How Many Magicians?

[marycatelli]

Besides consideration of how magic works, one question about it will do much to determine the tenor of a fantasy word:  how thick does magic lie on the ground?  Can every housewife spin a spell to keep her milk from spoiling?  Or are there a handful of things of magic in the whole wide world?  If indeed, there are any -- some imaginary world fantasies actually manage to pull it off with no magic at all.

On one hand, limiting the magic has many uses.  You can keep it dramatic and wonderful that way.  You can keep it from giving your characters too many easy techniques to get around the obstacles.

On the other hand, plentiful magic does help with the world-building if you want to avoid an ugly realistic pseudo-medieval setting.  Any sufficient advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology -- except that you can make it feel like magic, with all the potential of wonder there.  You can make the world itself entirely filled with wonder.  And it does help with the Mary Sue, whose problem is often that she has magic, magic, magic! and no one else does.  Plentiful magic means that your hero is not a special little snowflake just because he has some, or even a lot.  And your villains can load up on it, too, giving him more obstacles that he can't get around.

From my random inspection of the fantasy field, it seems that the first set of advantages works better; books with low magic tend to be better.  Maybe I just have an odd sample.

What are your favorite high and low magic worlds?  Do you think one of them works better -- and why?

Part of

Comments

[cj-ruby.livejournal.com]

I like it when magic is rare and dangerous. When even those who use it treat it with respect like a hazardous commodity. You can also treat technology that way. I really like the way Roger Zelazny handled magic and tech in “Changling”.

It seems that in fantasy worlds less is more. When you do encounter magic it's better if it turns out to be a marvel. My favorite book of the last decade, “Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell”, really strikes the right note for my taste.

I've even run a few fantasy RPGs with a twist on magic use, inspired by Larry Niven's “The Magic Goes Away”. It takes a bit of rules manipulation, but the players seem to appreciate the fact that magic is scarce and at times unreliable.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

One thing I liked about Jonathan Strange was precisely when magic started breaking through--when children started seeing messages in the stones, and things.

(It was an awesome book)

[marycatelli]

Oh, yes, a wonderful book. Of course, all the ladled on mundane detail, up front, made it easier to detail the magic in lavish detail.

[marycatelli]

Unreliable can be important -- mechanical magic doesn't smell magical.

And rare does make it easier to make it wonderful, because then you only have to inspire wonder in a few passages -- and it does benefit from the contrast.

[dirigibletrance.livejournal.com]

High Magic: Middle Earth. Magic was everywhere, but in most places it was not obvious and flashy, instead it tended to permeate the atmosphere and place. Rivendell and Lorien were huge examples of this, with the power of the elven rings changing the very reality around everyone, although in a way subtle enough that they didn't notice it unless they really payed attention.

The Morgul Vale and the Dark Tower were another, darker example of this, where the magic drove mortal men's minds to terror and madness, swallowing light and hope.

[marycatelli]

On the other hand, the people who could actually use it were rare, rare, rare. Gandalf wasn't even human.

[dirigibletrance.livejournal.com]

Yes, that too. Magic was something that was largely outside of human control.

The few humans that could use magic of any kind, even just a little bit (healing with hands, mostly) had both Maiar and Elven blood in them, which is where the power came from.

But the magical beings didn't call what they did magic, to them it was just their "craft" or "art". It was just something they did, and some of them were better at it than others. I wonder if Tolkien wanted to imply that later, in the age of Man, our technology is the "magic" of mankind.

[marycatelli]

Considering the role technology plays in the trilogy -- in Saruman's stronghold, at the mill in the Shire -- if so, it's not a very flattering view of the "magic" of mankind.

[varianor.livejournal.com]

I think it has to be considered in the context of the destruction that Tolkien witnessed in England after the end of the Great War. The "magic" of English life ended for him as the green countryside changed. You're also correct that it paints quite a metaphor of an ugly picture for technology.

[marycatelli]

Yeah, much fonder of the Arcadian countryside.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Thinking about what dirigibletrance said makes me think of how the magic I like feels to me like atmosphere or weather. Weather does strange, sometimes predictable, sometimes unpredictable things, and we can use it--but we can't control it.That's one style I like.

Another style I like is where creatures are, by their nature, magic, but that magic is not a do-anything magic--a magic related to what they are. River magic and water magic for river creatures, fire magic for fire creatures, etc.

