the price of making it.

I don't know that I'd bring up Xanth in a serious discussion of how to write good fantasy, but I'll guess that there is no real price for that one...just as Anthony didn't seem to write in any realistic consequences for magic use.
 

As for magic having to be understood to be used, or even mystical, are we ignoring all those fantasy books based on people having innate abilities? In most contexts elves are creatures of magic. I am fairly sure that they would never be called creatures of technology... but then who knows - some people would say anything to prove a point...

Which reminds me... are there any bets on how many words Survivor will finish posting on this thread?

There are a lot of people talking about the real world as if it is relevant (or even understood). The fact is fantasy readers are creating their own worlds, with their own definitions and contexts. Because those worlds have developed in different ways to our own, the context will therefore be different, as will the psychology of the people involved. For us to use the word magic to describe levitation seems unrealistic, but for people from a different background then why not?

Of course just to soothe Survivors ego, the word magike, used by the greeks, was often used in combination with the word techne... So magike techne... meaning something like spiritual art (rough translation)...

And yes techne meant art... gasp of horror... not science but an art form. And in some ways I think we are confusing technology with science. While you could have a 'magical' technology, surely the underlying theory behind it would be a science?

Please somebody prove me wrong, I need a laugh today
 

Even assuming you are completely right about the word "magic" as used in the real world throughout all of history (and I am not conceding that you are), your strict definition (if it's not arcane, it's not magic) is fairly useless both for understanding and for writing fantasy fiction, because it does not reflect the way the word is used in that context.

The basic idea you have is useful: In fantasy fiction where the use of magical power is understood by at least some of the people, those who understand it would probably think of it technologically -- as a tool to be used to accomplish things. They would not be in awe of it.

But there is no reason why they cannot call that power "magic," because within the fantasy genre, the power by which a person casts spells is generically refered to as "magic."

You may continue to argue for your strict definition, but unless you can show how using your definition rather than the looser one generally accepted in fantasy is useful to those who want to write fantasy fiction, I don't think it really matters.
 

Survivor, If you were seen levitating a rock in Salem in that time frame, they wouldn't have raised you to deity status. More possibly they would have cut out your tongue, so you couldn't blaspheme or cast a spell on them. Then you would have promptly been burned at the stake.

2004 wouldn't be a possibility for you at that point. Unless, when you were burned to death you were somehow able to send your essence to another plane to wait for your chance to send your it back into the prime material and inhabit say... this BB. AAAAAHHHHHH! RUN AWAY, RUN AWAY!!!!

Seroiusly, the idea of magic that we should be discussing really pertains to the worlds which, we as Fantasy writers create. That "pretend magic" as Survivor put it, is the stuff that you have to bring in to some form of percieved reality. If you can get your reader to buy in to that then you have succeeded.

There are a few rules about magic in fantasy that should be followed. Unless Deity intervention is a factor.
1. Balance: no person should be all powerful.

2. Consequence: there has to be something exacted from the Mage/Wizard/Sorceror etc... that would make most people think twice or forty times about trying to cast a spell.(note the absence of the word magician)

3. Nature: you should maintain a balance in nature and magic shouldn't change that beyond recognition.

4. Intelligence: your Magic-user should be in the upper percentile of the populous where brains are concerned.

There are other rules as well but this would be a good platform to build magic on.

As far as good examples of a price or consequence for magic-use goes there were some excellent stories mentioned at the beginning of this thread (see page 1). Weis and Hickman have pretty much mastered this in all of their books.

Here is a list: THE DRAGONLANCE SERIES, THE DEATH GATE CYCLE, DARKSWORD TRILOGY, THE SOVEREIGN STONE TRILOGY.
There are other writers who also do a very good job, but I think Weis and Hickman have it nailed. If you haven't read any of these, you should definately check at least some of them out. I use them as reference material all the time. I could give specifics but I don't want my post to be longer than Survivor's. So if you want examples I will post them later if anyone is interested.

I would really like to get away from the Un-masking of magic discussion and get back the original intent of this thread.

quote:

---

Let's discuss some theories of how magic is used in fantasy stories.

