Re: Randomness from Westercon (Cost of Magic, As You Know Bob)

Patricia C. Wrede wrote:
"Sea Wasp" <seawaspObvious@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:46BAEFCE.8050905@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Patricia C. Wrede wrote:


*Your* metaphor is, apparently, technology. And apparently it's so fundamental to the way you see it that it seems trivial and obvious to you.

It's the way it is in ANY universe I've read. For some writers, they may ALSO be putting other stuff in it, but in any book with magic, magic does stuff. Why else would it be there? That's why it's trivially obvious. If magic didn't do some stuff for someone, you wouldn't have anything to write about with respect to magic.


In what manner does it do stuff, though? "It does stuff" applies equally well to weather and gravity as to technology similar things.

Weather isn't anything like technology. Or magic. Or psi.

Technology, or magic, or psi work ON the world. They're techniques as well as powers. Technology works on the world through using the "normal" powers of the world -- physics VS physics. Magic works by changing the facts of the world. Psi, in mine, works by tricking the facts of the world.

But your magic doesn't behave the way weather does -- it's not this gigantic natural phenomenon that is barely predictable, let alone controllable, and that can generate disasters from hurricanes to drought as well as the normal, useful alteration between sun and soaking rain that provides for crop growth.

If it was, no one would use it. Because they couldn't. Weather is a terrible parallel for magic, because it's a random, uncontrolled force. Magic is used.

And
*why* do people -- mages -- do stuff with your magic? Again, it doesn't seem to be because they *have* to -- because, like weather, it's an everyday, ubiquitous part of the world that you can only shut out of limited areas and control in those areas via the constant activity of things like heating and air-conditioning.

The power that is magic is everywhere, just like gravity is everywhere. Magic as it is USED is a tool, like anything else that's used to Do Stuff.


Techonology does stuff, but it's focused and predictable stuff -- or at least, the unpredictable things it does are generally unintentional design flaws or side-effects.

And in any story by anyone involving people who use magic, magic is focused and predictable in the areas that matter. If it wasn't, it could not be taught and would be to dangerous to use unless the only consequences of making a mistake were that nothing happened. But if the latter was common, again, it'd be unlikely to be used.

If the consequences for making a mistake were very large, again, no one would use it.

It's designed by people to do the stuff they want
done, and it causes problems largely because other people want other things done, or don't want those things done (and, of course, because of the design flaws and side-effects). Technology is a tool. So when you say "magic is just a tool," it sounds awfully much as if your fundamental underlying metaphor is technology. It's certainly not weather.

Magic could be a metaphor for weather if no one could use it, I suppose. If it was a random force that washed over the world and destroyed things (which it does to some extent in Elyvias and "Hell", a couple areas of Zarathan, my fantasy world). But if that's what it was, then there'd be no wizards.

Unless, of course, they had a nice, reliable way of using it -- as we DO use weather. Windmills, for instance. And then you're back to "tool".



This may be of greater concern to those of us who get bored rapidly by writing in the same universe. If you're going to spend the next 20 years writing in the same magicverse, you probably don't need to think much about this stuff, because it's not going to need to change.

I've already spent 30 years BUILDING the multiverse, I've barely started writing in it. :)


Every time I work up a new background, I'm excited and interested by it and I think I'll never get tired of it. And the most I've ever written in one setting is four books, and those short ones. Making it up is the fun, exciting part, for me; living with it while writing novel after novel gets old after four or five years, which is about what it takes for me to write three or four books.

I'll have to see if things change after someone actually allows me to write in one world for three or four books. :)



Though I've just recently started writing in something unconnected. Not from boredom, though.



Well, it may not be boredom in my case, even, so much as distractability. After three or four books, the imaginary universe is starting to feel comfortably familiar; it's lost that shiney new gleam. And along comes a notion for some other kind of universe, and my magpie mind goes "ooooh, shiney!" and I'm off.

Well, I just take the new universe, figure out how the natural law has to be to represent it, and stick it into my multiverse. My multiverse contains everything.


--
Sea Wasp
/^\
;;;
Live Journal: http://seawasp.livejournal.com

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