Let’s Talk Fantasy (Part 2: It’s Magic, You Know)

(Note: This the second part of longer series on the fantasy genre. Click here for Part 1: Nomenclature)

I can do four, and exactly four, magic tracks. For the first one, take a slightly oversized ring, place it around the tip of your thumb, and show it to your audience while making a ‘thumbs up’ gesture (thumb straight up, the rest of your fingers curled into a fist). Make sure the ring is tight enough to stay on during rapid movement, but loose enough to slide off with slight pressure. Now quickly pass your hand behind your head. As you do, tuck your thumb into your closed fist, grasp the ring with your fingers, slide it off your thumb, and extend your (now empty) thumb once more. Bring your hand quickly back in front of you, doing the same gesture now devoid of the ring. Hold the pose for a moment, move your hand back behind your head, tuck your thumb into the ring (concealed in your fist), and show your once more ringed thumb to your audience. Repeat.

Some of you are probably thinking, ‘that’s it? That’s not really impressive. You’re just hiding the ring in your fist. This would only fool six-year-olds and particularly abhorrent relatives.’ You are correct. But it kills with those six-year-olds. They’ll check behind your ears, inside the back collar of your shirt, everywhere besides your fist. And if you’re upset that I’m explaining this trick, I love that spirit. But like I said this is trick for children. If your first grader is subscribed to this blog, a) be better about monitoring their internet viewing habits and b) teach them better taste. The next three are all card tricks. Two of them are traditional sleight of hand, moving cards in hidden ways. Those aren’t my best- I have what the character the Robot Devil’s music teacher, Mrs. Mellenger, would describe as ‘stupid fingers’ (one of my favorite episodes of Futurama, if you haven’t seen it). The fourth trick is phenomenal. I let you shuffle and then I look at the cards to pull one and set it aside. That’s my only input into the trick. You do everything else. You draw any number of cards, stack them into different piles, etc. It culminates with you turning over the final two cards on a couple different stacks. One reveals the number of the card I set aside, the other the suit. I nod toward the card we first set aside, you turn it over, and you’re stunned. It’s fantastic.

Inevitably I have to do it again. Everyone watches my hands closely, waiting for the moment when I ‘cheat’ but I do exactly everything I say I’m doing during the sequence. There’s no movement, no palming. I’ve done this trick a few hundred times. My wife will groan and leave the room when I pull out a deck of cards if we’re with friends. I don’t care. I will keep doing this trick forever until everyone I know has seen it. After that I’ll be doomed to wander the streets, a spectral figure stumbling through the fog, surprising strangers in alleyways or parked cars asking them to shuffle the deck. Fantasy stories work because of the reaction to that last trick, looking for actual magic. I went to a STEM high school and later studied engineering. My friends are by and large the same. Science fiction author Arthur C. Clarke had three adages guiding his writing, the third of which was ‘any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.’ It’s a wonderful and heartening and wonderfully heartening notion. Humans do things we would have called magic a hundred years ago. Tell me guiding wheelchairs using brain waves isn’t telepathy, or that autonomous machines aren’t golems. But that doesn’t stop us wanting more. Just because I don’t believe in magic doesn’t mean I didn’t want my Hogwarts letter when I turned 11 or don’t try using the force once in a while just to doublecheck. Fantasy gives us real magic fundamentally different from anything we could produce in our actual life, no matter how wonderful.

Practical (rules for) magic

As we’ve established, I love magic. But that doesn’t mean I’m willing to give it a free pass in any story. I’ve read a rather aggressive amount of fantasy at this point and had the chance to explore a number of magic systems. There are some tropes/archetypes I think work well when using magic in a story but others that break that immersion or suspension of disbelief. Full disclosure- I’ve struggled with the labels. If you have a better idea on language here, please let me know. But in the meanwhile let’s call these three concepts world integration, effort, and limitations.