---

There's $0.02 at least!

 

But the fact remains, if you want the magic in your Fantasy writing to be 'magical'...then you have to make it arcane. As for calling it magic....

I don't think that it should be called magic if it isn't magical. 'Nuff said...I really haven't said anything else on the subject.

Read Poul Anderson's essayOn Thud and Blunder and ask yourself, does realism have anything to do with convincing Fantasy? If not, then be on your merry way. If so...well, why are you arguing with me?

This goes for most other terms connected with magic use as well, by the way. Saying that you're casting a spell is essentially synonymous with saying you're using magic. It is a mere tautology to state that "the power by which a person casts spells is generically refered to as 'magic'." That's why you call it 'casting a spell'

Defining magic as essentially arcane in nature isn't a strict definition, it is the very core of what makes magic magical.

Oh, and TruHero, your bigoted notions about the superstitious ignorance of the Puritans are hardly the basis of an argument. I admit, it would be wacky for them to think I was God (which is why I offered that as a wacky possibility), but it would be equally (or a little more, actually) wacky for them to simply assault and kill a guy for happening to stand near a floating rock (or even claiming to have levitated it). They weren't...never mind.

P.S. Tolkien's Elves claimed that most of their arts were non-magical, and their particularly magical arts were...arcane. Read his books sometime.
 

There are many forms of magic written about in F/SF. Of these I have read of:

• inner power that is, in essence, magic,
• the drawing of this power from the environment or surroundings,
• the drawing of power from talismans,
• the only the use of talismans,
• runes,
• potions, and
• rites.
  

There are many different ways magic has been portrayed, and all of them have originated from ancient 'mythology'. Many of the prices are pure physical and mental exhaustion, especially as in Christopher Paolini's novel ERAGON, and often in other stories. Another price is magical imbalance that may lead to such side effects as blindness and pain (as in L.E.Modesitt, Jr.'s Recluse series). Sometimes the price is simply social ostrocizion (sp?) as in Akhana Rishayo's 'A Merchant's Daughter'.
 

As far as Tolkein goes, he shows good balance in Magic, although he does have some all powerful beings in that story.
He shows how someone without magic can overcome that power by determination alone. I have read them several times (except for the Silmarillion, which Is very tedious to read). Tolkein is the grandfather of modern Fantasy. But modern Fantasy is usually very different from what he put down on paper.
 

When I was young Tolkien was still the father of Heroic Fantasy...what's the matter with kids today?

I still think you guys are all missing the boat here, but obviously no amount of argument is going to convince you at this point. [Insert name of famous HF writer here] could come onto this board and proclaim it by decree, but I don't think even that would change any minds if you're all this determined to be obtuse about it.

Speaking of writers, I tried to read a book by L.E. Modesitt once. He had these semi-interesting little excerpts from socio-political tracts at the headings of the chapters (or at least the first three chapters), but the actual narrative writing was an atrocity against SF...I mean bad writing, big red buttons and 'emkays' and 'allow me, the heroic captian, to explain to my obtuse crewmembers the very clever maneuver I've just completed' exposition...just really bad. Maybe it got better after the first couple of pages...which is all the text I actually read. But when the narrative is that hackneyed after so short a space, I just throw it aside. I can read my own stuff, after all.

If the snippets heading up the chapters had been more than mildly intersting I might have read all of them, but there is no way I was going to wade through the whole text of that stinker. Besides, I didn't have to read the whole thing. My mom, who is completely blind to really bad prose, read it and summarized it for me. Apparently the point of the book is that genocide is okay if the people you're wiping out belong to a religion you don't like.

Hardly the world's most original idea, but then, even if it were, I still wouldn't plow through all that farcical writing to get it.

So was his fantasy writing really good? I would find that hard to believe, but I'm open to persuasive arguments.
 

quote:

---

Saying that you're casting a spell is essentially synonymous with saying you're using magic.

---

Similarly, he would not think of himself as a magician, mage, wizard, sorcerer, warlock, enchanter, or any other synonym for magician. Ignorant people might call him such, but since he understands what he is doing, he knows he is not.

