Donny Bruso
Mystagogue
@Chilari Makes sense, now I just wish I could remember where I heard the line ripped off, lol.
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How much science in your fantasy?
- Thread starter Ophiucha
- Start date
Certainly! I have and always will say that all writing is subjective. But isn't it part of the fun of internet forums to Go round and round with arguments that have no effect on each other?
The only point I have is that when you say that there 'isn't much magic there' you are mistaking the lack of fire and explosions for the lack of magic. I like to believe that Gandalf and the Balrog (and many of the other battles) were actually full of magic. It was just elegant, subtle, and for most purposes invisible.
Also, as you say you have a deeply buried thread of cynism (which I have as well, but only for the real world. I suspend it for reading fiction - to an extent), what would you say IS a good use of magic, or a good magic system?
And of course, yes. I am a huge Tolkien fan. Other details of Tolkien have already been discussed, so I won't bother bringing anything else up (no matter how much of an urge I have to try and clarify the details that I love so much).
@Opiucha: Ah, in that case (with the "Pern is Fantasy" guy) you can rest easy knowing that he is demonstrably wrong. A rare thing on the interwebs...
On another note, does anyone else do a lot of thinking on how magic would have affected the growth of technology? Being able to ignore certain small physical laws even in small cases would change everything. If the wizards can bring rain, who needs irrigation? It's also fun to examine whether this makes magic and technology 'equivalent' or if there is an advantage in one or the other. Being that I usually try not to make magic just another science, I come down on the side of technology and learning being better on the balance of it. Of course, that doesn't mean much to the wizard who can, himself, fly.
Donny Bruso
Mystagogue
@Telcontar - Like I said in a previous post, I'm not looking for an actual magic 'system'. I don't really need to know how it works, I just want to see it happen 'onstage' so to speak. I don't want Gandalf to run down the stairs & say he put a closing spell on the door and it failed, I want to be up there in the stairwell with him, seeing him strain, sweat, and struggle to keep it closed. If the spell fails, I want to see the door explode into splinters and the look of complete shock on his face as he runs for his life down the stairs.
To me it's just being more descriptive about what is happening in your story. To me, not showing magic in your work is like not describing some horrible smell your character encounters. sure you can say 'the room smelled bad' and get away with it, but it's more effective if you say 'the room stank. A commingling reek of armpit sweat, urine, stale beer, and rancid potatoes. The foul odor was so thick it coated the sinuses and tongue, imparting a taste even more foul than the stench.'
And I'm not saying that magic has to be fire and explosions. Obviously there are more elegant applications. Perhaps wizards have evolved magical techniques to assist with construction, or to enhance crop growth time/yield. Maybe they have focused on mental techniques, enhancing memory, or sharing memories like internet videos among people. There is just about anything you can accredit to magic with the proper imagination. I'm not saying use it as a deus ex machina, which irritates people, myself included, but if you are going to include it in a story, why keep it in the background? Let it have some flash and have some fun with it is my opinion.
To me it's just being more descriptive about what is happening in your story. To me, not showing magic in your work is like not describing some horrible smell your character encounters. sure you can say 'the room smelled bad' and get away with it, but it's more effective if you say 'the room stank. A commingling reek of armpit sweat, urine, stale beer, and rancid potatoes. The foul odor was so thick it coated the sinuses and tongue, imparting a taste even more foul than the stench.'
And I'm not saying that magic has to be fire and explosions. Obviously there are more elegant applications. Perhaps wizards have evolved magical techniques to assist with construction, or to enhance crop growth time/yield. Maybe they have focused on mental techniques, enhancing memory, or sharing memories like internet videos among people. There is just about anything you can accredit to magic with the proper imagination. I'm not saying use it as a deus ex machina, which irritates people, myself included, but if you are going to include it in a story, why keep it in the background? Let it have some flash and have some fun with it is my opinion.
Mdnight Falling
Mystagogue
the scene you're talking about Donny.. actually DID happen from Gandalf's POV in the book... the entire time he tried to keep the door shut was detailed until the others ran down the stairs... but I agree the movies while good could have done better in representing the books...
OH I remember why I wanted to post today! I have the PERFECT thing where magic and technology are merged and it didn't even dawn on me until this thread came about LOL. There's an Anime called Wolf's Rain. It has both magic and technology. Though I think technology may actually overpower the magic in the series.
Anyway, in Wolf's rain you have wolves.. The animal. But people don't know they're wolves. Wolves have become a legend or a myth somehow and they're all thought to be extinct. They don't tell why I don't think but the wolves ended up going into hiding. hey hid right infront of the peoples' eyes but willing themselves to make people see them as human. There's no technology in THAT part by the way... that's one of the magic parts... The wolves are on a mission to find a place called Paradise, which may or may not exist.
The technology part is Chezza... The flower maiden. A completely genetic engineered "human" like being made out of Lunar Flowers that reacts to wolf blood and knows the way to Paradise. Really it's a great series.. Then again I may be biased cause I love wolves in general. But yeah I knew I'd watched something that combined magic and technology to the point you almost forgot the two had been joined..
Another one would be Eureka 7, but the only magic part I found in that Manga/Anime was at the end when Eureka and Ren merge into one spirit being
OH I remember why I wanted to post today! I have the PERFECT thing where magic and technology are merged and it didn't even dawn on me until this thread came about LOL. There's an Anime called Wolf's Rain. It has both magic and technology. Though I think technology may actually overpower the magic in the series.
