Why Wizards Can’t Discover Quantum Mechanics
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Mar 4 2010, 5:03 AM
Have you ever wondered why most fantasy books and movies are set in feudal agrarian societies? The civilizations depicted may be thousands of years old (the elves always seem to come from a stable society older than human history), and yet they’re still barely past the discovery of steel.
Lord of the Rings? Feudal agrarian.
Song of Ice and Fire? Feudal agrarian.
Riddlemaster of Hed? Feudal agrarian.
Chronicles of Thomas Covenant? Feudal agrarian.
Earthsea? Shannara? Melnibone? Feudal agrarian.
Lankhmar, Narnia, Cimmeria? Feudal agrarian.
Why is that? Why are they all pre-industrial, pre-Renaissance, pre-Enlightenment?
Why are they all pre-science?
I know why this is.
It’s not because the world before the Industrial Revolution was by definition more romantic. It’s not that the world before the Enlightenment was more adventurous.
It’s that a wizard will really mess up a scientist’s day.
The whole point of science is to figure out how the world works, and come up with rules that tell you how it will work in the future. Observe, hypothesize, experiment, lather, rinse, repeat. Over time, by examining and correlating empirical data you discover the immutable laws of physics, upon which you can form larger and more elaborate theories.
Unless, that is, you exist in a world where the laws of physics can be affected by the pure willpower of some bearded dude in a pointy hat.
“Force equals mass times acceleration” is a pretty good rule. It’s useful, and very reliable. You can calculate a lot of different things with it.
But what if you lived in a universe where force equals mass times acceleration times willpower times the mystical accelerant of the fancy little necklace that you just captured from that ogre? Or force equals mass times acceleration plus mana, minus the number of people who had seen a dragon fly that day?
Well, you’d be in a world where you couldn’t figure out f=ma in the first place. Where you couldn’t trust that a steam engine would create a predictable amount of mechanical power, a turbine could create magnetism and energy, or pulses of light could transmit information through a series of tubes to a powerful kind of scrying glass called the inter-nets.
Dragons, elves, and wizards will fuck up Galileo, Copernicus, and Newton every time.
You see this theory in play in some fantasy books – the Amber series plays with multiple universes, some of which have modern technology. But in that story world, the closer you get to the two true poles of existence (Amber and Chaos), the less technological you must become.
In modern ‘urban fantasy’ like the Harry Dresden books or ‘manapunk’ stories like the Shadowrun series, you have worlds that combine high technology and magic. But in those story worlds, the magic has always been pushed underground, or has disappeared entirely for a long time, in order to allow true science to develop.
So, science and magic don’t mix. Oddly though, for some reason science and movies often don’t mix either. A filmmaker insisting on using real science in the story development process is as weird and difficult to find as a quark.
There are some legitimate reasons for this to happen, but sometimes it’s just intellectual laziness. Filmmakers know that many audience members don’t understand how science works, or simply don’t care that the science in any given movie is stupid.
Personally, bad science in a movie doesn’t automatically ruin it for me, if the movie is otherwise well done. I enjoyed the reboot of Star Trek despite the fact that the time travel plot device was just plain silly. I enjoyed Sunshine despite the fact that it stopped being a science fiction movie about halfway through. I even love the various incarnations of Frankenstein (based on a book that some say is the cornerstone of science fiction literature), despite the fact that we’ve learned a lot about what constitutes “life” since then.
But what does annoy me is when a filmmaker is so dismissive of the intelligence or good taste of his audience to label something “science fiction” while completely throwing away anything in it that could possibly be called “science.”
Because we already have a label for that. It’s called “fantasy.”
Have you ever wondered why most fantasy books and movies are set in feudal agrarian societies? The civilizations depicted may be thousands of years old (the elves always seem to come from a stable society older than human history), and yet they’re still barely past the discovery of steel.
Lord of the Rings? Feudal agrarian.
Song of Ice and Fire? Feudal agrarian.
Riddlemaster of Hed? Feudal agrarian.
Chronicles of Thomas Covenant? Feudal agrarian.
Earthsea? Shannara? Melnibone? Feudal agrarian.
Lankhmar, Narnia, Cimmeria? Feudal agrarian.
Why is that? Why are they all pre-industrial, pre-Renaissance, pre-Enlightenment?
Why are they all pre-science?
I know why this is.
It’s not because the world before the Industrial Revolution was by definition more romantic. It’s not that the world before the Enlightenment was more adventurous.
It’s that a wizard will really mess up a scientist’s day.
The whole point of science is to figure out how the world works, and come up with rules that tell you how it will work in the future. Observe, hypothesize, experiment, lather, rinse, repeat. Over time, by examining and correlating empirical data you discover the immutable laws of physics, upon which you can form larger and more elaborate theories.
Unless, that is, you exist in a world where the laws of physics can be affected by the pure willpower of some bearded dude in a pointy hat.
“Force equals mass times acceleration” is a pretty good rule. It’s useful, and very reliable. You can calculate a lot of different things with it.
But what if you lived in a universe where force equals mass times acceleration times willpower times the mystical accelerant of the fancy little necklace that you just captured from that ogre? Or force equals mass times acceleration plus mana, minus the number of people who had seen a dragon fly that day?