Now that you have decreed that the vast majority of fantasy fiction uses such terms incorrectly, perhaps you will enlighten us by explaining what he would call himself, what he would call the power he uses, and how he would refer to the means by which he uses that power.

Now, perhaps you will say that it is allowable for him to use magical terms if the knowledge of what he does is arcane. But that answer is not satisfactory: if he used those terms to explain what he does in a bestselling book, the knowledge would no longer be arcane, and therefore the terms would no longer apply.

Perhaps you will say that the author should make up terms: He is a glorper who uses glorpular power to cast rinsits. Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time has used this strategy, so it obviously can be successful.

But is making up words to replace words that have traditionally been used in fantasy fiction the only satisfactory solution, in your view?
 

So, while not everyone is you Survivor, I think it would be safe to dispense with the demeaning insults and stick strictly to debating issues. Keep your degrading instincts focused on points, not people.

Thanks, mate

[This message has been edited by Alias (edited February 26, 2004).]
 

And do not confuse the word most with all. I, of course, did not say that "all texts about elves showed them as being magical.." I have read Tolkien, as well as many other books. So please do not use insults unless you are about to show evidence to back them up. Just because someone does not agree with you is no reason to attack their intelligence, or we will be back to the "I am right!" "No, I am right!" level of discussion.

Anyway, back to the main point, there is an obvious price to magic that is the same as the one paid for technology, and that is who controls the power? While most kids envy the powers of Harry Potter, they would not want some maniac trying to kill them. While Gandalf sounded grand, with sword or staff in hand, fighting Balrogs and such is no enviable task.

Power attracts power, and so any concentration of magic becomes a focal point attracting other "users" of magic. This, I believe, is the main premise of some of the Recluse books, as well some other fictional fantasy books.

I have to say this thread is becoming addictive. Thanks Survivor
 

Look, what I'm saying is very simple. I know that I've said it a bunch of times, but here it is again.

The defining characteristic of magic is that it is arcane.

quote:

---

So, according to you, a character in a fantasy who understands what he is doing when he makes lightning come out of his fingers to fry his enemy cannot realistically think of what he is doing as magic or casting a spell. He cannot call it wizardry, sorcery, witchcraft, enchantment, necromancy, voodoo, conjury, or any other synonym of magic, nor can he say he is using a charm, conjuraction, or any other synonym for spell. Only people who were ignorant of what he does would use such words to describe it.

---

This is exactly the kind of comment I find unnecessarily obtuse (and the only reason I would accuse Eric of being deliberately obtuse is because he has not admitted understanding the main point of my argument). Have I ever said anything that could remotely be construed this way? This is called a straw man, Eric, and it is beneath you and the standards of discourse on this forum.

Characters who know how magic is done still call it magic, but they do so with the knowledge that the thing that makes their magic magic is that only a select minority have access to knowledge of how it works.

quote:

---

Now, perhaps you will say that it is allowable for him to use magical terms if the knowledge of what he does is arcane. But that answer is not satisfactory: if he used those terms to explain what he does in a bestselling book, the knowledge would no longer be arcane, and therefore the terms would no longer apply.

---

This implies an error so embarrassing I'm ashamed to be forced to point it out. But I will answer the question. Yes, if your character publishes a best-selling book in his own world, and thus propagated accurate knowledge of the methods used by magicians to everyone in that world, then it would no longer be effectively magic in that world. Just think on our own magic for a moment. When some renegade magician shows how the tricks are all done, all the other magicians have to redesign their tricks so that they can't be done the old way...otherwise the tricks will no longer be magic because the whole audiance will know how they're done.

They can still be effective illusions, but they are no longer magic.

quote:

---

Has anyone noticed that Survivor is picking small holes in people's arguments and avoids all their main points? The word context has been used by several people, and is still relevant. Perhaps he cannot see past his own cultural background...

---

Has anyone noticed that this is an accurate description of what everyone else is doing with my argument? I'm telling you that one necessary consequence of keeping something 'magical' is that most people don't know how it's done. You all keep avoiding addressing or acknowledging that point in your replies.

