Clarke's Law

[bloodyrosemccoy]

God DAMMIT, Jeph Jacques:

"When you think about it, all fantasy novels are actually science fiction novels. Magic is just nanotech." - Hannelore's Twitter

Well, there goes the unique novel idea I was developing. Back to the drawing board.

Comments

[kadharonon.livejournal.com]

To be fair, JMS kinda got there first with the technomages in Babylon 5.

It's not about how unique the idea is. It's about how unique your approach to it is.

[madripoor-rose.livejournal.com]

Snort. I have half a novel from highschool where the fantasy world is just a deeply committted multigenerational role-playing game, and the witches and wizards are the fx guys.

[redbird]

Does it matter where you draw the lines?

Jo Walton just won the Hugo for Among Others, a book in which the characters aren't entirely sure if the magic is real.

[cjtremlett.livejournal.com]

Sufficiently advance science = magic.
Sufficiently analyzed magic = science.

And there are no unique ideas. If you're lucky enough to get into print first, the people who have been thinking of or working on it and just work slower are having that moment. And there are plenty of stories of people writing something and getting it into print (or putting it on TV or in a movie, for that matter) and only then finding out that someone else, somewhere, has already done something very similar that somehow had never made it to their attention before.

Neil Gaiman talks about this kind of thing. So do a lot of other writers and such, but I like Neil's way of thinking of how there's this cauldron of ideas and stories and such and everyone who writes dips a ladle in and pulls out what they want to use and puts it all together in their own way. And then that goes into the cauldron, too. I think he was speaking primarily of Sandman, or maybe American Gods, or maybe both, when he used that metaphor.

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

*grin* True. I guess I just needed a moment of pouting, because I was sure that THIS time my idea was unique. MAYBE NEXT TIME

On the other hand, I'm pretty used to Poul Anderson having already had pretty much all of my ideas. So I guess this is nothing new.

[gwalla.livejournal.com]

If it's any consolation, the anime Scrapped Princess also kinda beat you to it.

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

... Actually, somehow, it is.

[brightlotusmoon.livejournal.com]

DAMMIT.

Also, that's what my husband keeps telling me, since he's been an actual magic practitioner since he was 14. He says it's all basically science, especially physics. I just want it to be magic. But okay, I'll go with physics. I've seen the way Husband uses magic and physics at the same time, so I believe it.

[van.livejournal.com]

Ahahaha, I love that Clarke's Law. It's annoying at times, but AWESOME, too, because I'm a person who doesn't believe in "magic" but I do love science, and I love that someday the magical things I want to exist will because we've made them possible through science.

[padparadscha.livejournal.com]

Hee. I have all sorts of ways to explain magic in my stories--the most recent is the idea that it's in a parallel universe with slightly different laws of physics. (There are particles that complement protons and electrons that don't exist in our world, which makes crossing from there to here a little difficult when you've got those particles in your body.) It makes for a nice scientific cop-out.