Now that the New Year’s pleasantries are out of the way, it’s time to get back to the work of worldbuilding. It’s work that never truly stops, you know. Worldbuilding isn’t just a rabbit hole, it’s a bottomless pit for your spare time. But it’s undeniably fun, in that creative sort of way. In that sense, these are my favorite posts to write.
Anyway, this post is going to serve as an introduction to a new series of worldbuilding articles. These will be about the “regular” length for my posts (about 2,000 words), and they’ll cover a very specific subject: the interaction of magic and technology. Look around the fantasy section of your favorite bookstore, whether physical or virtual, and you can find plenty of examples of worlds where these two forces coexist. It’s a staple of certain subgenres, after all.
But many of these worlds are just our own, only viewed from a different angle. So much fantasy (I’m not only talking about books here, but games and movies and TV, too) takes the classic D&D approach of “medieval, but with wizards“, and that’s really a shame. Why? It’s simple, if you think about it. Magic changes the game. With magic, the rules of history don’t apply.
Now, I’m not saying all fantasy is this way. There are plenty of stories out there that take a…nontraditional approach to magic and technology. The “magitech” and “technomancer” styles are good examples of this, but not the only ones. Any segment of fantasy has its highs and lows; to me, great worldbuilding is definitely one of the highs. That’s not to say I don’t enjoy a good sword-and-sorcery romp as much as the next guy, but I do find more fulfillment out of a detailed setting that feels real. It’s hard to describe, but depth and logic play strong parts.
And I especially love good magic systems. More importantly, I want to see a world that understands its magic, a world that reacts to it. I can suspend my disbelief for things that are physically impossible, but not those that are logically impossible. Throwing fireballs, summoning demons, reviving the dead—and, for sci-fi, add in FTL travel, teleportation, and so on—those are all fine, as long as there’s a reason for them. It can even be a literal miracle, if that fits the setting. Just don’t make it a deus ex machina, that’s all.
The intersection
So let’s get back to this whole “series” idea. Remember that? Here’s what I’ve got in mind.
First, this is an irregular series. It won’t be every week, and it doesn’t have a definite end. I could write about something like this for an eternity, but I won’t. Instead, “Magic and tech” posts will be interspersed with the more regular worldbuilding and literary articles on Mondays. I’ll try to do one a month, but don’t hold me to that.
Second, I know I’ve spent the last few months talking in generalities. This will be different. I’m going to take a specific example and work it to the ragged edge. The setting I’m making will have a few built-in assumptions, and I’ll go over the basics in a moment. Almost everything else I intend to flow logically from those assumptions. My logic doesn’t always work the same way as everybody else’s, so feel free to call me out when (not if) I screw up.
Third, the setting will be mine, but don’t let that stop you from swiping bits and pieces of it for your own. Maybe the assumptions are altered slightly, or history took a different path. Who cares? Change the names and a few of the details, and it’s yours.
The assumptions
There are, to a first approximation, an infinite number of possibilities for combining magic systems, technology development, cultural development, and historical circumstance. That won’t do. We need to narrow things down, so I’ll be starting from a known origin point. The core assumptions I’ll be making are:
-
Magic exists. That’s a no-brainer, if you read the title of this series, but it bears repeating. Specifically, magical aptitude is a function of a few different factors, not all of them scientific. All we really need to know, though, is that about one out of every 80 people has the talent, and about two out of three of those never realize they have it or give up trying to harness it. Actual mages make up about 1/250 of the adult population.
-
Magic is known. People understand that some among them have a power unexplainable by natural laws. To them, it’s taken as a given, the same way some people can write songs or make statues from marble. It’s a gift, yes, but no more than any other creative gift.
-
Magic is fairly predictable. Sure, there are a lot of possibilities for thinking outside the box, but most mages in this setting are conservative and low-key. They’ve made something like a cross between art and science, and most of them don’t mind keeping it that way.
-
Technology is at a level roughly comparable to the High Middle Ages. No steam engines or (technology-based) electricity, but a few peripheral countries are lacking in mages, and they have developed the earliest gunpowder weapons as a defense.
-
Technology stagnated earlier in history, due to the conservative nature of most mages. Within living memory, however, things have started to progress again. We’re not talking a millennia-long Dark Ages—A Song of Ice and Fire, I’m looking at you—but about 400 years of the status quo.
-
Religion is…complicated. The supernatural is generally agreed to exist, but there is no single faith that unites a vast section of the world. Most religions do favor magic over technology, but some are the opposite, considering magic anathema. A couple eschew both, feeling that magic is too powerful for mortals, but technology is too soulless.
-
The inhabitants of the world are otherwise modern humans. This is almost an afterthought, but it helps to be clear on this point. We’re working with people like us, not aliens or elves.
More to come
So that’s the rough sketch. Now it’s time to fill in the blanks. As I write this series, I’ll fill in a table of contents down here. (The hardest part will be remembering to do it!) As always, comments and constructive criticism are most welcome, and I’d love to hear about your own creations. Other than that, there’s nothing left to say but this: strap yourself in and enjoy the ride.