Thoughtful Stuff
Apr. 16th, 2004 09:07 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kerravonsenWouldn't it be interesting to invent a fantasy universe in which there were two (or perhaps three) kinds of magic, which bear a similar resemblance to each other as proceedural programming, functional programming (and perhaps, object-oriented programming). In other words, they go about things differently, require a different way of thinking, and each one has a particular kind of problem that it is best at solving. The question is, what sorts of magics would they be?
Perhaps one is about being and another is about doing. Or perhaps naming rather than being. And the doing style is cruder, but easier to understand, so more people use it.
While reading "The Riddle-Master of Hed" today, one of the themes struck me: that in order for Morgan to be given a new name, his old one had to be taken away from him first. He was driven into his destiny by losing everything he had.
Another cool thing about that trilogy is that, looking back at it as a whole, when one actually knows what it was all about, you have quite an unusual fantasy plot. It's a twist on the "hidden heir" idea, because rather than having a Dark Lord to fight that everyone knows about, you have a hidden enemy and a hidden good guy who's desperately waiting for his heir to come along because it's all that he can do to keep the enemy in check -- and in the meanwhile it's complicated by a minor bad guy whom the good guy can't act against because it would risk his long-term strategy against the real enemy. I can just see Avon being caught in that kind of situation, and him being just as mercilessly pragmatic as Deth had to be.
Of course, it isn't just the plot that makes this trilogy cool; it has a depth of tapestry to it, painted with vivid colours, and all the riddles that keep on being told, which give it both a depth of history and a feel of myth. And also how the different lands, while they may evoke this and that, are not just copies of various ancient cultures (you know, the Japanesey ones, the medieval ones, the Arabian ones, the Roman ones, the Celtic ones...). And it's also good because it isn't deadly serious all the time. Well, the first book anyway. I can't remember if the later books have lighter bits, cuz I haven't got up to them yet in this re-read.
I must to bed, to rest my head, for I must away, ere break of day, to find our long-forgotten LotR sites.
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Date: 2004-04-16 06:43 am (UTC)Now if the rest of the world is interesting and the plot is more than halfway decent, this might go somewhere. :)
Can they spot the special people with ability to practice "being" magic because they lisp?
:)
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Date: 2004-04-24 05:09 am (UTC)(pokes out tongue) Actually, the functional language that I first learned was Miranda, a nice little thing that didn't have Lots of Irritating Stupid Parentheses.
I would think that the "being" magic would be mainly transformational, the most elementary transformation actually being to make copies of something; to transform something into something else would require the comprehension of some sort of transformational formula which defines the relationship between the two things, and some formulas would be more complex than others; indeed, transformational research could be in discovering new formulas. So, for example, to convert coal into diamond with "being" magic could be very simple, because they are so similar in their beingness (since they're the same element), but it would be quite hard in "doing" magic, since it would require reproducing the process by which coal is naturally turned into diamond (high temperature and pressure) -- perhaps it would be not that hard to do but it might take more energy. Conversely, you might not want to light a fire with "being" magic, because you might get carbon dioxide rather than a nice hot fire. Or carbon monoxide (oh dear). Does that make sense? I'm just thinking aloud here.
no subject
Date: 2004-04-24 11:01 am (UTC)Ooohhh...line-blurring! :)
no subject
Date: 2004-04-24 09:13 pm (UTC)Well, I was really only using chemical similarity as an example of something that would be easy to do. If we're talking magic, then you could be doing anything that a "law of similarity" might recognise -- like turning a puddle into a mirror, or ice into glass, and so on.
Ooohhh...line-blurring!
Well, let us not forget that anything that can be mapped onto a Turing machine is computationally equivalent. That is, my expectation of the two kinds of magic is that it is theoretically possible for one to create the same effect with either one, but the different magics are better suited for different kinds of tasks; things may be possible but not feasible in one or the other. Just like in computing, where it would be theoretically possible to write everything in Turing machines, but it would take so long to write and so long to run that it wouldn't be worth trying. There's this saying we have at work: anything is possible but not everything is feasible.
no subject
Date: 2004-04-26 07:07 am (UTC)Riddle Master of Hed
Date: 2004-04-22 07:15 am (UTC)I was pleased to find a mention of Patricia McKillip's trilogy. I absolutely love that series, and often thought it was the series of books I would most like to have written myself :-) I read it the first time many years ago, and have regularly re-read many times since.
There *are* some lighter bits in the later books. I particularly remember Raederle and the Pig Woman in 'Heir of Sea and Fire', and the farsical invasion of the Court in Anuin by the stampeding pigs. And in the third book, the part where Raederle and Morgan are on the road to Lungold, and irritable all the time with each other, I found to be an amusing depiction of a relationship in its early stages!
The whole trilogy has a great balance of light and shade, and I always feel very involved with the characters, who seem very well drawn and *real* to me.
As you can tell, I absolutely love it, and I am delighted to find it being referred to :-)
So, tell me then ... did you work out who the High One was before his identity was revealed?
Re: Riddle Master of Hed
Date: 2004-04-24 04:54 am (UTC)Since I first read the trilogy not long after it came out, more than twenty years ago, I can't remember whether I figured it out or not, but I suspect not. And of course on the re-reads I already knew.
One thing I will always treasure are my signed copies of the trilogy. I was at the 1993 WorldCon, and bought new copies of the books when I found out Patricia McKillip was there. What was even better was listening to her on a panel about YA SF; a couple of us talked to her afterwards, basically being encouraging because she'd been describing how difficult the Young Adult market was.
Strangely enough, though, her later books haven't appealed to me as much as this trilogy. The Riddle-Master trilogy I would count as the most accessable of all her works. Even "Fools Run" and "The Forgotten Beasts of Eld" which I also liked, are less straightforward, much more caught up in the sheer weaving of the words. I can't remember what book it was that I read after those, but I found it was like one long dream that didn't make sense (while "Fool's Run" was like one long dream that did make sense) and I gave up on reading her novels, because I couldn't be sure any of them would click with me ever again. I mean, it's rather disturbing to read a book that evokes such rich atmosphere, leads you into a strange incomprehensible wonderland, and then leaves you there. If there are any of her later works that are actually more accessable, I'd like to know.