Enchantment or advancement.

[Rumil]

A couple of random points to throw in here..

LoTR seems to me to be set in a Dark Age/Early Mediaeval milieu (approximatelyish naturally). In Britain the people of those times sometimes looked back to the remains of Roman civilisation and wondered at the power of the Ancients (eg. central heating, aqueducts, municipal buildings, Hadrian's Wall etc etc) . Therefore some sort of respect and awe for artefacts of a bygone age seems appropriate.

Was it Arthur C Clarke that said any sufficiently advanced technology is viewed as 'magic' by those unfamiliar with it? I'm sure Tolkien would have hated the idea that eg. Sting was the product of high-tech rather than 'craft' but the effect is the same, both Sting and a light-sabre could cut deep into a wooden beam at a single stroke!

[Hookbill the Goomba]

Originally Posted by Rumil

Was it Arthur C Clarke that said any sufficiently advanced technology is viewed as 'magic' by those unfamiliar with it?

Highly advanced technology is almost indistinguishable from magic. The opposite is also true.

[Lalwendë]

The Smiths of old (as in forgers of metals, not the band with gladioli-toting singer ) used to be thought of as great magicians by ordinary people who saw them turning rocks into weapons and could not explain it other than as magic.

There's the old folk story about Wayland's Smithy, where local people would leave their horses and come back next day to find them with iron shoes fitted...

[Mnemosyne]

Originally Posted by Rumil

Was it Arthur C Clarke that said any sufficiently advanced technology is viewed as 'magic' by those unfamiliar with it? I'm sure Tolkien would have hated the idea that eg. Sting was the product of high-tech rather than 'craft' but the effect is the same, both Sting and a light-sabre could cut deep into a wooden beam at a single stroke!

Eh... really? Sting could cleave spiderwebs, because spiders were a threat in the land where it was forged, but as far as I know the enemies of the elves of the First Age weren't Evil Ents that required +3 Woodchopping Swords. One of the better things, IMO, about fantastic weapons is that they can be specialized like that, so that you don't have superweapons like lightsabers, sonic screwdrivers, etc., that people need to come up with increasingly creative methods to stop.

Which is rather beside the point.

What I find to be an irritating trend in non-realistic literature is this need to come up with scientific explanations for everything that is beyond the reader's understanding. It was cool when Anne McCaffrey did it, but I hope no one will disagree with me when I say that the "midichlorian" explanation of the Force killed a lot of the fun of Star Wars.

Where did this need to rationalize everything come from?

In Tolkien you don't get that: you get runes of virtue and songs so powerful they inspire visions and athelas and curses that have an effect. And you get old, powerful objects the like of which will never be made again--the Silmarils, which contain only a fraction of the light of the Trees, whose power is harnessed, again at a fraction of its true level, in Frodo's star-glass (which then passes over the Sea )

The enchantment is more powerful than advancement, I would argue, because the Story has to continue. In one sense the continuity of artifacts like this is what makes them powerful.

One other area I would extend this inquiry into, and that's the healing arts of the Elves and of Gondor. Aside from the mention of athelas and possibly some singing, we never get any detail of what this knowledge was or how it worked. I've run across stories in fantasy that do try to give detail and it never works for me because I can tell that the writer is a modern-day person, using modern-day knowledge to diagnose someone ailing and then trying to mask that knowledge. (The quickest example that comes to mind is a piece of fan fiction in which Aragorn performed surgery on a man with cancer!)

So to what extent is less more when an author portrays items of wondrous power? Is an explanation of how it works more or less appealing than a tale of its history proving how effective it's been in the past?

[Rumil]

Hi All,

Strangely Mnem I agree with you, notwithstanding the following...

He took from the box a small sword in an old shabby leathern scabbard. Then he drew it, and its polished and well-tended blade glittered suddenly, cold and bright, 'This is Sting,' he said, and thrust it with little effort deep into a wooden beam. 'Take it, if you like. I shan't want it again, I expect.'

The part I agree with is that mysteriousness should be preserved, and similarly dislike the urge to science-up fantasy. I prefer there to be countless creatures of strange types in the Wild, Giants in the Misty Mountains and a veil of uncertainty (and perhaps decency!) to be drawn over the origins of orcs.

My only point being that if you have some ancient sword of immense history in our world, its just an old sword with an interesting story, however in LoTR it can also be better, more useful and more functional, just as if it was from an advanced tech. Agree with Lal the Smith was somewhat of an uncanny figure steeped in ancient mysteries in legend!

