Hi everyone, this is Aliette de Bodard peeking in from Paris. Charlie's been kind enough to let me borrow a spot on his blog while he recovers from jet lag we both went to Worldcon in Spokane, but I have a big advantage over him: I wasn't in the US long enough and actually never really adapted to the 9-hour time difference, so when I came back I was basically functioning normally. On the minus side, I was a pumpkin in Spokane! Magic systems, for me, are a bit like the air you breathe: I've found out much to my dismay that I can't start writing a story without having an idea of where the magic is coming from and who uses it.
Magic conditions so much of the fabric of a fantasy universe for me that not working it out in advance feels a little like setting out across a blizzard without skis, warm clothes or a distress flare.
When it comes to magic systems, there is of course an entire spectrum between magic as the numinous, the fundamentally irrational and illogical JRR Tolkien's Lord of the Rings , the magic of the sea in Patricia McKillip's The Changeling Sea , and magic as a quasi-rational system Brandon Sanderson's Cosmere.
The former, again, has a range between magic permeating the entire world for instance, Elizabeth Bear's The Eternal Sky , where the celestial bodies hanging in the sky depend on which country one is in , and magic as an incursion, a break in the ordered surface of the world through which the numinous and outright scary can intrude the eerie, quiet otherworld of Kari Sperring's The Grass King's Concubine is effectively contrasted with a gritty and very real Industrial Revolution. The latter, in turn, is what Brent Weeks characterises as an attempt to make magic closer to science, to prevent Deus Ex Machina endings aka getting characters out of any scrape: it sets very clear limits on what magic can and cannot do.
This, of course, raises the issue of differentiating magic and science, notably when you happen to have both in the story. Very often, magic is the province of a select few: not always a hereditary system though Adrian Tchaikovsky's Guns of the Dawn , for instance, has two magical ruling dynasties , but certainly one of chosen people, those born with magical abilities Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time differentiates those who can be taught and those with the spark, who will express that talent without being taught, but it remains that you're either capable of magic or not.