If I've missed anyone's 'main point' then please feel free to point out the main point I've missed, and I'll either agree with it or point out that it is mistaken (and demonstrate why). But the claim that you all have main points that I haven't addressed is more than a little suspicious, under the circumstances.

Ok enough joshin' around.

Some of us have posted some referrences of books that we felt showed a good use of magic and balance. What exactly was it in those novels that made it ring true for you? Go into as much detail as you can without spoiling the story for anyone who hasn't read it yet. Sound OK?
 

I did rationalise this with background as to how our use of the word magic today differs from that of the Greeks, or even the Persians (it is quite likely that magike comes from magi, which was a Persian priest type person)
 

I have read other books involving balanced magic, but I am not sure if I can explain how they operate with out too many spoilers.
 

1. In the context of real life, when a magician uses magic to turn a bunch of flowers into a bird, he is not really turning flowers into a bird. It is an illusion. It is a trick. It is false. It does not really happen.

2. In the context of fantasy fiction, when a magician uses magic to turn a bunch of flowers into a bird, he is really turning flowers into a bird. It is not an illusion. It is not a trick. It is true. It really happens.

Can you tell the difference?

I am asking this seriously, because the difference seems completely obvious and important to me. But the way you keep bringing up the fact that magicians in real life are tricking the audience as being of some relevance to the use of magic in fantasy, it sounds to me like you do not see the difference.

[This message has been edited by EricJamesStone (edited February 27, 2004).]
 

I read the first one and it never really grabbed me. One of my brothers, on the other hand, loves the series. So it's probably worth a try.
 

Eric, I'm not saying that stage magic and "real" magic as found in fantasy aren't different, I'm saying that in a certain fundamental sense, they are the same, and that similarity is why we call them both 'magic'.

Let me give an example that might be more helpful. In most traditional societies, the magic users are also the health care providers, hence the sometimes pejorative term 'witch doctor' to describe a shaman (or the more neutral 'medicine man'). In most effective cases, the traditional shaman would use a herbal extract or some similar form of medical treatment that is available today from the modern pharmacy.

Now when we take pills from the pharmacy to cure some ailment, there is much that is the same. The active ingredient of the pill will be the same as the active ingredient of the shaman's preparation, there will be a significant placebo effect in both cases--assuming that the underlying ailment being treated is the same, and that the strength of both medicines is similar, the effectiveness is about the same.

So why is one 'magic' and the other not?

See, my point is that the case of the stage magician and the 'real' magician of fantasy (or the real magician of a primitive tribe) are different in many more ways than they are the same, but we call them all magicians (or whatever...the point being we call what they do magic). Whereas the super-geneticist or doctor that actually heals us or tranmutes one living thing into another is doing something quite similar in many ways to what the magician of popular fantasy or the medicine man does...yet we call them quite different things.

I'm pointing out the single factor that we actually use to distinguish whether to call it magic or not.

And please don't brush this off with a "well, it's just a word" attitude. It isn't just a word, it's a fundamental concept. Whether we call it mysterious power or arcane knowledge or Mike Myers Mojo, it means the same thing (well, maybe not if we call it Mike Myers Mojo--I'm not quite sure what universal concept that would involve).

It's magic. It's the reason that we call the fictional powers of the HF wizard and the illusory powers of the stage magician and the real powers of the shaman all the same thing. Because in that particular, they are the same, and that's what makes them all magic, whether based on presditigi...whatever or mana or herbal mojo.

Anyway, I like for magic to have realistic consequences. Costs...eh, I can take 'em or leave 'em, but convincing magic affects the way people live. Having an inordinate cost for magic is just a handy way to limit the consequences...if everyone needs to chop off a significant body part to do a spell, then the number and power of spells that can be cast is limited to the number of appropriate limbs possessed by wizards. Kinda like a three wish limit...the protagonist has to decide whether it would be better to do things the conventional way or use up one of his wishes (fingers, eyeballs, whatever).

Like in Die Hard when Bruce Willis gets to the end and discovers he's got exacty two bullets for two bad guys.