Anyway, in Wolf's rain you have wolves.. The animal. But people don't know they're wolves. Wolves have become a legend or a myth somehow and they're all thought to be extinct. They don't tell why I don't think but the wolves ended up going into hiding. hey hid right infront of the peoples' eyes but willing themselves to make people see them as human. There's no technology in THAT part by the way... that's one of the magic parts... The wolves are on a mission to find a place called Paradise, which may or may not exist.
The technology part is Chezza... The flower maiden. A completely genetic engineered "human" like being made out of Lunar Flowers that reacts to wolf blood and knows the way to Paradise. Really it's a great series.. Then again I may be biased cause I love wolves in general. But yeah I knew I'd watched something that combined magic and technology to the point you almost forgot the two had been joined..
Another one would be Eureka 7, but the only magic part I found in that Manga/Anime was at the end when Eureka and Ren merge into one spirit being
- Thread starter
- #25
Ophiucha
Dark Lord
I guess I can elaborate on my own story, since others have begun doing so.
In my story, magic is created by the presence of the Eldest (or the Oldest, people refer to them differently depending on how they regard them). The Eldest are these draconian sea beasts (save one which lives in the mountains of the Occident) of nigh invincible strength and immortal lifespans. They hibernate for hundreds of years at a time, but when they are awake, they cause great havoc upon all worlds (including Earth). Their skin shedded long ago to create the land, and the smallest flakes of their inert magic created the faeries. A faery is nothing more than magic itself. But the world was as dead as the skin that it came from, and so the faeries created dragons, magicless beings to populate the world. The Eldest were displeased with this, and so created elves, creatures which were tied to the Eldest, yet could only use magic via faeries. The process is ambiguous, but it involves lining their ears with faery dust. It created a balance in the world, and it gave the Eldest some beings to mess with in their home world. Magic, here, is definitely not much of a science. The only rule of it is that as it becomes more powerful, it becomes more specialized. At your 'peak', a water mage (as an example) could lift the water from a lake, but before she is popular enough to lift the sea, it begins to work against her. She goes to lift the sea, yet she leaves behind her a pile of salt, sand, and sea dragons behind. She can ONLY manipulate water, and anything in it - any impurity - is left outside of it. This works in various ways depending on the magic, of course.
As for technology, that ended up a bit odd. Their technology was somewhere between Renaissance and Industrial Revolution, depending on where in the Kingdom you were, up until about four decades ago. When the Eldest awoke from their latest hibernation, there was a new species on Earth - "humans" - who were remarkably similar to elves. They took to Earth, and it created passages between the two. Earth moves forward in time far greater than Mercury (Mercury is the name of this world), so if a man from, say, 1850 comes through one year, two years later, it could be a woman from 1865. Paridell, a sort of warlord in the Occident (where these passages tend to open), makes deals with humans in exchange for information on their world. He will get them jobs, tutors, and all the necessities for life. Most agree to it, but obviously, most are only so knowledgeable. He gets bits and pieces of information. A man may come through who is a zeppelin engineer, or a woman may come through who can only really draw one and explain the basics. Technology evolves far faster than he can keep up with it, as well. He may at last master the steam engine only to find that technology obsolete by the time another human speaks with him. This leads to some seriously skewed technology. Mostly with a steampunk feel - clockwork robots and steam-powered computers - but by the time the story starts, he's already gotten into the diesel-powered technology and the year on Earth is about 2160.
In my story, magic is created by the presence of the Eldest (or the Oldest, people refer to them differently depending on how they regard them). The Eldest are these draconian sea beasts (save one which lives in the mountains of the Occident) of nigh invincible strength and immortal lifespans. They hibernate for hundreds of years at a time, but when they are awake, they cause great havoc upon all worlds (including Earth). Their skin shedded long ago to create the land, and the smallest flakes of their inert magic created the faeries. A faery is nothing more than magic itself. But the world was as dead as the skin that it came from, and so the faeries created dragons, magicless beings to populate the world. The Eldest were displeased with this, and so created elves, creatures which were tied to the Eldest, yet could only use magic via faeries. The process is ambiguous, but it involves lining their ears with faery dust. It created a balance in the world, and it gave the Eldest some beings to mess with in their home world. Magic, here, is definitely not much of a science. The only rule of it is that as it becomes more powerful, it becomes more specialized. At your 'peak', a water mage (as an example) could lift the water from a lake, but before she is popular enough to lift the sea, it begins to work against her. She goes to lift the sea, yet she leaves behind her a pile of salt, sand, and sea dragons behind. She can ONLY manipulate water, and anything in it - any impurity - is left outside of it. This works in various ways depending on the magic, of course.
As for technology, that ended up a bit odd. Their technology was somewhere between Renaissance and Industrial Revolution, depending on where in the Kingdom you were, up until about four decades ago. When the Eldest awoke from their latest hibernation, there was a new species on Earth - "humans" - who were remarkably similar to elves. They took to Earth, and it created passages between the two. Earth moves forward in time far greater than Mercury (Mercury is the name of this world), so if a man from, say, 1850 comes through one year, two years later, it could be a woman from 1865. Paridell, a sort of warlord in the Occident (where these passages tend to open), makes deals with humans in exchange for information on their world. He will get them jobs, tutors, and all the necessities for life. Most agree to it, but obviously, most are only so knowledgeable. He gets bits and pieces of information. A man may come through who is a zeppelin engineer, or a woman may come through who can only really draw one and explain the basics. Technology evolves far faster than he can keep up with it, as well. He may at last master the steam engine only to find that technology obsolete by the time another human speaks with him. This leads to some seriously skewed technology. Mostly with a steampunk feel - clockwork robots and steam-powered computers - but by the time the story starts, he's already gotten into the diesel-powered technology and the year on Earth is about 2160.
Mdnight Falling
Mystagogue
Wow! That sounds awesome Ophiucha!