World Integration. Magic, by it’s very definition, is something that defies fundamental forces. I have a hard time embracing a story where you have a handful of humans who can do magic and the world is otherwise unchanged. Some authors intentionally make the magic unremarkable (Terry Pratchett’s Discworld comes to mind, and it’s one of my favorite series), but usually it helps my immersion when magic is inexorably woven through the setting of the story. High fantasy has the advantage over low fantasy here (see my previous article linked at the top of this post for definitions) because you can tie magic into your world building through creation myths, magical creatures and plants, or even geography (series like The Broken Earth, Stormlight, or the The Wheel of Time). Low fantasy stories navigate this disconnect by having pockets of magic and dedicating resources to keeping magic away from the view of the rest of the world, or else bake into the story that there is something about the very nature of magic that keeps non-magic people from noticing it. Think about how the eyes of Muggles passing the Leaky Cauldron slide directly from the building on one side to the other and skip the pub itself.

Effort. Magic, like all things, needs to be a craft you can hone. Innate skill will always matter. There’s a quote variously attributed to many people in the basketball world that ‘you can’t teach height.’ But- I much prefer magic systems where effort/creativity are rewarded. Many of my favorite stories include magic that improves with study or through increases in commitment or the embrace of ideals (The Stormlight Archive). Otherwise, when the magic is more binary (everyone has the same level of power that is either on or off), characters excel through embracing creative application. It’s not that their magic is more powerful, instead they’re cleverer in its use. I balk at stories with too much focus on the power with which your born. I’m admittedly only on book eight of The Wheel of Time, so this may change, but in my opinion too much is tied to the Aes Sedai’s innate ability with the One Power.

Limitations. Magic gets to defy physics. That’s allowed, it’s kind of the point. But if you’re going to break natural rules you need to define a new set to govern your system. And I’m not saying you can’t then also break that second set of rules. Our favorite characters often push boundaries of what anyone thought was possible (even in that magical setting). We do usually find out though that hard rules exist, it was just lack of knowledge or taboo that set the previous boundaries. Regardless- magic can’t be limitless. Either set specific rules (‘no wishing for more wishes’), establish costs (this uses your manna/lifeforce/etc.) or establish consequences (if you do this too much, you’ll draw the bad guys here). And, do so in advance. The deus ex situation where our protagonist suddenly finds themselves in a situation in which they couldn’t have known their powers would fail irritates me. They are allowed to learn how they were trapped in that moment, but not that the trap was possible. If your characters exist in a world where only some people can do magic, you also need a way that non-magic users can compete. Allow technology, martial prowess, numbers, whatever it is to balance out your magic users. I love the trope where your protagonist is magic and the chief antagonist, while perhaps employing magic users in a cabal, has no actual powers.

Maybe it’ll happen this time

Whenever I do my card tricks a scene from the first book of The Magicians trilogy plays in the back of my mind. Minor spoilers here, nothing that isn’t mentioned on the book jacket. But the main character, Quentin, is taking an admissions test to what he thinks is an unknown but elite college in upstate New York. Quentin has practiced sleight of hand tricks his whole life and during the exam a proctor asks him to perform. During a coin walking trick, the proctor asks him to repeat a segment. And then again. Later in front of a full panel of teachers, the Dean hands Quentin a standard pack of cards and asks him to do ‘real magic.’ Confused, he tries to go through his normal routine only to have the Dean get angrier and angrier, reaching over to contort Quentin’s fingers into painful positions. Quentin, no idea what’s going on, grows agitated before finally snapping. He tosses the cards in the air which, as they fall, snap into place in a perfect card tower. He blows on the tower, collapsing it into a perfectly stacked deck, before fanning the cards in front of him. Every card is now a queen, standard suits and colors and some unheard of and fantastic. The scene goes on for a while, and the imagery is chill-inducing. Unbeknownst to himself, there was a moment in his coin walking routine he performed actual magic. The teachers needed to see more to grant him admission to their school. I’ll let you know if, next time I do my trick, the same thing happens to me.

I planned to offer my thoughts on specific magic systems from a handful of books but decided to pocket it for later. So- let me know if you have a series or system in mind, and if I’ve read it I’ll give my thoughts next time!