Magic & Mystery
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I’ve always been a genre purist. It seems to me that when you mash up two different settings it’s a cop-out for not being able to do one right by itself. If you’re good a making breakfast, but a new lady friend asks you to make her dinner and you make her an egg and cheese loaf. A nice cheese omelet formed into an artery-choking vomit-like brick of greasy yellow. Better hope you’ve got some other charm to fall back on - dexterously dazzling cunnilinguistics.
It can be done well. I’ve spoken on how Buffy didn’t appeal me in the past - kitsch dark occult, NAH - but do love Firefly, Joss Whedon’s Western Sci-Fi mix redemption. Another example is Jim Butcher’s Dresden Files novel series - actually I‘ve only finished listening to the debut novel Storm Front but if the writing holds through out the series it‘ll be gravy. Not egg gravy. The story inspired a single season series on Sci-Fi Channel, but in the tragic tradition of Farscape, it too was canceled before its prime. Wasn’t a great showing with its Mulder and Scully love tension between Harry Dresden and his cop contact Murphy, but it did magic a bit differently than normal.
Butcher did a lot upfront to soothe my suspicions. Many setting leave me wondering why magic has to be underground. Why doesn’t science absorb it? Methane is flammable, shit can produce methane, and therefore bat guano could maybe produce the twenty-foot radius fireball of fantasy lore. It would take a lot of bats on a prune diet, but you can work with that as an author. Many don’t because it seems to take a bit of work and talent, which they don‘t have or choose to showcase. Geeks like sexy sexy detail, duh!
Butcher shows why this can’t be in his world. Magic operates by a symbolic science, although it’s used the same way as the forensic sciences on CSI - but far less cheesy. The forces are often fueled by dark energies - not the “dark” as in extra creepy but the kind that requires demonic orgies, hatred and lightning storms to power. If it became mainstream the world would be hell given this cheap form of energy. White Council that enforces laws to protect our civilization although it isn’t a part of it checks the potential for power abuse. There’s a practical reason why it shouldn’t become more popular - although they’re not uber secretive about it. Main protagonist Harry Blackstone Copperfield Dresden advertises in the Yellow Pages and is on police retainer.
Dresden’s tale is a gritty film noir detective story that simply adds credible magic. He broke as fuck - would you hire a wizard? Instead of paying crackhead informants, he’ll pump a faerie for information - no homo. He lives an old fashion life not from some hokey style but because dealing with magic ruins machinery. Yet, he still packs a revolver since it’s a simple mechanism and guns are fuck’in handy. There laws of magic like those of physics, which are too numerous to exposition dump, but Harry, our hero and first person narrator, has no problem explaining them in simple terms as they come up without sounding like lecture.
I could very well be disappointed later on the series, but so far so magically delicious.
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