| Re: Must fantasy include magic
While I agree with Theresa that magic, in the sense we know it, is a person or entity trying to control supernatural forces, I think that magic in fantasy is 90% your/the character's perception of the world. It is what they consider magic that is the key.
To a caveman, the use of electricity is magic. To a medieaval man the car is magic. Both our control of electricity ( a 'supernatural' force until science explained it) and the internal combustion engine are easily explainable to us, but not to them.
In say The Chronicles Of Morgaine, Morgaine has devices that she considers explicable and merely the result of science. Yet to everyone else in the world(s) they are magic, because they control forces which the people who live there cannot, and as such in that book, they are magic. |