Imaginative premises.
Surprises.
No deus ex machina.
A surprise must be shown to have followed logically from already stated premises which include the laws of hyper-physics, e.g., is FTL possible?, or of magic, e.g., are flying carpets possible? A counterfactual premise, e.g., a talking lion, is neither logical nor illogical but simply a premise with logical implications, e.g., discourse with such a lion. (Someone thought that "talking lion" was illogical. Clearly, he thought that "logical" meant not "consistent" but "consistent with our experience, therefore familiar and expectable." Aristotle and his successors did not formulate and systematize the familiar and expectable but how to think about it - and about anything else. And some people get their idea of logic from Mr Spock.)
Poul Anderson's fantasy and sf exemplify the above rules. Some writers of graphic fantasy seem to make up their laws of magic and supernature as they go along but manage to make this work, nevertheless. Is SM Stirling's Sword of the Lady a deus ex machina?
The Sword:
cannot be cut, stained, blunted, damaged or stolen;
can cut a falling hair;
bestows the gifts of tongues and of detecting falsehood;
has adjusted its length and weight to a new wielder;
will not harm its wielder or his/her kin.
So far, this seems intuitively right but what will come next?
2 comments:
The thing about premises is that you can't arbitrarily adjust them to suit; that'll wreck a story. "Where everything is possible, nothing is interesting", as the saying goes.
The other thing about the Sword is that it's -dangerous-. Dangerous to the wielder; you're well-advised to use it as little as possible. The Powers that made it intended it mostly to checkmate other interventions.
Dear Mr. Stirling,
All the same, I'm not quite happy with your "The Sword of the Lady." It still looks too much lie a deus ex machina to me. You write well, so I can mostly overlook that. But I would have felt less uneasy about the Sword if it sometimes made MISTAKES.
Sean
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