Re: Pure Time Travel Stories?
- From: "rja.carnegie@xxxxxxxxxx" <rja.carnegie@xxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: 22 Sep 2005 16:44:41 -0700
Tina Hall wrote:
> Rja.carnegie@xxxxxxxxxx <rja.carnegie@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> > Nancy Lebovitz wrote:
> >> Tina Hall <Tina_Hall@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> >>>For a while now an idea for a story has been spooking around in
> >>>my head, an earth where magic is real, right from the start.
> >>>(Say, for example, accessible for anyone with a certain level of
> >>>consciousness. Without that you'd just end up with lots of
> >>>randomly exercised magic.) It would have to have a completely
> >>>different history - no Roman Empire for example. The question
> >>>is, how is one going to do any references at all? (What I mean,
> >>>for example, is, how would anyone know that it's set in what
> >>>here is Italy? You wouldn't even know _when_ it's taking place,
> >>
> >> Supply a map (as someone else suggested) or if you want to
> >> reward attentive readers, then have the story drop enough clues
> >> about the physical setting.
>
> > Yeah. Distinctive geography.
>
> Yes. Apart from differences caused by magic.
>
> > People will probably still build cities in similar places for
> > geographical and economic reasons,
>
> No. You have to fit in the magic as a reason. Take only the USA for
> example. No European settlers a few hundred years ago. Whoever lives
> there got there at another time, and built their places for their
> reasons.
>
> Wasn't Las Vegas founded by gold-rush somethingorother? Is there
> anything that'd lure people that aren't interested in gold? (Just as an
> example. Say, with magic, gold is next to useless for whatever are their
> purposes, and they have other means to extract whatever they are after.)
>
> > use the same natural resources (vineyards, seal hunting, etc), so
> > if you play up the cues then you can carry it.
>
> It's a different enough world that there's no reason that that is the
> same as here, even the industries would be different. There's also the
> possibility that wine from those regions wouldn't taste any good,
> because of magic.
Magical pollution? Interesting. Incidentally, Larry Niven did some of
this, too, but with the conceit that it was set in European history or
prehistory, I think(?) There was magic but it was a limited resource,
and it's all been used up and it doesn't come back. At one stage a
de-magicking device was used as a weapon, or a counter-measure.
In general, I accept that the ability to use magic - which presumably
can do some things but not others - will mean that some of the time,
people will want different things compared to our world; fertile ground
for mandrakes, fo instance. But sometimes they'll want the same things
that we did. Anyway, we're trying to /solve/ your hypothetical
storytelling problem.
I'm not sure about the "when" issue. A different set of civilisations
to ours would probably develop at a different rate at various times. I
can suggest one fairly well-known event - the Crab Nebula supernova,
which I think was observed in AD 1054. Working it into the plot may be
tricky. You could tease it for a while, believed (falsely?) as omen of
a time of tribulation, sparking wars, and then let someone get a good
enough look at it to describe it and identify it to anyone who wants to
know. This would be a good place to steal nearly word-for-word from
contemporary observations. (I think the actual words are Chinese!)
Maybe you can even use an excuse to put in an epilogue 950 years later,
i.e. now.
Randall Garrett's "Lord Darcy" stories just use Christian dates. The
theory of magic was worked out in the Middle Ages after, IIRC off the
top of my head, Richard II survived in the Crusades. Or didn't.
Whatever. Anyway, stories had dates like 1965. They'd just invented
the telephone and the flashlight. The flashlight worked with
enchantment instead of vacuum to prevent the lamp filament from
burning, and they didn't know how the telephone (teleson) worked at
all. They had a substantially different belief system.
> > And you can cheat and have similar place names and languages, why not?
>
> That's one I've been thinking about, but it only goes so far. There's no
> reason the places have the same name when the split in history was
> around the time fire was first used deliberately.
>
> > No one's gonna come after you with a baseball bat, probably.
>
> They might just call the thing 'club', too.
>
> > an island on the east coast of North America is guarded by a statue of
> > a traditionally dressed wizard, a mighty man with a hat on...
>
> Why on earth would they have a statue there? Or even a city? That's the
> very kind of stuff that should be different. Otherwise it's just lame.
Coincidence. Or it's just a good place to put a big statue. Put the
colossus on Rhode Island if you prefer. I just wanted to recreate
Man-Hat-On Island. ;-)
If it's a river harbour, why isn't that a good place to put an early
settlement? That's what I'm getting at. I guess that the harbour is a
safe dock for ships that work at sea, fishing, trading, and the river
provides convenient transport inland. Remember witches can't cross
water ;-)
> > Can animals work magic in this story? (Yes, I know it's
> > hypothetical.)
>
> No. That and why was mentioned in the post Nancy replied to.
Well, I already said I think that's unfair to the animals. It also
makes homo sapiens a bit more special than we deserve to be, I think.
Why not make the people Neanderthals? You don't have to /tell/ anyone.
Maybe be subtle with the visual descriptions of people.
On the other hand, magic-wielding Cro-Magnons can really kick Muggle
Neanderthals out of anywhere the C-Ms care to invade.
Or, early humans or our recent cousins can be the first species to use
magic /imaginatively/, just as we actually have used the resources of
the natural world more and more imaginatively.
> > I wonder whether our earliest civilisations can be compelled to
> > exist in this story.
>
> No, they would be different from the start.
>
> > [...] If the ancient Greeks can use magic, maybe they can stay
> > independent, too.
>
> They were no ancient Greeks.
Well, presumably /someone/ lives where ancient Greece should be. They
may not have slavery or a tradition of public debate.
Incidentally, I forget, is Kurt Busiek's "Arrowsmith", with I forget
how I promised to describe the contribution by Lawrence Watt-Evans,
already on your list of book suggestions that you don't like? This one
is set in a Europe with a population of humans and magical beings...
and a continent-wide war. Places have similar but different names
(Tejas in America is its own country?), and I think the man in the
street doesn't create much magic but can use magical objects.
.
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- Re: Pure Time Travel Stories?
- From: rja.carnegie@xxxxxxxxxx
- Re: Pure Time Travel Stories?
- From: Tina Hall
- Re: Pure Time Travel Stories?
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