Skip to main content

Where Science and Magic Collide: Kat Heckenbach's Finding Angel and Seeking Unseen

Finding Angel and Seeking Unseen are sequels in my friend Kat's story universe geared toward a young adult audience. She portrays magic as a special talent that each character has, a special skill that is stronger than any other magic he or she might be able to perform. Her tales center around the individual journeys of self-discovery for these characters—just as every person over time learns what he or she is best suited to do over time, her protagonists work to learn and develop their "talents."

Kat's a fine writer and I've enjoyed the quality of her writing and character development for a long time. But what interests me for this post—the story idea that has my own creative juices flowing--is her decision to make her magic creatively compatible with science.

In Finding Angel, Angel, whose special talent is, well...finding things...is described as learning to focus on moving air molecules to create lift in order to levitate objects. Or in a similar way, magic in this world would create diamonds by compressing coal...or put out a fire by driving air molecules away, denying the flames the oxygen it needs, or cooling a room by selectively driving out the fast-moving particles of air and allowing the slow-moving ones to stay...

This means Kat’s universe is orderly and regular, something her magicians can study and understand, just as scientists would…except they have access to a power that goes outside the realm of what is currently known by the science of planet Earth. I really like that—it’s not 100% original, because some other worlds of magic work at least a little like that, but it’s uncommon enough to be fresh—it’s an elegant little thought, one that Kat executes well.

If I were to expand on this sort of wizardry for a story of my own, I’d make a whole set of talents focused on what we’d call on Earth scientific discovery and investigation. So one person might have a talent of knowing rocks, another details of life forms, or another the stars…or the molecules of air that we’ve already talked about…or maybe even talents of knowing about antimatter, neutrinos, or the Higgs Field…though of course, they would have other, more “magical” names for them…

(Follow the links to purchase Seeking Unseen and/or Finding Angel - I believe you'll be glad you did...)

ttp

Comments

  1. Kat HeckenbachSeptember 17, 2012 at 7:21 PM

    Thanks so much for the post, Travis. I love you take on my magic system and the cool ideas it's inspired. I wouldn't have thought to have Talents that know about neutrinos :). Awesome!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Captain TravisSeptember 20, 2012 at 9:58 PM

      Kat, I think you could really make something of that if you wanted to--detecting neutrinos and knowing when some of them were missing could be the ultimate "X-Ray Vision" sort of thing...

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

7 Ways to Deal with the Problem Magic Poses Christian Fantasy Writers

First off, what is the problem with magic for Christians? Or sorcery? Or witchcraft? (Are all of those things even the same?) An entire book could be written on this topic (perhaps I'll do that someday) but to keep this as brief as possible, the short reason this is a problem is the Bible has nothing good to say about the practice of magic (neither does extra-Biblical Christian tradition). No translation of Scripture will record the 12 Disciples watching Jesus walk on the water and say, "Wow, that was magical!" Nor is the mana falling from heaven in Israel's wilderness wanderings described as some kind of powerful spell that Moses used, nor even is his rod described as "magic," even though Moses had the power granted to him by God to turn it into a serpent at whatever time he chose. No, the Bible describes events like these as "miracles," or "signs," or "wonders." On the other hand, when the Bible talks about "mag
17 comments
Read more

Peter Jackson's Ring of Power

As Gandalf famously stated in the Fellowship of the Ring, the Ring of Power appealed to the good-hearted and heroic wizard, giving him a desire to use it for good. But in fact, as every LOTR fan knows, it   cannot   be done. The Ring of Power will eventually corrupt every person who attempts to use it into an evil being. Watching the Fellowship of the Ring movie last night reminded me of this principle. The fact that evil   cannot  be used for good is one of the things I love most about The Lord of the Rings. It’s a powerful statement about the attempt human beings make over and over again to gain power supposedly for good—which simply cannot be done by evil means. Not without   becoming   evil. By the way, back when it was first released, I strenuously objected to the plot changes Peter Jackson put into the Fellowship of the Ring. No, for me, the original story was quite good enough and didn’t need to be streamlined or “Hollywoodized” or anything of the sort. When Frodo s
Post a Comment
Read more

Nanite Infested Aliens

Inspired by the history of Europeans coming to the New World carrying bacteria to which the native inhabitants had little to no immunity, I thought: "What if aliens visiting Earth carried their own sort of infection or infestation, to which we humans had no immunity?" Sort of a War of the Worlds scenario in reverse... But I'm sure that sort of thing has already been done by someone, aliens carrying virulent disease(s) humans don't carry. So what if the infestation were of nanites--what  if nanites become a standard part of healthcare for any advanced technological species? (Just as hand washing and sterilization of medical instruments become standard at a certain point of development--once bacteria are discovered and found to be potentially harmful.) So that nanites are literally crawling all over (and inside) the bodies of high-tech aliens (or perhaps time travelers from Earth's distant future). What if these nanites potentially posed a risk to the human race?
Post a Comment
Read more