Implied Magic, No Magic, Low Magic, Fake Magic

I mentioned in a previous post that I am currently reading The Masters, the first volume in the reworked Stone Dance of the Chameleon series. I vaguely remembered the original iteration of these books (then a trilogy) coming out at the end of the 90s, and I think I read bits of it, but this is something of a director's cut - if by that we mean a redux version that has more volumes (seven) but is actually slimmer and more efficiently told.

I have been impressed by it so far - indeed, it has kindled within me the fire of enthusiasm for the fantasy genre, which I have not felt lo these many years. Fantasy's great sin has been its derivativeness of Tolkien (which manifests even in hostile responses to Tolkien's work, such as those by Moorcock, Harrison, Mieville, and so on); Pinto has I think managed the much rarer feat of copying Tolkien's approach without borrowing any of his furniture, even to react against - a thing which only a very small number of fantasy authors have been able to convincingly achieve. 

Gene Wolfe is the obvious comparator here. I would not put Pinto in his class (though this may of course change as I read through the series), but the project feels to me to be similar: to create worlds which feel as Important and Resonant as Tolkien's Middle Earth, while being in all other respects only accidentally related. Pinto seems to have, whether intentionally or not, achieved this too, and it is in itself a feat worthy of respect - leaving to one side the fact that it is also a genuine page-turner from the start.

There is another point of interesting comparison: Wolfe's Book of the New Sun feels infused with magic (in that case, of course, very advanced technology) but it exists in the background as a kind of permeating force, rather than a plot point or distinct field of knowledge. The characters don't behave as if there is some discrete, identifiable phenomenon such as 'magic' or 'technology'; where it exists at all it is a seamless part of their experience of the world. In Stone Dance of the Chameleon, we get a similar, but even more muted, sense that there is probably something magical going on somewhere, but if it is, it is so natural and normal to the characters that they do not really think of it at all - as a fish does not particularly pay attention to decorative statues in its nicely filtered tank.

I like this type of setting, which I will call (I am not sure I have ever heard anybody name such a category) one with implied magic - implied because it never really comes out and makes the statement: 'A spell will now be cast!' 

It is different to the no magic setting, where as the name suggests there is clearly no such thing as magic at all. The Viriconium stories spring to mind here, as do quite a lot of Moorcock's, and also probably most of A Song of Ice and Fire's early volumes. There will be others, if I think hard enough. (Those Tad Williams books?) Here, it is often the case that having no magic is a statement of some kind - either a refutation of irrationalism or an insistence that the existence of magic pollutes the materiality of the fiction. It doesn't have to be that way, of course, and I have an abiding sense of attachment to the bits of A Song of Ice and Fire that read like a history of the Wars of the Roses happening on a different plane of existence.

The classic low magic setting is Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, where magic is rare, treated with suspicion, and is hinted to be corrupting. Would one put the Sword of Truth series in this category too? There will, again, be others for those willing to put their thinking caps on. Here, again, it often seems as though the decision for magic to be 'low' is more than an aesthetic choice; it hints that something symbolic is being said about the nature of power.

I am not sure if I have ever come across a fictional setting in which all the characters believe that magic exists and has observable effects but it isn't in fact real (or in which the matter is never decided or made clear either way). This is true for RPG settings also, but could be interesting to experiment with: what if PC magic was all just a matter of legerdemain and bluff?