Tim Hunter: It doesn't seem like there's any real magic anymore. Not like it was. Where did all the magic go?
The Phantom Stranger: Much magic was lost when the last vestiges of Atlantis sank - - although misplaced would perhaps be a more precise term.
The Phantom Stranger: Between the Dark Ages and the Middle Ages many of the powers of Faerie and Gramarye left this plane for good. Some for one place, some for another.
The Phantom Stranger: And as science arose it left little room for magic.
Tim Hunter: Why?
The Phantom Stranger: The difference in viewpoint.
Science is a way of talking about the universe in words that bind it to a common reality.
Magic is a method of talking to the universe in words that it cannot ignore.
The two are rarely compatible.
Tim Hunter: So what are you saying? That magic died out by my time?
The Phantom Stranger: No. But wild magic is a thing of the past.
-Neil Gaiman, The Books Of Magic, Volume I, The Invisible Labyrinth (New York, 1990), p. 40, p. 41, panels 1-2.
"...the Otherworld, the halfworld, Faerie, whatever you want to call it."
-Poul Anderson, The Merman's Children (London, 1981), Author's Note, pp.vii-x AT p. vii.
Tim Hunter: Constantine said we were going to FAIRYLAND. He was kidding, wasn't he?
Doctor Occult: We travel through the fair lands, child. Call them AVALON, or ELVENHOME, or DOM-DANIEL, or FAERIE, it matters not. It id the Land of Summer's Twilight.
-Neil Gaiman, The Books Of Magic, Book III, The Land Of Summer's Twilight (New York, 1991), p. 5, panel 5.
Although Anderson and Gaiman parallel each other in fantasy, Gaiman does not write sf.
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
And I'm annoyed by the Phantom Stranger's ridiculous description of science! A real science is NOT just a way of talking about the world. To quote a but from page 146 of Anderson's IS THERE LIFE ON OTHER WORLDS, science is "...a body of more or less organized fact and theory together with a process of discovery involving hypothetical explanations whose deductive consequences are checked against observed data and that are discarded when they don't work."
Ad astra! Sean
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