magic vs. reality

No. If fantasy was provably consistent with reality, it wouldn't be fantasy any more.

Who says Magic doesn't exist?

sunandshadow said:

Maybe this is a silly question, but does writing about a universe where magic works while believing that magic doesn't exist in reality bother anyone besides me? It makes me uncomfortable to think that my storyworld and all the plot events which depend on magic are a 'lie', meaning that they are provably inconsistant with reality.

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But all fiction is technically a lie. The things we write about never happened; if they did, we wouldn't be writing fiction. I don't really see a difference between a modern novel writer who writes about movie stars who don't get along and a fantasy writer who writes about wizards who don't get along. None of it happened; whether or not it could happen isn't really relevant.

Now, if I were reading a nonfiction book and suddenly the characters started working magic (I mean with results attributed to the magic and not to coincidence or some other normal process) I'd be disgusted and put the book down forever. But I have no problem reading a fiction book where impossible things happen, as long as they're presented in a realistic way. Book reality is different from, er, real reality.

no, it's not a lie because the reader knows, by very definition of the genre, it's 'fantasy.' you're not trying to decieve anyone against their will. where's the lie? if i told you staring at the mona lisa caused cancer, you wouldn't believe me, eh? i hope not, at least. if that was my story and you *wanted* to believe for the sake of entertainment or whatever, you'd accept the 'lie' for as long as the story lasted. you certainly wouldn't start a crusade against the louvre.

fantasy and sci-fi are just a setting to explore a character or situation that exists in real life. if you wanted to excercise a theme, you could do it practically in any genre you want, right? if you've done your job well, the 'reality' is there despite what dressing you put on it. stripped of the fantasy or science, there's reality, wouldn't you say?

i don't think it's absolutely imperative that you know and the reader has to realize that, say, a dragon has a philosophic symbology in our culture (as it's got one in the eastern culture). so does a camaro or ripped jeans. it could help if you're trying to get a point across. if not, then it's just entertainment and you hope you get the right combination. if not, you wind up with 'willow,' if so, 'star wars,' which are pretty comparable movies in their basic elements, eh? or it's more likely i'm exhausted after a long day and have no clue what i'm rambling about.

is it really magick that's the issue? on the surface, perhaps. deeper, though, and you can supplant that dragon with a mustang GT convertible, orcs with corrupt cops, the wize wizard with grandpa and the ultimate evil with the CEO high in his corporate headquarters. with fantasy and sci-fi, certain things are fascillitated easier than others, but i wonder what 'spell' can't be accomplished in 'reality' given a fair exchange of objects and characters from fantasy to real life.

so, no, since fiction is a shared lie, there's no need to feel like you're cheating anyone. i guess 'magick' is a different symptom of the same disease, but it's a disease the patient pays to have. the option is to quite fantasy, turn your back on magick, and write fiction set in contempary times and dress your 'truths' in a different pair of panties until there comes a time to start questioning even the world in that genre, too. i mean, the landmarks and correct placement of mail boxes manhattan doesn't make the world any more real, just 'correct.' the reality exists in telling a story about humans, doesn't make a difference if they're hobbits, ghosts or robots, does it?

sunandshadow said:

Maybe this is a silly question, but does writing about a universe where magic works while believing that magic doesn't exist in reality bother anyone besides me? It makes me uncomfortable to think that my storyworld and all the plot events which depend on magic are a 'lie', meaning that they are provably inconsistant with reality.

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On the other hand, people like me are baffled by what your question is, because I know magic exists.

Million dollars up for grabs if you can prove it. Much easier than writing.

Richard said:

Million dollars up for grabs if you can prove it. Much easier than writing.

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If I could prove it, I'd do it in a heartbeat. Unfortunately, it's one of those things I know in the sense that "I just know." You know, like some people say "I know god exists" or others say "I know so-and-so loves me." It just is. I've seen it in action, but it would be easy for naysayers to chalk the results up to happy coincidence.

Too bad, tho. I could use a million bucks.