But frankly I love it when a writer takes a ccompletely broken and unbalanced magic system and makes it work by having the consequences of the near unlimited magic use seem realistic. This is more like the real world we live in anyway, after all. We have a hell of a lot more power than we can use without destroying our world. And it profoundly affects the rules by which we play all our games, from international politics to deciding how to punish our kids for misbehavior.

I mentioned Hart's Hope before, which is a great book because it plays with the idea of a completely unbalanced magic system and what happens as a result. Notice that Queen Beauty, despite unlimited power, can't afford to exercise unlimited oppression except against selected individuals. Why? B'duh, she can't afford to really tick off anyone that could make a blood sacrifice sufficient to challenge her. When she accidentally does...she goes down.

Tolkien also has a completely unbalanced 'magic' system. In the books, he brings about with greater clarity the challenge that imposes on Good. Evil can use absolute power to crush opposition, but Good must foster and lead, acting as a guide which others can freely follow or reject. We see it in each good character, how they work to provide others with freedom to choose. And how is it that Good wins despite the fact that Evil can use power so freely? Because Evil cannot share that power, and the struggle over it is ultimately pyrrhic.

After all, if Bruce Willis had a hundred rounds left for the final confrontation, it still wouldn't be a good idea to go spraying machine gun fire into the room where his wife is being held hostage with a gun to her head.

And of course, you can't just stop at plot devices...the consequences of magic have to permeate your milieu for it to be convincing to the reader. If teleportation is easy and common, then why would there be roads? If telepathy, then why pigeons? If magic can make you mighty, then do nobles still keep swordmasters? What about childbirth? How important is primogeniture if it is typical for a mother to survive all her pregnancies? Different societies answer these questions in different ways...but they all have to answer the questions once magic brings them up.

quote:

---

"Ask me the questions, I'm not afraid."

Some joker who didn't know the capital of Assyria

---

Those in opposition to Survivor appear to be arguing that a guy who throws fireballs at someone using some magical mana from the air is using magic and Survivor seems to be arguing that the same man would be employing a technological technique that he would call magic.

I could have got this completely wrong because I must admit I haven't been following this thread too closely (it required too much effort) but that's the way I see it. Now if I am right that means that you're both right because you would both call the same event magic, even though Survivor is more interested in the actual way it works, because, I assume, he cannot envisage that something can happen spontaneously for no reason whatsoever (and I'm not saying that things can or can't, I'm just trying to show the different ways it seems to me that people are looking at this subject).

Obviously, I've probably missed something somewhere but I'm sure none of you will be shy in telling me what it is.
 

I believe that to be an extreme position that runs counter to traditional use of the word in fantasy fiction.
 

Gwalchmai, you're probably as near the truth as anyone, but the difference is a little more key than you realize.

Eric (and others) were saying...look, I don't want to straw man the position, and since I really don't know what they're arguing now, I'll leave it to Eric or any other interested party to define their position.

I'm saying that the reason we call something magic is because the means of doing it is obscure, arcane, or otherwise a secret from the population at large, either intentionally or by accident.

I've done magic tricks myself (only on little kids, just for fun, I swear). When I'm doing a magic trick, I call it magic. But I only do so because I'm keeping the technique a secret (again, only from little kids, and only for fun). Keeping the audience in the dark is what makes it a magic trick.

For reasons that are unclear to myself, Eric cannot understand what I'm saying...perhaps a selective aphasia is at work here.

To restate and clarify:

Survivor's position is that if everyone knows how it works, you won't think of it as "magic."

I believe that to be a commonsense position that is in keeping with the traditional use of the word in the English language, including fantasy fiction written in English.

 

Yes, I read you last post. Didn't have time to respond to it properly, so I just responded to Gwalchmai.

quote:

---

Survivor's position is that if everyone knows how it works, you won't think of it as "magic."

---

I still disagree with it, because your position is absurd in the context of fantasy fiction.

The point I have been trying to make is that in fantasy fiction, the word "magic" is not used the same way it is in the real world.

