Systems of Magic, and a request

[rising_moon]

Recently I've read a few excellent fantasy novels which were written around believable, consistent, and reasonable systems of magic. Believable magic is one of the elements that will sell me on a writer. I've enjoyed The Abhorsen Trilogy, by Garth Nix, and, most recently, The Name of the Wind, by Patrick Rothfuss

Comments

[dreda]

Wait. WAIT. The twelfth one is going to be the last one? Really and for true?!?

ZOMG I can chuck this moldering monkey corpse off my back!!

[rising_moon]

Hee! So says his web site, anyway, which I found through polyhymnia_. The magic bar graph reports that he is 85% finished!

[dreda]

"We'd rather leave his legacy as it stands than have bad books attached to his name." - B. Sanderson

other than the books he wrote himself, of course...

(Grr. Crack monkey, get thee behind me! ;)

[kyttle]

Personally, I find that having consistent limitations to magic is really important to me for a story. I really hate it when magic is so all-powerful that a character should just be able to wave any problem away, but for some inexplicable reason they don't.

[kyttle]

To switch to the other topic, identity is pretty much always established by proving that you know the solution to some really tough problem that only you would know the answer to. There are a few ways to do this. Banks typically ask you to fill out answers to personal questions when you register, the theory being that only you would know those answers. Passwords do the same thing--registering a shared secret that in theory only you will know. But there is a much cooler way

[rising_moon]

This is a great idea -- but I wonder if what you're really testing for, here, is mathematical genius. :)

Can you extrapolate from there to a Factoring problem that can be individuated up and down the mathematics affinity scale? I'm sure the theory can transpose across skill sets.

[dreda]

Can you extrapolate from there to a Factoring problem that can be individuated up and down the mathematics affinity scale? I'm sure the theory can transpose across skill sets.

I'm all fluttery over here now...

[rising_moon]

(note to self)

Refer to the Media Lab "Amulet" project, i.e. the Wireless Universal Key.

While the professor rummaged in his pockets I hopefully imagined a tidy little lozenge like the old SecureIDs. Seeing the actual artifact, it occurred to me that cultural resistance to inelegant visual/physical design might trump other constraints to a system's adoption. (The Amulet is kinda big. I don't want to wear one around my neck -- which is where my magical mind expects to put an amulet.)

[rising_moon]

Hey, cool! I mean, ghastly but cool. I wondered who would start using that type of ID first.

I don't want a chip, myself, for any reason, but the subject been my standing joke for years: "Wait 'til we all have chips in our heads." I suppose we've arrived.

Where does the chip go? The wrist?