The engineer’s influence on magic…

Let’s face it – I am an engineer first. At least today that can be said.
However, in my fantasy genre writing, I do focus quite a bit on the magic systems. I despise the abuse of magic by having miracles pop out of the sky like so many snowflakes. Things must have a cost or an effect. If a mage can suddenly spit lightning bolts out his eyes (alright, I don’t have any of those, but you get the picture) all day long without getting tired or having side effect of magical overuse – the character easily becomes “unbelievable”. Yes – I know to one who doesn’t read Fantasy how ridiculous that statement may seem, but even Fantasy novels must abide by rules and be consistent about their use. Magic should have specific behavior and characteristics which can be followed and relied on throughout the book and/or series.
I’d like to share an excerpt from the first novel published earlier this year, HEIRS OF PROPHECY which demonstrates to Ryan (one of the characters from our world who is trying to learn something about magic in a new world), just how some of these rules might be expressed.

Ryan sat at the table in Throll’s office, pouring over The Theory of Wizardry, one of the books the ranger had brought him. Ryan had expected an intensely philosophical read, but this text read much more like a mathematics book. Even so, the more of it he read, the more the theories seemed to agree with the basic premise of what he had experienced with his father during their many experiments. The book stipulated that the equation for magic could be written in this way:

Power of Magic = Rate of Magic / Resistance of Medium

The book explained that the power associated with a wizard’s strike was directly related to how quickly the energy was pushed divided by how much resistance there was in the medium between the wizard and his target. Typically, air did not present with much resistance, while rock did.

Anyway, let it be said an engineer can be an author, but even as an author, its hard to take the engineer out of him. For the fellow engineers out there, the passage above will immediately be recognized by the electrical engineers out there as being a derivative of Ohm’s Law.  I suppose you might call it Rothman’s Law Of Magic – but I won’t insist.  😉
Hope you enjoy the novels as they pop out – keep reading, it’s good for you.
– Mike