mahiwaga

The evolution of Tolkien’s synthesized mythology of Middle Earth is well documented by his son Christopher Tolkien, who eventually published J.R.R. Tolkien’s notes and various drafts, some of which eventually became incorporated into The Silmarillion

Eventually he broke the explicit linkage between modern history and his newly-wrought mythology, but originally, he had a character of known mythology—Ottor Waefre (also identified with Wihtgils, the father of Hengest and Horsa, the two legendary brothers who led the Anglo-Saxon conquest of England)—enter the realm of faerie, meeting with the Elves of Tol Eressëa, the Lonely Island. In The Book of Lost Tales, he is named Eriol by the Elves, and they tell him about the history of Middle Earth from the Creation of the Universe to the War of Wrath against Melkor.

When I was younger, after I had flown through The Hobbit, devoured The Lord of the Rings, and even struggled through The Silmarillion, I found myself longing for more Tolkienesque fantasy. I tried Terry Brooks, and David Eddings, and eventually jumped into Tad Williams and Robert Jordan, but I found the first two quite woeful (despite reading through their various works), and while the last two are definitely interesting and entertaining, they still end up being pale copies of the master. (Memory, Thorn, and Sorrow is a straight-up homage to J.R.R. Tolkien¹, with a Middle-Earth-like world and uncanny similarities between the Sithi and the Sindar, the Norns and the Noldor, and the Storm King Ineluki and the King of the Noldor Feänor. And, sure, only The Eye of the World had outright Tolkien allusions, and Robert Jordan eventually moved beyond the master’s shadow, but, frankly, the Old Speech and the various mythologies that he explicates aren’t very deep and imaginative—I will extend this particular critique later.)

I did also partake of the works of Tracy Hickman and Margaret Weis—namely The Dragonlance Saga and The Death Gate Cycle. These definitely stray from the Tolkienesque framework, although, nonetheless, Dragonlance is tied closely to Dungeons & Dragons, which is itself derivative of Tolkien. (I never did like the idea of the balance of Good and Evil. It does not feel as natural as the balance of Order and Chaos, nor does it really fit the Taoist dualisms and multiplicities that I dig in Ursula Le Guin’s Earthsea Cycle. However, I do find myself haunted by the idea of the Cataclysm, and found it intriguing that The War of the Souls trilogy contains similar ideas to the last book of the Earthsea Cycle.) And while The Death Gate Cycle has much that is (sometimes nauseatingly) derivative, there are enough imaginative ideas in it that kept me reading through all seven books. The magic system was one of the most inventive I remember that didn’t seem overtly mechanistic and scientified.

But ultimately, I longed to read more Tolkien, and I randomly read Farmer Giles of Ham and (eventually) Roverandom. But in the meantime, there was the whole History of Middle Earth—Christopher Tolkien’s painstaking chronicles of his father’s notes about the creation of an entire mythology, starting with the stories that became The Silmarillion and going through all the multiple drafts and false starts that eventually culminated in the final version of The Lord of the Rings.

When I was younger, I definitely did not have the patience to wade through this vast, sometimes dry, and always exceedingly detailed work of scholarship. I grasped at the few snippets here and there (for example, there is a chapter from an aborted sequel to The Lord of the Rings, and I found myself entertained by the abandoned drafts where, instead of meeting Strider in Bree, they meet a hobbit named Trotter) but really couldn’t handle reading it from cover to cover.

But for some reason, the idea of slogging through the several thousands of pages of Tolkien’s rough drafts, with his son’s editorial comments interspersed throughout, doesn’t seem like a bad way to spend my free time.

Yes, I know it sounds pathetic.

