I recently took part in a flash challenge on another writing board (Scrawl) where the majority of the writers are NOT INTERESTED IN FANTASY. But they are interested in writing challenges and they made the mistake of asking me to suggest a topic. So, I gave them my Bridgetown milieu and asked them to write a short story in an hour and a half that honored the milieu and its established characters.

They were amazing. Many of them simply wrote in that mileu and honored the theme and characters, but wrote about dramatic events that could have happened elsewhere. They definitely fit the genre but they had no overt references to magic.

I mean, go ahead. I like the idea of writing fantasy without magic. Or better yet, fantasy that might have magic. Sometimes there are things that none of the characters truly know or understand and magic would explain (but so would something else).

the only novel that I've actually finished (not including my novel that ended up only being a novella) had this exact sort of world. There was no magic to speak of other than things that could be construed to chance and superstition. I would say it was pretty undeniably fantasy though, especially for me because as the story progresses (past what I wrote that is) it gets even more fantastic. So yeah, I think you can do it.

Mind you, my novel isn't a best-seller or even published so I can't offer any advice on the market, but really, who cares as long as it's interesting.

While there is definitely magic used in the novels, they don't rely on it - its another facet of the world he has created without being an overriding factor. In fact, while reading the first one I remember thinking "but where's the magic? - this is more like a historical adventure story". (Then I got to the end, before anyone shouts me down!)

So, nothing wrong with fantasy stories not containing magic at all, though Martin is the only one I can think of making use of it.

On an aside, Anne McCaffrey's Pern novels - SF or F? I'm sure this has come up before. Its an SF set up with a Fantastic atmosphere but absolutely no magic. Just a thought.

Alternatively look at George R Martin's series which has very little magic. Though the political setup there is based on medieval times.

Isn't magic more about world-view than world?

The "You see what you look for" effect .

I mean if people believe in magic, everything they see and hear and experience will confirm its existence to them.

If they believe in something else then they will find something in the 'event' that works to affirm their particular worldview. Be it science, religion, magic, spirits, chaos, the grand-master-scrabble-champion-in-the-sky or whatever.

We have, as humans, a tendency to want to connect the dots, some use a pencil, others a crayon. Whatever the medium, isn't the act designed to bring order to an otherwise apparently disordered universe? Consider the attribution of images to random stars, calling them 'constellations' and dubbing them 'the big dipper' or 'scorpio'. Or those bible code books -- random occurences of letters etcetera, imbued with meaning not by the writer but by the reader.

I don't care if there is any 'real' magic in your world, I only care if the characters believe there is. That is what you need to decide. Let me in on their world-view and hang the rest of it.

Go ahead and write whatever you want but fantasy is by definition characterised by highly fanciful or supernatural elements.

Without those elements it is not really fantasy.

In other words, without the supernatural, you had better make the milieu strong enough to take up the slack.

Otherwise it is like wanting to skip the science in science fiction.

Maybe we could call it 'soft-fantasy'?

But I also believe that fantasy should be fantastic.

The word fantasy comes from Greek 'phantasi' which means "appearance" or "what is visible or apparent" and could be applied to the imagination, as in "a vision".

So at its heart, fantasy is about the way things 'appear' to be. That may apply to the writer or the reader, but shouldn't it also apply to the character?

One example is Megan Lindholme's "Wizard of the Pigeons".

If the character's world-view does not 'at some point' incorprorate supernatural or fanciful elements you had better make the milieu fantastic enough to take up the slack. Otherwise call it speculative fiction as Magic Beans suggests, but not fantasy.

I'm not suggesting whacking an extra orc or elf in the mix for flavour. But the setting should serve to propel the story. It should not be incidental to it like: oh, and by the way they live in a castle.

I guess I am talking about applying a little rigour to the process of story creation.

Shouldn't the character begin to see and believe the 'fantasy' or interact with the supernatural or fantastic nature of the world they are passing through simply as part of the plot? They may deny what they are seeing or experiencing, but it must certainly 'appear' to be some way to them OR to the reader.

I never said that a story needs to contain magic in order to be a fantasy. But I do assert that a fantasy should be fantastic and have a reason to be so.

If you bristle against organising fiction into categories, why wouldn't you call ALL fiction fantasy or speculation and be done with it?

I know people who do.

Well to be honest when I first read the definition for spec fiction, I thought, "Wow, that includes all fiction."

Now many months later, I am of the opinion, "Wow, that includes all fiction, unless someone finds a convenient more sellable label." Ah the joys in labels.

Shadow
Pattern
Memory

The blurb says it's an intriguing tale of magic, manipulation and revenge. But maybe the magic is not overt, or is easily missed.

BTW the cover Art is fantastic, especially Pattern with the crows and the face.

And what again about their biology makes this possible? Sure seems like magic to me!

Minister, I don't think it has to be blatant. I've been working on a story for the last several years that I would consider sci-fi. However, the only real sci-fi thing about it, is that it is set in the future and some of the main characters ride around in space ships and are technologically advanced. The bulk of the story (16 or so chapters out of 20) is more of a medieval action/adventure story.

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Are there people out there interested in, buying, and reading material set on worlds not earth but like it?

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The blurb says it's an intriguing tale of magic, manipulation and revenge. But maybe the magic is not overt, or is easily missed.

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I hope I'm not laying out too many spoilers for people. But in case I am, I'll leave a few extra spaces.

S
p
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s

(since it doesn't like just a lot of extra return strokes)

But I don't recall magic in there. I don't count deity related things or special but natural abilities of a race of people as magic. There may be some borderline instances in there of magic, but I didn't really see it as so. Hope that helps.

Cya,
CC

[This message has been edited by cicerocat (edited November 07, 2004).]