Hmmm, I think there's lots of types I can like.

[marycatelli]

Magic that's like the air you breath has a lot of advantages. Such as not needing to infodump the rules so that the reader knows what your hero can do. And if your hero does use it, he will have to be clever and cunning and get it to do what he wants within its own nature. . . .

Many low magic advantages even in a high magic setting.

[arhyalon.livejournal.com]

I don't think it's the sample you have, I think it is a law of drama...low magic is easy to do, easy to make seem understandable, and easy to pull off.

Because we know the rules of reality, adding a little magic is easy to track. Adding a lot of magic makes things much harder, both in tracking (Example: (and this is from a book that does it's magic well) Why didn't the gov. in the Harry Potter universe use the truth serum more often? Why didn't they use it on baddies, or on Harry when they said he was lying? Answer: The author forgot she had it in her universe. Later, she made up a "fan save" but it should have been there in the story from the beginning.)

I have seen my husband moderate games set in high magical backgrounds that were absolutely fascinating and well-designed.

I've never seen anyone else, not in a novel or a roleplaying game pull off a high magic background without getting lost.

So, basically, many writers can write good low magic stories. Only a really excellent writer (in this area. Writers can be excellent at different things) can pull off a high magic background.)

[marycatelli]

The real logic flaw with the truth serum -- why didn't they use it on Sirius Black? Or on any other of the possible collaborators, possible curse victims?

[arhyalon.livejournal.com]

Exactly. The point is that tons of magic is really hard to keep track of.

That doesn't keep me from writing stories with tons of magic, but it does make it really much easier to write the other kind.

[marycatelli]

hey, that just makes it a challenge.

[marycatelli]

Come to think of it -- there's a writer whose books are much better in the first half than in the second. Because in the first she's introducing wonder after wonder -- and in the second she takes the wonders and tries to resolve some kind of plot out of them.

That can be a problem, too. You're juggling more things.

[starshipcat.livejournal.com]

Unfortunately, that could also describe a lot of science fiction authors too -- in the first half they introduce all these cool wonders, be they ancient artifacts or scientific breakthroughs or whatever, and in the second they madly scramble to bring them together to something that resembles a conclusion.

[marycatelli]

That's one reason why the much maligned quest story just keeps going and going and going. If the heart of the story (see below) is the wonders, it gives a reason for a picaresque novel, going from wonder to wonder without having to shoehorn them into the conclusion.

[kgbooklog.livejournal.com]

I've never seen anyone else, not in a novel or a roleplaying game pull off a high magic background without getting lost.

I think Steven Brust's Dragaera series and Jim Butcher's Codex Alera sextet did a good job of handling "everyone can do some magic". And I'm sure there are others I'm forgetting...

Lawrence Watt-Evans' Ethshar series is kind of middling magic; the talent needed to use a specific magic is pretty rare, but there are so many types of magic (8 to 15 depending on who you ask) that a sizable percentage of the population has a talent for something. See for example, Gresh's family (http://sonandfoe.com/notes-regarding-greshs-family/).

[marycatelli]

Brust's definitely does.

Though the Butcher series I've read is Dresden Files, suffering from the usual urban fantasy necessity of keeping the magic secret, which ensures low magic.

[barbarienne.livejournal.com]

I'm a fan of plentiful magic. But as arhyalon says, it's really, really hard to keep track of all the ramifications. You have the problem cutting both ways:

1. Author invents neat thing but fails to use it consistently. Readers say, "Why aren't your characters using that neat thing?" (The truth serum problem)

2. Author invents neat thing that is a total plot-breaker. Author is then forced to hobble neat thing lest it generate a "rocks fall, everyone dies" or force majeur instant ending.

(You get problem #2 in science fiction, where the sufficiently advanced technology always seems to fall victim to a plot-convenient power outage.)

My personal solution to this has been to treat magic like any other skill: everyone has it, but some are better at it than others. Put a maximum cap on it, and you have an intrinsic checks-and-balances setup.

[marycatelli]

I really like the everyone can use it approach. If only because I really, really, really loathe the special-little-snowflake approach, which is really common in fantasy.

[dirigibletrance.livejournal.com]

The was always happening, literally, in Stargate. Eventually the characters just started bringing spare Naquadah generators with them every time they stepped through the gate.