In the real world, what is called "magic" is actually the application of technologies borrowed from other disciplines (optics, physics, chemistry, psychology, etc.) in order to trick the audience into believing that something is happening when it is actually something else that is happening. There is no "mana" (magical power) that is used.

In fantasy fiction, there is often the concept of a source of power that provides the energy needed for someone to do what is considered to be "magic" by the general public in the fantasy world. That power is not electricity or magnetism or anything borrowed from the sciences, it is something unique to the practice of the discipline called "magic."

So, if there is one person in all the world who knows how to wield this power, then both you and I are agreed that it could realistically be called "magic" by the general population.

(My misunderstanding of your position was that I for some reason thought you were saying that someone who understood the technology would no longer consider it to be magic. Or did I understand that correctly?)

So our magic-user takes two apprentices, and says to them, "I will instruct you in the art of magic. I will teach you how to access the magical power that flows around us, and through us, and through every object. With that power, you will be able to cast spells to move objects, make them burst into flame, transform into other objects, and so forth."

So he teaches them. Now there are three people in the world who know how to use magic. They refer to their art as "magic," the source of their power as "mana," and the method for projecting that power as "spells."

Now eventually, each of the two new mages takes two apprentices, and instruct them in the art of magic, teaching them how to use mana to cast spells, and thus become mages themselves.

And then those four new mages take two apprentices each, and instruct them in the art of magic, teaching them how to use mana to cast spells, and thus become mages themselves.

And the process repeats itself.

Soon there are thousands of mages, all of whom refer to their art as magic, and think of themselves as casting spells.

Eventually the majority of the population practice magic and cast spells.

Finally there is just one person left who is not a mage. Everyone else is a mage, practicing magic and casting spells.

Finally, the lone holdout gives in, and becomes an apprentice.

And the moment he learns how to cast his first spell, according to Suvivor's Law there is no longer any "magic" in the world. The power may still be there, but they have to come up with a new name for it. And they can't "cast spells" any more; they have to come up with a new name for that as well.

Now, the tipping point could have been when mages were a majority of the population instead of when everyone had learned to use magic, and it would still make no difference. It is ridiculous to assume that people who are using the technology and terminology of magic would replace that terminology just because too many people understand the technology.

Now, maybe I'm still misunderstanding you, Survivor. But if one person can understand the power and call it magic, and two people can do so, how many people can understand it before they can no longer call it magic? Is it an absolute number or a percentage of the population? What would force the society to change its traditional terminology once a that critical number was reached?

quote:

---

Eric, I'm not saying that stage magic and "real" magic as found in fantasy aren't different, I'm saying that in a certain fundamental sense, they are the same, and that similarity is why we call them both 'magic'.

---

[This message has been edited by EricJamesStone (edited February 27, 2004).]
 

quote:

---

And I'm just saying that the similarity isn't what you think it is. Magic in fantasy fiction is the power that magic in the real world pretends to be. That's why real world magic must rely on tricking an audience. Fantasy world magic doesn't need to do that.

---

In James Barclay's Raven series, the four magical colleges treat magic very much in the same way we treat technology today. They are constantly researching different ways in which they can use the mana flow and even have specialist equipment to aid this research and test out their theories. Magic in his world is constantly evolving through the efforts of what we would call research scientists.

However, the people in his world, including the students and the faculties of these respective institutions, all think of what they are doing as being magic and they even term themselves as being mages. There is no sense of 'ha ha, stupid ordinary people think what we are doing is magic. Fools!' because they actually think of what they are doing as being magic even though they understand enormous amounts about the mana spectrum and how to use it.

[This message has been edited by Gwalchmai (edited February 28, 2004).]
 

I largely agree with what Survivor's saying, although not entirely.

It seems to me that if anyone really understands something to that depth, then it isn't really magic.

Now, that doesn't mean that you can't call it magic - I think if something like that were discovered and researched, it would be called magic... essentially our understanding of what magic is would change along with it.

But it would definitely be called magic, because people would look at what you could do with it, and see that it is exactly the same things that they thought magic was responsible for before, so the name would be inevitable.

