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.