[marycatelli]

and then they needed a new good excuse

[swords-and-pens.livejournal.com]

Hiya,

Hope you don't mind if I jump in. I came here via a link from cj_ruby.

I think one thing that we aren't discussing is the function and nature of the magic in a world. Amount is all well and good, but it is only part of the equation. How magic is used, the kinds of functions in performs, the cost (or lack thereof) of the magic, the limitions and scope, whether it is "spell" based or something else...all of these have a huge impact on how magic will come across and be used in the story. It's possible to have a world where magic is thick on the ground, but of a nature where it isn't always very practical to use it (or may be down right hazardous); or where it has distinct social costs/restrictions/stratification; or whatever.

My point is, how the magic is placed in and interacts with the world is arguably as important as how much of magic you see. It seems like the assumption so far has been that high/common magic use = handy/powerful/common spells, but that's kind of a broad assumption (and very fantasty RPG-based*). If anything, in a world that has that much latent power lying about, I could see where very strict controls, or even methods of use, would exist, be they natural or imposed by man.

* = Not that I am disparaging RPGs. Used to play a lot, and even worked in the industry for a couple of years. But there is a common assumption about magic you tend to see in gaming that has spilled back into some fantasy, which is interesting since that is where gaming got a lot of it's initial magic ideas from in the first place. :)

[marycatelli]

the more the merrier!

The strict controls have the problem: who's watching the watchmen? Do they use the magic themselves in order to enforce the controls? Are they corruptible? Are they weak? Can they figure out if the magic's been tapped?

[swords-and-pens.livejournal.com]

That's assuming it is a person(s) who controls the magic. In such a case, all of your questions are very valid, and can become challenging depending on how much or little hand-waving you want to do in terms of describing how they work these things. But strict controls can be dicated by the world/magic system, too.

In a piece I recently (unfortunately) had to put aside, I basically had two different approaches to magic in use. One was rooted in the concept of change, while the other had fundamental order as it's foundation. The first effected permanent change at some level (shape changer *becomes* the thing it changed in to), while the latter dealt more with surface impact, leaving the core intact (shape changer only changes into the thing, but stays themself at base). Those are just quick & dirty examples, but if you take a moment to think about it, you can see how such a magic system could either be strict in its application, or flexible, depending on how you want to write and present it. The key, of course, is staying consistant, as has been noted earlier.

I think that you can more easily run into "Truth Serum" issues if your initial magical premise is either fuzzy or weak. This is where strong world buliding pays off. If you know how things are supposed to work across the spectrum, it becomes harder to stray from your own rules.

[marycatelli]

I wouldn't call limits the system put on itself as "controls" because controls implies intent.

[marycatelli]

On the other hand, "strong world building" can often squelch the imagination. Yes, if you run wild and throw in lots of fun stuff, it can cause problems. But you do end up with lots of fun stuff.

[cj-ruby.livejournal.com]

If you think about it we live in a “high magic” magic society. We have instant communications, we have all but “instantaneous” transportation to nearly anywhere in the world, if one can afford it, and vicarious instantaneous transportation by watching our televisions & internet, if one can't. Food is plentiful and we have an endless variety. If we feel ill we reach for magical pills that make us feel better. And so on. When I read “high magic” fantasy, it often, seems all so familiar because it tends to emulate our own world.

With high or low magic fantasy worlds the magic may be wondrous or mundane, but the key to a good story remains the same. Do I care about the person or people the tale revolves around. If I do, all the bells and whistles or lack thereof don't make a whole lot of difference. This may be why less magic is more successful and easier to write. It isn't as distracting for the reader and it keeps focus on the heart of the story..

[marycatelli]

Kinda depends on what the heart of the story is.

[cj-ruby.livejournal.com]

True.

[houseboatonstyx.livejournal.com]

Hm, and in our high technology world, one limiting factor is not having the time or the brainpower to figure out what all the gadgets can do. Or why they seem to be fumbling. Or where the important data went. Or where the important gadget went....

[marycatelli]

Or not taking them seriously enough to bother

[cj-ruby.livejournal.com]

In a high tech or high magic world wouldn't one tend to take them for granted? The first time an amazing tech is displayed the world watches, but after a few times it becomes mundane, unless there's an accident or catastrophe. (The Apollo missions for example.)

We take the remote for our TV for granted until we misplace it. Then we are lost and frustrated without it.

[marycatelli]

That's a challenge for the writer.

