What if Magic was Science?

Okay, kiddies.  One more time into the depths of Fantasy.  After this post I promise to write about something else.  But something struck me as important last night while I was thinking about what makes for good, or bad, writing in this genre.  Something I need to get off my chest.


In a previous post I mentioned how imagination and immersion are needed to capture the reader and make them a fan.  Imagination to see the plot, the characters, the settings with a clear eye; the immersion of that imagination so tightly woven the reader is cacooned into a world so vast and so complex they don't want to leave.


I also mentioned in a separate post talking about writing fantasy a writer should read.  Read everything they can grab hold of.  From a laundry ticket to Nineteenth Century Russian novelists (although on the last one, take a bottle of aspirins with you.  Russians describe and describe and describe and . . . well, you get the picture).  You never know what you will read which will suddenly 'flip the switch' and make your mind go off the deep end in pure speculation.  Here is an example:


In my Roland series, those who 'have the touch of magic in their blood' have the capacity to enter the Netherworld.  And the Netherworld is  . . . well, hard to explain.  It's the supernatural.  But more than that.  It is Hell.  But more than that.  It is an unending River of Time, with no beginning and no ending;  but in truth, it is far more than that.  It is a place where a magician or wizard can talk to himself.  Talk to himself from out of the Past, the Present, and the Future.  It is the residence of Hope.  And of Evil.


The idea of this concept came to me one day while reading an article about Brane Theory.  A physicist, name forgotten, came up with the idea that there or, at least, 15 dimensions.  He postulates each of these dimensions are like a sheet of stretched rubber membranes hanging vertically in space/time side-by-side.  They rarely touch.  But when the do . . . .


Heavy stuff there, Eunice.  Makes your head hurt, old girl.  But it got me day-dreaming.


What if you could had the power to step into a place and see 15 copies of You?  You from the Past (in fifteen different variations).  You from the Present (again, in fifteen different variations).  You from the Future (you see where I am going with this.)  If this was possible--what ramifications did these multiple variations have on such concepts like Fate and Destiny?  Was there  actually such things as Fate and Destiny in a multi-dimensional universe?


Ah!  What if . . . what if . . . Magic was actually Science carried into this dimension from a different dimension?  What if . . . . !


See what I mean?  A casual reading of something completely unrelated to writing fiction suddenly unfolds in your mind a realm of possibilities.  And THAT, kiddies, is what makes for good fantasy writing.