What is Magical About Magic- Paul Guthrie Guest Post

What is magical about magic? Arthur C. Clarke famously noted that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, and that seems to imply that magic is just another way to do things, one that we don’t understand. “Sufficiently advanced” is a pretty ambiguous standard, of course, and it changes with time. In the movie “Minority Report” Tom Cruise uses a computer interface that looks like magic. He waves his hands and information pops up, images zoom, move around, disappear. Now we have tablet computers that behave in much the same way. Even if I don’t know how to make an iPad, I can buy one and learn to use it – clearly not magic. What if there were no visible object, the images just appearing in thin air? Holograms and retinal projections come to mind. I think magic has to be something that we inherently can’t do. Only special people (or creatures) can do magic.

So that raises some interesting questions for stories. What if you could learn to do magic? Does that make you special, even if you are otherwise ordinary? What if it isn’t very powerful, at least at first? If you could learn to do magic it might seem ordinary to you. You might treat it exactly the way we treat the iPad; play around with it, find out what it can do, be briefly astonished, and eventually take it for granted. The real question is, what would regular (normal?) people think, and how would they treat you?

The answer to that last one depends on when and where the story is set. I’ve begun exploring possible answers in a cycle of novels and stories called “The Magic of Others.” One meaning of “other” is simply “different,” and the characters in these stories are different in a number of ways. The first story, a novel, is called “The Wrong God,” and it introduces the way my magical system works. It explores the discovery (or rediscovery) of magic by modern scientists. The second is a short story, called “The Rule,” about a Roma (gypsy) girl in Ireland in 1692. Different times, different places, different beliefs about magic, but always that central difference; someone who can do magic is not like the rest of us.

The stories will be published by Trestle, so regular visitors to this blog will find them first. “The Rule” and “The Wrong God” are available now in e-book form wherever e-books are sold, including the links below.

The Rule:

http://www.amazon.com/Magic-Others--1--Rule-ebook/dp/B006KIY5SO/ref...

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/books/1107931470?ean=2940013830745&...

The Wrong God:

http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/21978

Amazon.com: The Wrong God eBook: Paul Guthrie: Kindle Store

BARNES & NOBLE | The Wrong God by Paul Guthrie, Paul Guthrie | ...