I also liked the comeback to Clarke that any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced . (Must take deep breaths to avoid an impassioned OT rant on the evils of distinctly unmagical Office 2007, breathe, breathe).

[Mnemosyne]

Rumil, I stand corrected.

[BGreg]

The part I agree with is that mysteriousness should be preserved, and similarly dislike the urge to science-up fantasy.

True, true. There is a very good story on that subject by George R.R. Martin, it's called "With Morning Comes Mistfall". I've just read it recently, and it basically supports everything you said here.

[Hookbill the Goomba]

Originally Posted by Mnemosyne

What I find to be an irritating trend in non-realistic literature is this need to come up with scientific explanations for everything that is beyond the reader's understanding. It was cool when Anne McCaffrey did it, but I hope no one will disagree with me when I say that the "midichlorian" explanation of the Force killed a lot of the fun of Star Wars.

Where did this need to rationalize everything come from?

I've had some first had experience of this, actually. In a writing work-shop I submitted the prologue to a book I'm writing. It contained a scene with some fire doing some very odd things (burning through stone, worming through streets and setting people on fire without killing them).
Someone said "Fire doesn't do this!"
I tried to explain that it was significant to the story and that "Later in the tale it will be revealed that the fire itself is a living thing."
They asked "How do you explain that scientifically?"
"I won't. "
They were horrified.

It has occurred to me that some who are unfamiliar with fantasy get very used to stories where everything is explained and they walk away from it thinking "Well, that was all very nearly sorted out". Not that there isn't some merit in this, but I think it is more of a delusion and fantastical thinking than dragons and wizards. This is where, in my opinion, fantasy triumphs in its depiction of things that are simply true, full stop. There is always mystery and enchantment, not everything is explained.
There's that good quote from Sean Penn, "When everything gets answered, it's a fake. The mystery is the truth".

I think that enchanted items illustrate this idea very effectively. They are more than tools to defeat the enemy, they have stories and mysteries behind them and almost become characters in their own right. Gurthang, the black sword, even gives us a little speech.

[Nogrod]

To have a good conversation someone must disagree a bit so that we'll continue to have a lively discussion. So let me play a kind practise-target to you guys.

I didn't find the midichlorian-thing making the Force in Star Wars uninteresting or dull. Quite the contrary. It became a kind of interesting idea, like qualitatively different atoms or something. And I wouldn't mind there being a scientifically satisfactory explanation to how the Palantirs work either (not that I am craving for such an explanation).

I think there is an issue of both misrepresenting science & underestimating it's creativity / overestimating our imagination.

Take the latter first. After the era of romanticism we have been in love with our "inner imagination" over the "dull reality". But it was already during the middle-ages that people realised what imagination is; it's a capability to rearrange things we have seen and to set normative & alternative views to the reality. Take a horn some animals have and put it on a horse and you get a unicorn. Look at a poor neighbourhood and imagine it rich (we know what being rich could be like) - just follow the cultural history of "afterlife" or "paradise" to see how it is tied to peoples' imagination that is dependent on the level of technology & culture of any given time and place.
God didn't give Moses and his people tanks and machine-guns - or send them buses or trains to get rid of the following Egyptians as that kind of technology had not yet been conceived of by men when the story was told and so people could not imagine them.
Confronted with odd experiences that had to do with light people used to imagine seeing angels (shiny people-like creatures with wings like birds have) and all kinds of similarly-built creatures. Nowadays we tend to see also Ufo's (technological devices looking more or less those things we now can build ourselves). One could continue this list...

So what we imagine is tied to what we have experienced. And mind you, most of the "new perspectives" that have really changed our way of looking at the world or which have actually changed our envirovenment come from science. The universality of abstractions, the theory of atoms or that of evolution, or dark matter or whatever you wish. Just mind-boggling ideas that easily make our mythologies look like unimaginative commonplaces - and just continuation of billiontimes used ideas.

So I'd say science is creative but our everyday imagination is less inventive.

Then the first point about misrepresenting science. I hear people saying oftentimes that science destroys the magic from the world. But does it really? (look above) Or they say that science only concerns itself with matter (which is normally thought of in a way of solid things like tables or flesh-built animals) and forgets the other things there must be.