If I could prove it, I'd do it in a heartbeat. Unfortunately, it's one of those things I know in the sense that "I just know." You know, like some people say "I know god exists" or others say "I know so-and-so loves me." It just is. I've seen it in action, but it would be easy for naysayers to chalk the results up to happy coincidence.

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Yep. Doing so right now in fact.

I am a strict behaviourist and materialist. I don't even believe in minds or souls. I write magic because I enjoy it. I also write about good people getting everything they want by being virtuous, destined lovers meeting and science reversing all the damage weve done to the planet. It's fiction, the world can be anyway I want it to be. That's part of the fun. I don't happen to believe in magic but I sure as hell would like it to exist and writing lets me spend some time in that world and take a few passengers along for the ride.

p.s. I thik the desire for magic is one of those truths.

sunandshadow said:

All fiction is technically a lie, but it's supposed to have a core of truth that speaks to human existence...

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That's not the magic, that's the characters. The real reason anyone picks up a book isn't to see how the author designed his or her magic system, it's to see what happens to the people in the story. All the rest is just decoration.

Is there some rule, written or unwritten, that says stories pigeonholed into the genre fantasy must contain magic? Or that science fiction not contain any?

I just finished reading Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town, Cory Doctorow's latest. Splashed on the cover, superimposed over a Star Trek communicator badge-like swoosh are the words Sci Fi. The publisher (of the copy I read; Doctorow makes the text of the novel available free) is Tor. Although I generally trust Tor's judgement regarding the distinction between science fiction and fantasy, I'm not sure they hit it correctly in describing this book. There is little hard science--what there is deals with computer networks--and much that might be considered magical, if not downright magic--the protagonists mother is a washing machine, one of the characters has wings. I dunno. It took me a couple days to get a quarter of the way into the book, and a day and a half to finish it. Whatever the genre of the book, I liked it.

P.S. Now if I'd only read all of the link I included above: there, Cory Doctorow explains his idea of the book's genre: "... I've been calling it a techie contemporary fantasy -- contemporary fantasy being the label commonly applied to magic realist fiction when written by North American popular authors..."

I'm by no means an expert, but here's my advice if you want it.

Don't worry too much about throwing magic into your world. Just be sure it's consistent. For example, if a wizard in your story only knows fire spells, don't have him somehow cast an ice spell at a fire monster he meets later on, unless you've established that he can also cast ice spells moderately. Otherwise people will get confused, and then will question "how did he cast an ice spell?

I find this website to be extremely helpful. Maybe it'll help you out as well:

http://www.watt-evans.com/lawsoffantasy.html

Again, be consistent, and people may not even realize it. The main trick (according to the website) is that you'll want to have "rules" and boundaries for your magic system. Otherwise, what's to stop the hero from just casting a spell that turns all of his foes into bugs, where he can then just squish them (you could do it, but it would be a very boring story). Have your magic system complement the story, not be an excuse for an easy way out of a battle. If you give your hero too many powers, the story will be less interesting overall (unless he can't use them all the time either, which would make it more interesting. But again, point that out ahead of time, so the hero can only cast his invulnerability spell when there's a full moon or something).



Going to an extreme here (but hopefully it helps make more sense of what I'm trying to say), but for example, look at the movie Matrix Reloaded (I know, it's not "magic", but for the sake of this thread, let's say it is). In it, the main character Neo, can fly without trouble. Then he gets into a fight with the Smith agent, and there's a cool fight scene where he fights like a hundred of them (they do show how he makes copies of himself at least), all looking exactly like Smith. Neo's kicking butt, so Smith decides to "zerg" him with more copies ("zerg" meaning rush him with a lot of numbers. It's a popular term with gamers, and taken from StarCraft in case you're wondering, where the species known as zerg simply throw huge numbers to defeat their foes. I thought it's a funny but appropiate word to use here).

