2005.08.27
The Anti-Magic Fantasy Story
It would be interesting to read a story about someone who wants to abolish magic on their world. Usually magic is such a prevalent fixture in the fantasy genre. I’m not widely aware of what already exists in the field so this might have been done already.
The trick would be to have a good reason for the need to abolish magic, and to somehow make the protagonist sympathetic to the reader. I can imagine all sorts of ways you could make an unsympathetic person want to get rid of magic, but nothing immediately springs to mind for someone likable.
I will delve into the possibilities of this elsewhere…
Categorized: writing
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One Response to “The Anti-Magic Fantasy Story”
- Mookee says (August 28th, 2005 at 02:34:46 )
There was a series of books that sort of dealt with this … not really the banning of magic, but that was woven in the plot. The problem is I can’t remember what the hell the name of the series was. I read the first one, it started out great, but the ending was horrible and I declined to read the rest of the series.
If I remember correctly, everyone was a sorcerer of some sort, and people were born with specific magic abilities. Some of them were offensive, some defensive, some were healers, etc. The idea was to have the right combination in any circumstance. An offensive guy would kick your ass, but was defenseless without assistance. You get the idea.
The main character is born with no magical ability whatsoever. Generally, these children are killed at birth, but for some reason they don’t kill him and he lives. Turns out something happens at the end where it’s significant that he has no magic ability (go figure on that one).
Anyway, in the end, some space/time portal, whatever, shows up and insert modern day technology with tanks, etc. It turns out this magic planet is the only planet in the universe with magic and the general with the tanks wants to take it.
It goes downhill from there. That being said, I think one of the big turnoffs was the combination of modern day technology with present day technology. I don’t really like the mix in fantasy … I’ll not say it doesn’t work at all. For example, “the force” in the Star Wars movies could be considered “magic,” and they pulled that off pretty well…
That was way longer than intended, sorry about that.
