Fantasy fiction typically uses either a soft or hard system of magic (with, to be sure, overlap). Soft magic is pretty much without any firm rules or explanations, as in Tolkien or Rowling, where hard magic may have quite strict rules, as in Sanderson. This does not mean the mechanisms of hard magic need be explained; the wielders of it may have only empirical knowledge—they know this works and that doesn’t.
However, there is type of hard magic which can be explained. I like to call this scientific magic because it truly is science rather than magic as we usually understand the term. Some claim taking the mystery out of magic ruins fantasy, turning it into a sort of science fictions. I understand this. I also know that I like to know why and how things work, so my magic has solid ‘scientific’ underpinnings. That still leaves a lot of room for the truly magical, the enigmatic, the not understood (except by the author!).
The magic of my main fantasy sequence, the whole Annals of Izan into which most of my fantasy novels fit, is scientific. It is based on the concept of infinite worlds and the ability (hereditary in humans) to access them by physically entering them—in part. One can never move entirely from one to another unless one is a god or travels via a portal. I’ll admit to having had a fairly rudimentary system when I wrote the first Donzalo’s Destiny novels but the basic ideas have remained in place. They have only been expanded and refined, and never contradict the mechanisms I created then.
Have I written using soft magic? Sure, some of my short stories do not attempt to follow any rules at all or perhaps I should say they follow the traditions of myth and fairy tale. Invisibility? Why not a cloak to hide beneath, as in Harry Potter, and not explain how it works? In most of my novels, however, such a cloak could not work nor even exist (although somewhere in the infiniverse, of course, it would). I would say something like the wizard pulled shadow from another world to hide himself (not all that well, sometimes!). Easier is borrowing smoke or fog, but also rather obvious and not invisibility at all.
Logical, even scientific, rules set boundaries for the author. There are things the characters can do and things they can not, and we must work with that. No easy outs! I have nothing at all against soft magic systems, as long as they aren’t simple laziness. I won’t complain about Gandalf mouthing spells, even if we have no idea of how they work. I won’t complain about Le Guin’s ‘naming’ magic in the Earthsea books; that magic’s a little harder but there is no real explanation of why knowing a name gives one power. And the supernatural does impinge on those books, as when Ged pursues the dying child’s soul. I carefully avoid any souls, ghosts, or anything of that sort. All the magic is physical, there are no spirits, and even the gods don’t know if there might be an afterlife.
But then, if there are infinite worlds with infinite possibilities, we would have to continue to physically exist ‘somewhere.’ Or infinite somewheres! A resurrection of the body, to borrow a Christian concept. If so, neither the wizards nor the gods of my tales know where it is. Nor do I ever intend for them to—it is enough to stick with the magic I have created and keep away from that sort of thing.
Stephen Brooke 