When Neo realizes it's pointless to fight, he just flies off. While it is an interesting fight scene to watch, if Neo can fly, why didn't he just do it at the start of the fight? Would've saved a lot of time (and money, so that they didn't have to paste Smith's face all over those extras hehe), and it didn't work very well for me (what I would've done is have those smiths be destroyable, and as Neo's kicking their butts, one of them realizes that it's pointless to fight, and runs off, knowing that they need to gather a larger force to subdue Neo, instead of just throwing more and more bodies at him like in a video game with infinite spawning enemies hehe. That would've certainly explained why everyone's a smith by the end of the third movie. Alternatively, I wouldn't of given Neo the ability to fly till later in the movie, and he has to escape a hundred smiths chasing him with his wits rather than just flying away).

We live in a universe built out of probability at its most basic levels. We live in a universe governed by the Heisenberg Uncertainty principle and the laws of quantum mechanics. We live in a universe where it is impossible to disprove anything absolutely. Why not believe in magic?

Belief in magic offers one participation in a universe of endless possibilities...disbelief offers one a universe of strict cause and effect where one has no control over anything. Why not believe in magic?

To me the universe is such a magical place ... I see magic everywhere ...

Who here can disprove the existence of magic?

Why not believe in magic?

In storytelling you can use magic without believing in it and without your audience believing in it -- it's called suspension of disbelief. It's not a lie. Go for it.

diana

I believe at the level you're speaking of, Diana, it's less a belief in magic than a semantics argument. I agree with many things you say, but I don't believe in magic. Call it something else and I would have no problem with it, I think.

I believe in Superman.

All fiction is technically a lie, but it's supposed to have a core of truth that speaks to human existence...

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I think that readers to look to fiction, especially of the more fantastical or darker variety, to map their own reactions to places they will never go. And by 'places' I mean locations, but more importantly, corners of their own minds. Some people are wired with a greater curiousity to explore "what if" and if they are not inclined to, or particularly competent at, drawing up their own scenarios then they pay us to do it for them!

I think fiction is less a lie than a key to a locked door. The story, the key and the locked door are all constructs that we've made up to diagram our internal experience. I see no need to defend these mental expeditions.

So conjure away!

if i'm not mistaken, the issue is that since magick in it's non-esoteric sense (i.e. not 'look at the magick of that sunrise!') doesn't exist, then the universal truths, for lack of a better term, can't be real b/c the laws of that universe isn't real. i might agree were we talking about the physics of magick vs. proven laws of the universe (which almost begs of a religion vs. science debate). followed to your version of a logical conclusion, there can therefore be no human truth that can be derived out of a world with completely fictitious laws. did i get that close? broken down, 'garbage in, garbage out.' can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear, eh?

of course, historically magick can be the basis of how we get to the core of human truths, right? and that, note, is when magick wasn't some esoteric thought, rather the basis of actual, honest to goodness truth in how the universe functions. were those guys lying to a lesser degree? not really, i don't think so. they certainly had no emperical evidence that would stand up as anything other than anecdotal. magick and magickal beings aren't meant to be taken literally, but what it and they represent are (hopefully) and were meant to represent something philosophically*, and in *that* therein lies the greater human truth. there's no intention to lie by using fantastic creatures and methodologies in your or their wonderlands, they're merely expressions of greater meanings condensed into one convenient (and entertaining-- i'd venture to say a humourless philosopher is poor in more ways than one) package. during the course of thousands of years, the meanings are lost to us by and large, and now a serpent is just a serpent to some of us. we might not even know why we use that serpent in a story today, but somehow, at the same time, we're compelled to do so a lot of the time.

so, in all reality, all marketting and publishing issues aside, by telling the story *without* magick, you're actually RISKING the truth. (should i have written propaganda, or what?)




* a lot of people feel as if philosophy is a means to disprove God. on the contrary, philosophy often brings the philosopher closer to a belief in God.

Well, I'm really a science fiction writer, so I may not be the best person to ask. *But,* why not expand from a belief such as Alchemy, and create a magic system around that?

Of course, you could also give it a different name, but still try to build a system around that belief, and vice versa.