Ack. Basically, what I'm saying is that using our vocabulary to argue about a world that is different to our own is difficult because the vocabulary is shaped by the needs of the world. And significant discoveries shift the meanings of words. Consider the word "quantum" and what it means now vs. what it originally meant ("a quantity or amount").

BTW: I think we're only 1 post from 3 pages
 

You've concentrated solely on how stage magic isn't really magic.

How do you explain what has happened to actual, working magic like medicine, oriental martial arts, and chemistry?

Remember, these were and always have been core elements in my argument. You can't just ignore them.
 

quote:

---

You've concentrated solely on how stage magic isn't really magic.

---

No, I've also focused on the fact that people generally continue to use words they are accustomed to using to describe something unless there is an incentive to change. Tradition!

quote:

---

How do you explain what has happened to actual, working magic like medicine, oriental martial arts, and chemistry?

---

Good question. Here's my theory:

Now, in the case of a witch doctor who gives someone a magical herb that relieves pain, his "magic" is what we call "medicine."

But why do we call it medicine instead of magic when the medical doctor gives us codeine and the pain goes away?

It is not because we laymen understand the science behind codeine any more than the witch doctor's patients understand the magic behind chewing an herb. It is because our culture and language eveloved in such a way as to make the terminology of science primary in our language.

Why? I think the answer is found in the interaction of the development of science and Christianity (actually, an idea found in Judaism that carried over into Christianity.)

Although there were scientific principles discovered long before and in other places, the scientific worldview (that is, the idea that science could explain everything about the natural world, and the development of the scientific method) seems to have begun developing in Europe after the fall of Constatinople in 1453. (This is not meant to denigrate other cultures; it is simply a fact that science took hold in Europe -- which at the time was behind China and the Islamic world, scientifically -- and thereafter developed more quickly than it had anywhere else. The reasons for this are various -- see the excellent book Guns, Germs, and Steel.)

So science is developing in Europe, which happens to be dominated by the Christian religion. And although Christianity's belief system allowed for the existence of magic, the practice of magic was forbidden as being evil.

If you were a scientist, it was smart to describe your discoveries in non-magical terms. When witchcraft carries the death penalty, you don't want to be a witch doctor. Being a medical doctor is much safer.

Eventually, thanks in large part to scientific advancement, the European nations became the dominant nations of the world. (Again, no disrespect inteded for other cultures. This is merely historical fact.)

And, in encountering other cultures, the European scientific viewpoint spread to explain actual, working magic (such as medicine and chemistry), replacing the terminology of magic with the terminology of science. (I don't know anything about oriental martial arts magic, so I cannot comment on it.)

But if the European idea of science had not come to such dominance, then the actual, working magics would probably still retain magical terminology. Tradition!
 

That is a good point, but it brings up an interesting corollary.

Would these magical technologies have become demystified if not for 'science'?

There are strong advantages that accrue to the weilder of arcane knowledge, after all. It is rarely in the perceived interest of anyone holding arcane knowledge to demystify it for the masses.

Look at the way many doctors practice medicine today...despite the stated ethics of 'informed consent' and so forth. Heck, look at the way Wall Street does business, despite some pretty stringent laws on the subject.

But this is of course all a side argument. The issue is not whether the particular word 'magic' will be used (except in the case of a society in our future discovering 'magical' abilities...in which case I think we both agree the word 'magic' wouldn't be used). And of course, most HF takes place in distant worlds where English is not spoken at all (often this is explicit, such as when the writer has invented words that supposedly come from 'ancient Barbookian' or whatever).

As someone or other already pointed out, techne used to be a term that could be used for magic. Our modern word is so divorced from the idea of magic that most people actively resist the idea that magic would require technology (or even technique).

If a society developed some technology that had previously had very mystical overtones, and for whatever reason demystified it, would their 'modern' word for that technology still appropriately translate as 'magic'?

By that standard, we should translate ancient texts on math using the word 'magic' a lot to replace current math terms.

From a more literary conceit, fantasy worlds where none of the magic is 'magical' in the sense modern English speakers use the word isn't very good fantasy most of the time, particularly if the writer is so obtuse as to still call it 'magic'.