So, even if no dragons appear, even if everyone is perfectly, normally human, and even if no spells are cast that have an empirically measurable effect, it'd still be classified as a fantasy. And I'm sure that if it's a great story, people will love it.

If you need to write it, then write it!

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What does the character think is happening?

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I realized that what I really wanted to write was the fantasy story, and also realized that what I really wanted to write wasn't sf at all, but fantasy. So many of those creatures are now in my current fantasy WIP.

The same is at least partially true of most of the modern technology we use on an everyday basis. For the vast majority of people, technology is handled "ritualistically" rather than "technologically". That is to say, most people use advanced technology by rote rather than through an understanding of the underlying principles on which it is based.

So I think that while some people coming out of a "magical" culture could be taught to understand advanced technology for what it is, it would probably be no greater a percentage than understand advanced technology after having been raised within the framework of a technological culture.

That is the practical distinction between "magic" and "technology", not only knowing what works, but why it works.

There is, naturally, another important distinction between magic and technology (all the more so since it is this distinction which lead to the rise of technology as the dominant force in modern culture).

In a simplified theological sense, magic costs you your soul, and technology doesn't. Of course we could argue back and forth about various quibbles of which one actually costs you your soul, but the idea that magic was "evil" and technology was "okay" is something that even the most superstitious peasent out of the Dark Ages could grasp (if he wanted to avoid being burned for witchcraft, at any rate).

I regard this as a special case that doesn't have anything to do with the fundamental difference between magic and technology, but it is an important special case because it illuminates the mystery of how technology ever developed. In fact, most people still tend to think of the "magic v. technology" question in terms that echo this old theological division. "Magic" is some special force associated with spirits and other supernatural entities which is "outside" the bounds of "technology".

Since I don't see any particular reason that using technology rather than magic to accomplish something would be particularly damning, I don't subscribe to the idea that there couldn't be a technology of using supernatural forces in some manner proscribed by religion. And, as I mentioned above, there are those that turn the equation on its head and assert that technology is "evil" and magic is "okay".

Magic (as religion often is) is elitest and technology is democratic. Only the few wizards (priests) have magical powers, the rest of you don't. But anyone who can work a tool can make incremental improvements in the implements used in daily life.

You could say that in a fantasy world, magic is no more supernatural than rain or earthquakes. It would be part of that world's natural law. Magical Physics. Then you have to figure out who or what has the ability or knowledge to work with the physics, and how they came by that ability or knowledge.

Nothing against what you said, Yanos, but I think that often what looks like superstition to westerners are rituals or concepts that are suffused with multilayered meanings and resonances--very poetic. One might say almost magical. To early westerners, this was viewed as quaint, savage paganism (e.g. The Last Samurai). Current westerners tend to see it as anachronistic in the least, still mistaking it as something primitive. I think that's highly unfortunate, because if our own culture had evolved that way, we would be the richer for it. We in the west don't seem to have any kind of "everyday magic."

One of the things that actually don't like about the Potter books is that there's too much magic, as if the hundreds of volts of electricity used by Muggles were simply replaced with an equal amount of mundane magic for the wizarding world. This is totally a personal thing, but I like my magic rare and even a little frightening. It's not for washing dishes, in other words! I know this sounds like I just contradicted myself, but I know myself to be a product of Western civilization: there will always be that sense that magic is a little forbidden, is hidden knowledge.

This process never happened in Asia, which is why Asian cultures were never able to capitalize on their enormous advantages in applied sciences during all the millenia they were world leaders in every concivable field.

As a side point, the confabulation of Christianity with the Catholic Church is very common, but I would hope for better from anyone actually interested in a medieval setting. The tension between Rome and Christians was one of the defining conflicts of that entire era, and lends it much of its interest as a subject for fiction.

I should also stress that it is only in the eyes of the superstitious that the main distinction between magic and technology is which is "evil" and which isn't. Which you brand as "evil" doesn't really matter, what matters is that you distinguish them on that basis. While the pressure on European technologists to clearly explain the workings of their technology in order to demonstrate its non-demonic origin was a proven bootstrap to having technology win out over magic, it is at least concievable that a systematic suppression of anything that relied on non-miraculous means would enable technology to become distinct from magic and thus eventually win out (just how this would happen is a matter of speculation).

In any case, without a major cultural impetus to distinguish magic from technology, the vast majority of humans can't or won't distinguish between the two. One major problem with modern science is that most scientists can no longer tell dogma from science. And non-scientists aren't any better off (except for the fact that they don't under as great a delusion for the most part).

I particularly like the descriptions of the actions of the camp followers out to make a quid.

History of the Albigensian Crusade.
Pierre des Vaux-de-Cernay
(Translated. W.A. and M.D. Sibly. Boydell, 1998.)

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This process never happened in Asia, which is why Asian cultures were never able to capitalize on their enormous advantages in applied sciences during all the millenia they were world leaders in every concivable field.

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Yeah, there's some crazy stuff from that, too, like the world's first clock way before anyone else had it--but it was toy for the Chinese emperor. They didn't do anything with it. Still, it's this paradigm moreso than the western one that offers great ideas for fantasy stories. This is your oddball wizard doing crazy stuff without regard to the rest of the world. Funny that we want this less dogmatic and religious viewpoint for fantasy stories whose settings are often ripped from the western medieval period.

Here's an old thread from before I came on board here, that touches on this topic:
http://www.hatrack.com/forums/writers/forum/Forum1/HTML/000951.html

It's the same concept I've been using in what I've been writing. It's a fantasy setting, but a fabled object is in fact something from 20th Century Earth. Since the people of this planet don't have the same technological capabilities we have, to them it's magic.

My $0.02.... you may refund any change you wish.