Charlie Stross
Listen, in high fantasy settings you typically get a cod-mediaeval society coexisting beside starships'n'deathray-equivalent magic, right?
So there's got to be a REASON why the folks plodding along behind the mule don't have any truck with flying carpets etc.
My money is on: magic is a lot like software, only when it breaks your flying carpet crashes, or it turns into a fungal network that eats you.
And have you ever MET a wizard? Would YOU use an enchanted broom That Guy created as an MVP?
Charlie Stross
@staringatclouds @sbamueller Shockingly, I might have read that back in the late 1970s …
StaringAtClouds
@sbamueller @cstross Re magic as a finite resource idea
Have a read of "The Magic Goes Away" by Larry Niven
That explores the idea
Sebastian Müller
@cstross could be different reasons: Maybe magic is scare or a non renewable resource or a wizard can only do so much magic per day.
Charlie Stross
@angusm I had this elaborate theory a couple of years ago on Twitter (now lost) about how gold mining by dwarves and treasure looting by adventurers is inherently inflationary so the dragons, by taking it out of circulation, balance the economy AND underwrite the banking system in D&D-land. Wise monarchs keep the economy balanced by a judicious balance of dragon farming, dungeon building, and windfall taxes on adventurers.
Angus McIntyre
@cstross The problem is that magical software startups need VC funding, and the dragons have all the gold.
So you have to go to them, and if they don't like your pitch deck, they char-broil you.
Graydon
@cstross Try to imagine software development without the internet.
Sure, it's magic, you can give the rock anxiety, but you have to move the rock. You have to write down the instructions on vellum; you have to transport the instructions with the rock. You can't ask anyone any questions without either sending them a letter or standing next to them to talk.
Peasants don't use magic because they can't afford it; the Moore's Law cost collapse doesn't happen.
Charlie Stross
@graydon Some of us remember software development before we got internet in our country!
Graydon
@karchie @cstross If you can print books!
Charlie starts off with cod-medieval; they can't print books. They can't make paper for books, either, your book production limitations include "grazing land".
You could get a whole series of books over stealing the (especially good) exemplar shiny rock a rival university uses to teach people how to make their own shiny rocks. You could get "this is insane" plot lines by looking up the history of theft of saint's relics, too.
Kevin Archie
@graydon @cstross When I was your age, internet was called "books." I'm not even disagreeing with you--with the internet, among other things, software is a lot more pervasive in ordinary life. still, you could get an awful lot done with not much more than K&R, Stevens, and Plauger on your shelf. Common Lisp had even better books.
Charlie Stross
@karchie @graydon For added lulz, due to all the aforementioned obstacles, the state of "language" design in magic stops at about the SNOBOL4 level, or maybe MUMPS; structure is all computed-goto spaghetti code and (if you're lucky) regular expressions with variable syntax conventions and missing bits (eg. no grouping for some reason). In SNOBOL4 any program more than about 4 lines long rapidly became impossible to follow.
Kevin Archie
@graydon @cstross your point is solid. it took an awful lot of free-ish dissemination of information to build the infrastructure that the money is using to build walls around all the information. each wizard keeping to their tower would lead to not many wizards and most of them terrible
Chris is.
@cstross I feel like you're already treading this ground a bit with the Laundry Files, but yeah, I'd read the shit out of something that both a) took this on and b) took it seriously. I feel like the temptation to play it as a joke would be hard to get past for a writer.
Charlie Stross
@graydon @lain_7 @karchie There's going to be *intense* interest in better spellcasting languages that fail safe rather than incinerating the caster's soul in event of a trivial pronunciation or syntax error.
Graydon
@lain_7 @cstross @karchie The dread phrase "formal grammar" starts to creep in, here, and you get magic instruction that's purely grammar ("how to express your desires in a magically rigorous way") and doesn't in any way tell you how to do anything operant.
(Anyone who remembers checking grammars with wetware can start to predict just how much you don't want these people casting spells. But, hey, economical of resources.)
Of course the folks from operant traditions won't talk to them.
David Mankins
Don’t forget APL and LISP, both predating SNOBOL (APL, as a language instead of a notation, was roughly contemporary with MUMPS, I think).
Interestingly, both APL and LISP basically started as *notations* — a better, parchment-preserving means to remember your incantations.
APL also has the cachet of arcane symbols.
Pseudo Nym
@cstross @graydon @lain_7 @karchie
Reminds me of
https://www.deviantart.com/a-r-k-l-i-t-e/art/how-to-summon-a-lemon-1104364657
David Mankins
Is it time to drag this out?
Charlie Stross
@malcolm I may have read the first couple a few decades ago …
Malcolm
Tom Bortels
It's the same reason I don't have a nice suit of plate armor today: it's wildly expensive. Not so much the materials, but the manufacture.
In the modern world, I don't have a helicopter. It's wildly expensive.
In fantasy magic times - the only people who fly around on brooms or carpets are the very specialists who know how to manufacture and maintain them. Random mundanes don't have the skills/training/talent to fly them, much less make one, unless you're the scrappy protagonist.
Charlie Stross
@tbortels Interestingly, around the time plate armour went out of general military usage (early 17th century) a suit of gothic white plate cost about half a yeoman's annual wages. ("White" plate being standardized/mass produced, not tailored to the customer.) It wasn't much more expensive than everyday clothing was, back then!
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