Soft Magic

I am not fond of ‘soft’ magic. All the magical events in my primary fantasy mythos follow strict, generally well defined, ‘scientific’ rules. They may be ‘rubber science,’ as the science fiction community terms such plausible but invented rules, but they remain constant. In that sense, my fantasy could be alternatively labeled science fiction.

Most fantasy has used soft magic over the years. And centuries and millennia! Stuff just happens without much explanation. Gods and demons have powers. Sorcerers cast spells. Names have power. And so on. You’ll find it in Tolkien. You’ll find it in Le Guin’s ‘Earth-Sea.’ That approach also spills over into science fiction when telepathy or the transferal of consciousness occurs, often without explanation. I assiduously avoid such things. Even at best, they become a crutch.

As can be soft magic. It’s far too easy to fudge what magic can do when there are no strict rules. Ultimately, having those rules requires us to think creatively about how to work with them. Rather like writing poetry in form; finding the words that work properly can lead us to new insights on meaning, point us in new directions. We will find no new roads if we don’t run into a few obstacles.

I might add that the rules of magic in my stories are also rooted in science (yes, of a sort). They are not just arbitrary rules that have no explanation — or ones that are, in themselves, soft magic. Sanderson’s work tends that direction. However, it is recognized in the work that most practitioners (even the gods, sometimes) do not completely understand the underlying reasons things work. Magic is ever likely to remain a somewhat empirical sort of science.

Hard and Soft

We sometimes speak, in the fantasy genre, of ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ magic systems. This refers to the rules of how magic works in our created world, whether they are clearly delineated or ‘anything goes.’ There is a very wide range between those two. Tolkien’s magic is fairly soft; it is simply magic and some can wield it. This is not unlike the magic of the myths from which he drew many of his ideas.

Tolkien does soft magic well. In other hands, it can become nonsense, following no logic, and providing easy solutions to any problem that comes along. On the other end of the spectrum, an author like Sanderson provides quite strict rules for the use of magic.

All this, for the most part, is how magic works, not why it does. Admittedly, if one gets into explaining the nuts and bolts of it, one veers toward soft science fiction. I plead guilty to this. I need to know why my magic works, and it needs to be grounded in science of a sort. No depending on nebulous ‘elemental’ magic or ‘the power of words’ or anything of that sort.

Of course, my characters don’t need to know what I know. Most sorcerers are operating on empirical knowledge. It’s like that bit by Arthur C. Clarke about advanced technology being magic to those who don’t understand it.

More than a few old school science fiction writers leaned heavily on telepathy to create ‘magic.’ Andre Norton used it a lot, whether working in SF or fantasy. Even Edgar Rice Burroughs threw it in from time to time. Unfortunately, that can be as mushy as any soft magic, if we do not have a clear idea of how telepathy works. It doesn’t work in my primary fantasy worlds, but...well, the books do explain mind reading and more, and it all fits into the concept of infinite worlds and the ability to enter into them.

Admittedly, I do not clearly state why some have that ability. But then, we needn’t explain why some have better hearing than others, need we? Or why some are smarter! We just say ‘genetics’ and that’s how I explain it—some are born able to see or even partially cross into other worlds. And that is the basis of all magic.

Or I should say all known magic, or magic that works in my worlds. If we posit infinite universes there would have to be all sorts of magic out there. That is only of academic interest as it would not impact any world where it didn’t work!

So perhaps the bulk of my fantasy is really soft science fiction? It could certainly be argued but I would not attempt to market it as such. It reads like genre fantasy so that’s what I call it. It’s all part of the speculative fiction spectrum anyway.