Obviously, the periodic table has too many elements for a meaningful magical setup... The alliance of Noble Nations? The Plunder of the Alkali Earth Metal countries by the selfish Halogens? Maybe I'll reserve this for a satirical story.
Anyway, on one end of the spectrum of magic, soft magic, I would cite the Lord of the Rings, and The Chronicles of Narnia. Magic in these universes was rather untechnical, things just happened, no careful systems behind them. In the Chronicles of Narnia, Lucy's vial? Yup it helps with the most deadly wounds. Why? It doesn't really matter. Coriakin, the wizard in The "Voyage of the Dawn Treader" casts a spell to make the Duffers monopods; it just works. Of course, Narnia is a great children's series and this level of design in a magic system is perfectly acceptable, and perfectly entertaining.
Magic in The Lord of the Rings may seem to be a little like Narnia's at first. The three rings are imbued with the will to preserve the Elvish lands. The One ring makes you invisible; questions about how light is bent around a person's body or perhaps the physical dematerialisation of that body are irrelevant. How does it extend someone's life? Well Tolkien does offer some explanation, tying in with his thematic concerns, but they aren't very technical. That doesn't matter, the themes in The Lord of the Rings are powerful enough to drive the nitty gritty of the magic system out of the picture. Yet a line from Lady Galadriel in "The Fellowship of the Ring" makes such a dismissal of Tolkien's magic system as completely akin to C. S. Lewis's; anything goes system, well, a little hasty. In the chapter The Mirror of Galadriel, she says :
'For this is what your folk would call magic, I believe; though I do not understand clearly what they mean; and they seem to use the same work of the deceits of the Enemy.'
To me, this line suggests that Tolkien was submitting the notion that to the simple Hobbits, many of the tools employed by the highly developed elvish societies were so amazingly incomprehensible that they were regarded as magic. Perhaps magic is just a broader umbrella term for processes that we observe but do not yet understand. Here I will invoke Arthur C. Clarke's third law of science fiction :
'Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.'
On the other end of the technical scale of magic systems are constructs by Brandon Sanderson, hard magic, with his marvelously crafted and innovative set of rules and abilities. It doesn't make sense scientifically, but they are detailed enough to have a fair amount of structure. The pleasure of reading about his colour/life-essence based system in "Warbreaker", the symbol/land based system in "Elantris", and the metal-burning system in "Mistborn"have prompted me to subscribe to Sanderson's first and second laws of superhuman abilities :
1. 'An author's ability to solve conflict with magic is directly proportional to how well a reader understands that magic.'
2. 'Limits to a magical system are more interesting than the abilities within that magical system.'
Brandon Sanderson has two well thought out essays behind the two laws he suggests, if you're interested, do take a look. They've been quite instrumental in developing my own understanding of magical systems.
Personally, I would like to have my magic system lie in between these two extremes in a distinct way, based on understanding. I have the notion that my characters may be employing magic, but not understand its fundamental underpinnings which is the only limit to what they can conceive to do with it. It would be rather like the process of scientific discovery in that way.
Other magical systems that I've come across in my reading that I've found interesting are :
- The idea of true names in Ursula le Guin's Earthsea universe
- Trudi Canavan's magics in The Age of Five and The Black Magician Trilogy
I haven't yet had the time to read the Wheel of Time series with its much appraised magic setup. Hope to get round to it someday. Based on these reflections, I'm constructing my own magic system based on a fusion between scientific concepts of the four fundamental forces and typical magics, I'll detail this in another post, this one's getting too long.
I hope this has led you to consider the superhuman abilities of characters in any fictional work with a little more thought, it takes time to craft a meaningful magical or technical system. Another little realisation brought home to me as I design my own sub-creation.
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