World Creation 5: The Magic Fades

When we last left off the World Creation series, I was unable to decide whether or not I should include magic in my setting. Understandably, this confused some readers. I do, as some commented, have advanced technology—why would I need magic? Aren’t they equivalent?

Well, not entirely.

I present the cases for and against magic below.

FOR

1.) There are limits to the plausibility of magical technology. Airships fly, robots have the semblance of sapience, and factories produce goods of near-handcrafted quality. All of this is wondrous, of course, but hardly impossible with the creative application of a spanner wrench, even in our world. However, white light knitting wounds instantly, precious materials being whisked from thin air, illusions fooling the senses perfectly—none of these things are really all that plausible in a no-magic setting. If I want to do any of those things, as is I’m screwed.

2.) Magic can add flavor. Magic can lend a certain feel to a world: the audience relishes the break not just from the ordinary, but from the possible. This is more or less the primal reason that storytellers, since the dawn of time, have felt compelled to include the magical and mysterious in their worlds.

3.) Magic can solve problems. There’s nothing worse than an author using magic to resolve some giant cliffhanger where no clear option presents itself. The Deus Ex Machina as a passable solution to a conflict died out with the Greek theater that spawned it—authors always have and always will be lazy in this fashion, but the audience has long since stopped tolerating it. However, small loose ends that would take too much time or be too complicated to realistically resolve can be tidied up with magic without provoking reader outrage.

AGAINST

1.) It might damage the verisimilitude of the setting. The impression I want to carry off is definitely that this world is a world that works—events and setting played believably off each other until we get a global situation that the reader accepts as making perfect sense. While the reader can, to a certain extent, accept magic as just another fixture of a world not our own, I worry that some of the credibility of the setting will be drained away by the existence of forces that patently don’t exist. As much as possible, I want the reader to forget that the events that take place are set in an entirely fictional world.

2.) I would need to be very careful about how powerful magic is. I would want magic to take a secondary role, sort of a backseat to technology, and that would be difficult to balance out. I would need magic that was effective enough to justify its existence, but not enough to be more useful than technology. After all, if moderately powerful magic was available in any capacity, it would probably significantly limit the spread of technology. There’s no point slaving away to find a way to transmit materials when one can teleport with a snap of the fingers, no reason to create artillery when mages with fireballs can be found in every part of the world, no purpose served by robots that golems cannot fulfill. Necessity is the mother of invention; if the needs of society are filled by an extant, there’s little point in inventing redundant ones. The alternative is weak, worthless magic, and that would be little more than a distraction.

3.) Magic immediately invites comparison to other fantasy stories. Now, some of the best novels ever written have had magic in them, and I’m certainly not saying that the fantasy genre is one that I don’t want to be associated with. However, this particular world is definitely in a whole different genre than, say, Lord of the Rings. Overall, I’m afraid adding magic would cause readers to view it a context it’s not supposed to be viewed in—a magic-less world communicates the vagaries of the setting better.

Overall, I think the no magic camp wins out, here. While magic can be good in a setting, I can’t think of anything I’d want to accomplish that would necessitate its usage, and unless it’s an integral part of the setting it’s just going to be distracting.

Science, you have won another victory.

(There’s probably going to be a few typos in this post, since I am absolutely exhausted at this point tonight. I’ll probably go back and revise this thing later, as well as linking to the other parts in the series.)

EDIT: Okay, yeah, there were some serious glitches in the first part. Now fixed.