You get stuff like Operation Chaos where part of the fun is we are surprised by the mundane items of the narrator's world.

and one advantage of a quest or other mobile story is that the character can always be seeing stuff that's new to him, too.

[houseboatonstyx.livejournal.com]

Surprising the reader with things that are common in the fiction world was handled beautifully in Xanth.

The POV character was often encountering something surprising to him. But also, what seemed commonplace to him was made worth wordage for some other reason. For example, the opening: "It wasn't easy, being the child of an ogre and a nymph."

[houseboatonstyx.livejournal.com]

I was thinking mostly of game balance: limiting the characters' actual functioning even though powerful items are common in their world.

But also, a tool being lost or malfunctioning would justify the POV character reviewing details the character knows but which will be new to the reader.

[marycatelli]

Well, there's always the difference in a game between a Monty Haul campaign and power-gaming. Powerful items can be countered by equal and opposite items. In writing terms, the character equivalent to a Monty Haul campaing is, of course, Mary Sue.

But malfunctioning does indeed give a good excuse for info-dumping. I may steal that. . . .

[varianor.livejournal.com]

Interesting discussion. Thank you for posting it! (I followed the link down from cj_ruby's LJ while taking a break from writing a kobolds in the Old West adventure. :D ) One subject that I have pondered off an on over 25 years of writing a few scattered pieces of fantasy fiction and running many fantasy games is your postulate. The answer is that It Depends.

Rather than use the difficult to define "high" and "low" magic terms (insert "brow" after both and it takes on a funny context - though I mean no offense since they are quite common discussion terms, used properly here), I propose a slightly different taxonomy, one with two sets of qualifiers:

Frequency of Magic
rare - only a few have access
available - significant individuals can work magic; it may be semi-common in everyday life
abundant - anyone can do it, and it's everywhere

Technologicness
One of the divides that I see tends to be a comparison of magic to technology. How close it the one to the other? Is it possible to replicate or to at least approximate technology with magic?
classic - magic resembles that of the past - rituals and rites with fetishes and charms and all manner of historical and accurate aspects
mixed - some functions of technology are assumed by magic, but society isn't based upon it
powerful - magic utterly replaces technology in thought word and deed (example: David Brin's The Practice Effect.

Magic often focuses down upon control. How easy is it for the author to control how the magic interferes with all the classic "plots" of the world? Now, we're not talking boy meets girl - not too many stories monkey with that although it's often a big theme. We're talking about conflict - be it war, theft or otherwise. Magic allows passage through walls, or devastation on a large scale, or transformation from one form to another.

On this definition set, the Lord of the Rings, a true favorite of mine, thus is "rare mixed". Terry Pratchett's unfailingly funny and wonderful Discworld books are "available powerful". Poul Anderson's excellent Operation Chaos would be "abundant mixed". The Belgariad would be "rare powerful".

However, even my own taxonomy above wouldn't explain Reeves' wonderful book The Shattered World where magic rent it asunder, and everyone lives on rocks in space, but there's very little actual magic at all.

Eh well, it's a good discussion.

To answer the question, I find that the novels that take one aspect of magic and explore it well as part of a story, I like. Example: Katherine Kerr's Deverry books. Another example: Greg Keye's Kingdoms of Thorn and Bone. Novels that give a great mystical feel, but where magic adds new aspects to the world at large, also appeal. Examples: Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, or the Dark is Rising books by Susan Cooper.

Then again, I really liked Stardust, and it might be said that there's a lot of magic in that book.

That isn't the be all and end all though, because any well told story that includes magic is an excellent one. I think my preferences fall more towards those books where magic enhances a fantasy world a bit in some interesting and unusual way, instead of becoming the focus of the novel. In essence, I think I agree with your own conclusion. Given a choice, I'll take Swords and Ice Magic over a Drizzt Do'Urden book....

[mythusmage.livejournal.com]

Did a story way back long ago (work shop exercise) in which the characters (three men, two humans and an orc) were caught on a research station in the Jovian atmosphere when the station's external gravs got hit by a mana surge. Unfortunately the external gravs were Merlins, while the internal gravs were manufactured by another company.

In one scene Steve, one of the humans, said something like, "At least we've got plenty of mana to work with in our castings." To which Larry, the orc, replied, "It isn't the amount of energy you have available, it's the amount of energy you can use."

[marycatelli]

Sounds like you had fun!