Well, you’d be in a world where you couldn’t figure out f=ma in the first place. Where you couldn’t trust that a steam engine would create a predictable amount of mechanical power, a turbine could create magnetism and energy, or pulses of light could transmit information through a series of tubes to a powerful kind of scrying glass called the inter-nets.
Dragons, elves, and wizards will fuck up Galileo, Copernicus, and Newton every time.
You see this theory in play in some fantasy books – the Amber series plays with multiple universes, some of which have modern technology. But in that story world, the closer you get to the two true poles of existence (Amber and Chaos), the less technological you must become.
In modern ‘urban fantasy’ like the Harry Dresden books or ‘manapunk’ stories like the Shadowrun series, you have worlds that combine high technology and magic. But in those story worlds, the magic has always been pushed underground, or has disappeared entirely for a long time, in order to allow true science to develop.
So, science and magic don’t mix. Oddly though, for some reason science and movies often don’t mix either. A filmmaker insisting on using real science in the story development process is as weird and difficult to find as a quark.
There are some legitimate reasons for this to happen, but sometimes it’s just intellectual laziness. Filmmakers know that many audience members don’t understand how science works, or simply don’t care that the science in any given movie is stupid.
Personally, bad science in a movie doesn’t automatically ruin it for me, if the movie is otherwise well done. I enjoyed the reboot of Star Trek despite the fact that the time travel plot device was just plain silly. I enjoyed Sunshine despite the fact that it stopped being a science fiction movie about halfway through. I even love the various incarnations of Frankenstein (based on a book that some say is the cornerstone of science fiction literature), despite the fact that we’ve learned a lot about what constitutes “life” since then.
But what does annoy me is when a filmmaker is so dismissive of the intelligence or good taste of his audience to label something “science fiction” while completely throwing away anything in it that could possibly be called “science.”
Because we already have a label for that. It’s called “fantasy.”
Lord of the Rings? Feudal agrarian.
Song of Ice and Fire? Feudal agrarian.
Riddlemaster of Hed? Feudal agrarian.
Chronicles of Thomas Covenant? Feudal agrarian.
Earthsea? Shannara? Melnibone? Feudal agrarian.
Lankhmar, Narnia, Cimmeria? Feudal agrarian.
Why is that? Why are they all pre-industrial, pre-Renaissance, pre-Enlightenment?
Why are they all pre-science?
I know why this is.
It’s not because the world before the Industrial Revolution was by definition more romantic. It’s not that the world before the Enlightenment was more adventurous.
It’s that a wizard will really mess up a scientist’s day.
The whole point of science is to figure out how the world works, and come up with rules that tell you how it will work in the future. Observe, hypothesize, experiment, lather, rinse, repeat. Over time, by examining and correlating empirical data you discover the immutable laws of physics, upon which you can form larger and more elaborate theories.
Unless, that is, you exist in a world where the laws of physics can be affected by the pure willpower of some bearded dude in a pointy hat.
“Force equals mass times acceleration” is a pretty good rule. It’s useful, and very reliable. You can calculate a lot of different things with it.
But what if you lived in a universe where force equals mass times acceleration times willpower times the mystical accelerant of the fancy little necklace that you just captured from that ogre? Or force equals mass times acceleration plus mana, minus the number of people who had seen a dragon fly that day?
Well, you’d be in a world where you couldn’t figure out f=ma in the first place. Where you couldn’t trust that a steam engine would create a predictable amount of mechanical power, a turbine could create magnetism and energy, or pulses of light could transmit information through a series of tubes to a powerful kind of scrying glass called the inter-nets.
Dragons, elves, and wizards will fuck up Galileo, Copernicus, and Newton every time.
You see this theory in play in some fantasy books – the Amber series plays with multiple universes, some of which have modern technology. But in that story world, the closer you get to the two true poles of existence (Amber and Chaos), the less technological you must become.
In modern ‘urban fantasy’ like the Harry Dresden books or ‘manapunk’ stories like the Shadowrun series, you have worlds that combine high technology and magic. But in those story worlds, the magic has always been pushed underground, or has disappeared entirely for a long time, in order to allow true science to develop.
So, science and magic don’t mix. Oddly though, for some reason science and movies often don’t mix either. A filmmaker insisting on using real science in the story development process is as weird and difficult to find as a quark.
There are some legitimate reasons for this to happen, but sometimes it’s just intellectual laziness. Filmmakers know that many audience members don’t understand how science works, or simply don’t care that the science in any given movie is stupid.
Personally, bad science in a movie doesn’t automatically ruin it for me, if the movie is otherwise well done. I enjoyed the reboot of Star Trek despite the fact that the time travel plot device was just plain silly. I enjoyed Sunshine despite the fact that it stopped being a science fiction movie about halfway through. I even love the various incarnations of Frankenstein (based on a book that some say is the cornerstone of science fiction literature), despite the fact that we’ve learned a lot about what constitutes “life” since then.
But what does annoy me is when a filmmaker is so dismissive of the intelligence or good taste of his audience to label something “science fiction” while completely throwing away anything in it that could possibly be called “science.”
Because we already have a label for that. It’s called “fantasy.”
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