If we live in a universe based on total probability, then there is a perfect 50/50 chance that magic does or doesn't exist. In the same way that you can't disprove anything, you can't prove anything either.

Using the simple observation that true magic just doesn't happen in today's world (and if it does I'm sure it would not be so elusive considering a celebrity on some far away island still manages to get in the tabloids), the probability scales tip ever so slightly into the "does not exist" section. If it happened every day, logic would dictate that it tips ever so slightly into the "does exist" section. But I've never seen magic.

So even if we disregard all probability, the argument for magic not existing is still stronger than its defense.

then again, with alchemy you get deep into philosophy. some alchemists were merely trying to achieve making gold, but many others considered it a philsophic quest to achieve purity of soul. creating gold had nothing to do with it for some. francis bacon was an alchemist, if i recall, who was rather wishy-washy on what he wanted out of alchemy. (i'd have to look this up again, so don't take my word for it right now.) the philosophic symbology found in alchemy is no less shallow than you'd find in, say, greek art.

there is a scientific side to alchemy, which at one time had a lot to do with superstition, wives tales, and belief in 'magick' (for example, the idea that moonlight had a magickal ability to transform one thing into something else). we owe a lot of real science to alchemy, though, beyond some of the ridiculous experiments some of 'em tried basically amounting to the hope that 'magick' would make gold from some metal.

it was the quest for 'the philosopher's stone' that had the more esoteric thoughts, afair. (you might remember nicolaus flamel (sp) from harry potter, but he was a real person who supposedly *did* create a philosopher's stone, and there are several anecdotal stories around about people running into him... a 100 years after his 'death.')

i'm glad you mentioned alchemy. it's a wonderful mix of reality vs. magick and really a perfect example of how and why 'magick' has benefitted our truths. not to mention why we shouldn't give up on 'magick,' existant or not. other than religion, i can't think of anything else you can say the same thing for that's got the same 'magic vs. reality'.

loquax said:

If we live in a universe based on total probability, then there is a perfect 50/50 chance that magic does or doesn't exist. In the same way that you can't disprove anything, you can't prove anything either.

Using the simple observation that true magic just doesn't happen in today's world (and if it does I'm sure it would not be so elusive considering a celebrity on some far away island still manages to get in the tabloids), the probability scales tip ever so slightly into the "does not exist" section. If it happened every day, logic would dictate that it tips ever so slightly into the "does exist" section. But I've never seen magic.

So even if we disregard all probability, the argument for magic not existing is still stronger than its defense.

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Your argument, while appearing perfectly logical, isn't. You begin by saying that if we live in a universe of total probability...

There is no if, my friend, according to quantum mechanics, we do live in a universe where everything is basically made out of probability. That is a scientific fact.

Then you drag out everybody's favorite, the strawman argument. It is not logical to assume that just because we live in a universe of probability that there is a 50/50 chance for the existence of magick. And, BTW, according to the rules of logic, it is possible to prove that things happen, but impossible to disprove that things don't happen.

Your simple argument that true magic doesn't happen in today's world because you haven't seen it, is also logically unsound. You've never seen radio waves, either, but I bet you believe in them. You've never seen atoms or electrons, but you probably believe in them. It is possible that you don't sense the magick around you because of the phenomenon of bias of the observer. It is a basic fact of reality on the quantum level that the observer affects whatever is being observed. It is also a fact that human observers maintain a bias based on their own experiences and prejudices. So perhaps, if you don't believe in magic, you are unable to see it work in the world around you.

The world you see bares little relation to our world's fundemental nature as science has discovered it to be.

Whereas you choose to close your eyes to the infinite possibility of creation, others who are open to such possibilities live in a world of richness and meaning. Please, bring your skepticism, but keep your heart and mind open to possibilities, otherwise you will never see them. To exclude the possbility of magick in one's world view, is to exclude the possbility of magick from one's experience.

Maybe, I'm wrong. Maybe not. The way I see it...why not believe in magick?