Dabbling in Magic Part 1: What Could Possibly Go Wrong?

Practical Magic or Tech?

Arthur C. Clarke posited long ago that any significantly advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. I’d like to turn that aphorism on its head and suggest that any significantly advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology.

Simply put, the magic of a world is part of its technology. It’s important to remember that as you craft your world. Consider, for example, what technologies we might not have developed if we had magical ways of achieving the same end. If most members of a society can start a fire just by saying, “Wood, burn,” why invent a technology to do it? That pretty much does away with such things as cigarette lighters, matches, and maybe interior lighting. 

In the Mer Cycle trilogy (THE MERI, TAMINY and THE CRYSTAL ROSE), I intentionally used magic as technology. The folk magic in these books, like folk medicine, derived from the aphorism: “Necessity is the mother of invention.” If monk-mages need to make copious copies of important manuscripts, someone will invent the magical equivalent of a photocopier.

The Implications of Incantations

Writers who deal with military ordnance are aware of something called “collateral damage.” I think writers who deal with magic need to cultivate the same awareness. The magic we use in our stories has repercussions that can take any number of forms. 

First, it usually costs the user something. Maybe it’s the normal wear and tear of extreme effort, the way a baseball pitcher pays for every slider or curveball he throws with strain on muscle and bone. When a starting pitcher throws seven innings of baseball, he requires four or five days to recuperate. What about your mage or shaman? What does it cost him to pull off a potent spell? 

The toll magic takes on the user can be intriguing, dire, even humorous. Does Marvin the Magnificent become ravenously hungry whenever he pops off a nifty enchantment? Does every spell he casts lose him the ability to cast a similar spell for an hour? 

What effect does the magic have on the people around the user, or anything else in his environment? In MAGIC TIME: ANGELFIRE, one of the characters wields magic with particularly nasty “feedback.” The character is a Blues musician whose songs draw refugees to safety. Unfortunately, they also cause innocent bystanders to change in unpleasant and unnatural ways. An additional twist is that his music is the only means of protecting someone very dear to the musician from a horrific predator. He finds himself choosing between her life and the lives of innocent strangers.

Next time: Keeping it Real (and Under Control)

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