But science is not tied to what we can see and feel. Science studies also energy, waves, quarks, laws of nature (can you see them?). In a sense theory of evolution or quantum-physics are more fantastic than any fantasy-novel will ever be. They make you draw breath and just look at them in awe. Comparing those ideas to some fantasy-character surviving death and coming back as a superhero look quite pale indeed.

And a cool thing about science is that it says openly that there are a lot of things we don't yet understand or know. Take human mind as an example. Science says that it's one of the most complex things in the whole universe. It has something to do with electricity-passing neurons and the chemical reactions in it can be tracked to certain extent. But frankly we have just taken the few preliminary steps into understanding a human mind. That I think is fascinating!

And if scientific studies suggest that we need to change our conceptions on what matter is, what is life, what being itself is, then science will change itself to make room for better views of reality (whatever that is...). The case of human mind is to the point. I'm eagerly looking forwards to the next breakthrough in science about mind which might actually challenge our everyday conceptions of matter and consciousness...

A new step there wouldn't spoil the miracle but would enhance it and raise it to a new level!

All that said, I do love and appreciate mythology and fantasy to the fullest. I just think science is not a threat to it but a well from where our imagination can replenish itself to become even more fantastic.

[Hookbill the Goomba]

Originally Posted by Nogrod

All that said, I do love and appreciate mythology and fantasy to the fullest. I just think science is not a threat to it but a well from where our imagination can replenish itself to become even more fantastic.

Oh, I agree. But I have always felt that scientific explanation often feels very out of place in fantasy. For me, science fiction and fantasy are two different things and I do get annoyed when they are lumped together. I don't deny their similarities, but I do think they work in different ways.

To some extent, science often is the discovery of things ancient and unknown. Especially in terms of cosmology and quantum physics. These are things that have always been true and we are only now learning. But in terms of stories science works in a very different way, I think.

If the Lord of the Rings had been more science fiction based, it would not surprise me if, when considering how to defeat Sauron, they analysed his giant flaming eye (if this were Sci-fi, I doubt it could be seen as metaphoric... just go with me on this. ). Having done this, they'd probably gather some big buckets of water and construct some way of flinging them at him.

Magic and enchantment works on a slightly different plain. The rules that govern it are much less bound to reason, you could argue. The ring is not a physical part of Sauron, and yet its destruction can cause his death (or however you want to say it). The only thing binding Sauron to the Ring is his life-force, power or will. This is a much stranger thing and not so easily dealt with.
Again, in a science fiction arena, I suspect that the Ring would hold Sauron's 'psychic imprint' or some such and that reversing the polarity would cause feedback and so blow him up. All of which is done in the safety of the lab.
The magical connection between Sauron, the Ring and Mount Doom are what drive the story on. They give the journey a focus.

Perhaps I'm talking nonsense. I usually am.

[skip spence]

Originally Posted by Nogrod

And mind you, most of the "new perspectives" that have really changed our way of looking at the world or which have actually changed our envirovenment come from science. The universality of abstractions, the theory of atoms or that of evolution, or dark matter or whatever you wish. Just mind-boggling ideas that easily make our mythologies look like unimaginative commonplaces - and just continuation of billiontimes used ideas.
...
So I'd say science is creative but our everyday imagination is less inventive.

Then the first point about misrepresenting science. I hear people saying oftentimes that science destroys the magic from the world. But does it really? (look above) Or they say that science only concerns itself with matter (which is normally thought of in a way of solid things like tables or flesh-built animals) and forgets the other things there must be.
...
All that said, I do love and appreciate mythology and fantasy to the fullest. I just think science is not a threat to it but a well from where our imagination can replenish itself to become even more fantastic.

Well said. I too feel that science gets an undeserved bad rep sometimes. Reminds me about a discussion I had recently with a lady friend while watching a beautiful sunset. She thought that such a marvellous phenomena must mean that there is some higher power somewhere. I disagreed and said that what we are experiencing isn't actually a "sunset" in truth but an interpretation that our brain is making based on information it's received from the eyes having picked up photons that have radiated from the sun some 10 minutes earlier and hit the earth's atmospheric particles at a certain angle. This we perceive as a thing of beauty because of the wiring in our head. She felt it was a very unromantic and dull way of looking at a sunset. I tried to explain that from this perspective it is ourselves that are amazing and mysterious, not some divine entity somewhere, and that all the beauty and mystery in the world is in our mind. And ain't that magic?