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. —Sir Arthur C. Clarke

This is a fitting epigram to my post about Torque, Dust, and Mist. There is yet another magic system from yet another fantasy epic that I must admit is quite intriguing—Robert Jordan’s system of saidin and saidar from The Wheel of Time. Jordan appropriates the ancient symbol of the yin and yang and devises a magic system that segregates according to gender. Saidin is the magic of men, and after the Breaking of the World, it becomes tainted by Shai’tan (also known as the Dark One, although it is just the Arabic Shaitan with an apostrophe in it, and is clearly related to the Hebrew word Satan, that is, Adversary.) Saidar is the magic of women, and in the post-Breaking world, only women are allowed to practice magic. Instead of wizards, we have the Aes Sedai. (I did like the idea of mage and her knight-warder. I reminds of me of something that I can’t quite remember.)

The problems I have with this system of magic, however, is that (1) there does not seem to be any limits to it (2) too many people use the One Power (3) there are actually discrete Dungeons and Dragons-like spells (teleport gates, balefire, healing, etc.) Jordan makes it worse by multiplying the different kinds of magic—in addition to the One Power made up of saidin and saidar, there is also the True Power, derived from the Dark One.

This is in stark contrast to the non-mechanistic magic used in not only Middle-Earth, but also most fairy-tales and myths the world around.

Furthermore, if you’re going to technologize your version of magic, then I think you should go all the way with it and not stop with a half-baked explanation for why things are the way they are. For example, Le Guin gives a mechanism for magic in the world of Earthsea—it is about speaking True Names, and using the language of Creation. Hickman and Weis describe different runic patterns that have intrinsic power in The Deathgate Cycle. In The Wheel of Time, I find it dissatisfying that while Jordan describes channeling, the source of the One Power is not entirely clear, nor does it make any particular sense how the One Power comes manifest with so-called reality. (If, on the other hand, he said something simple, like everything is made of the One Power, then perhaps I might buy it.)

But the unlimited nature of the One Power tends to make things ridiculous. There are at least a hundred named characters who have magical ability (in contrast to the handful in The Lord of the Rings) and the characters rely far too much on it instead of on their own qualities. (Witness how the War of the Ring is won entirely by Sam and Frodo, characters who have no magical power whatsoever, except for maybe that which is bestowed upon them by artifacts—the One Ring itself, Galadriel’s Phial, the swords of Westernesse, etc.)

Maybe it is simply the bias of Western tradition. The Mage has always been a supporting character, and never the hero. Gandalf is an adviser. Merlin is ultimately a subject of the king. While Schmendrick from The Last Unicorn indeed has a personal quest, his main contribution is in catalyzing the actions of the main protagonist, the Unicorn, and of the book’s explicitly named hero, Prince Lir. The Wizard of Oz turns out to be a red-herring (and actually well epitomizes exactly what Arthur C. Clarke meant.) In The Princess Bride, the only character who performs explicit magic is Miracle Max, a minor character. So maybe it’s just this sensibility of mine that rebels against accepting that almost every single character in The Wheel of Time can channel, and the series’ hero is the most powerful Mage in the entire world.

Even in The Earthsea Cycle, which revolves greatly around magic, Ged doesn’t really become a full person until he abandons magic, and most of the action is performed by characters who have no magical powers like Lebennen and Tenar.

(Hmmm. Maybe this is why I’m not totally into Harry Potter. This series also suffers from magic that has no apparent limits, and from having way too many characters who have magical powers.)

The description of a magic system tends to be the crux of a good fantasy novel, and the ones that do it best are those that manage to preserve what it means for something to be magical. The reason why our technology doesn’t awe us anymore (and sometimes I can pull my head out of my ass and recognize just how magical it is to be able to talk over cell networks to anyone in the world, from anywhere in the world, or even how magical it is to be able to fly across the country in mere hours) is that it’s mostly ubiquitous. This definitely removes any sense of magic and awe, no matter how magical something is.

One of the cardinal rules of writing any kind of speculative fiction—whether science fiction or fantasy—is to create a set of rules, like an internal description of your universe’s laws of thermodynamics. Being able to judiciously violate these rules is where you can work in the wonder and awe of magic. If it’s all over the place, then it ceases being magical.

Catch-22, I know.