I don't often read fantasy, but some of the books that I got through the Hugo voter packet are. So I decided to read them. Some of them are good, others I have ditched part way though. Some I finished but felt like I shouldn't have. Such is life.
One thing that I guess is fairly common to fantasy stories is that there is a cost of doing magic. Energy, soul, something. With that in mind, that's something that seems to be missing from the Harry Potter universe. With seemly zero cost of doing magic (other than being able to follow recipe books or be able to enunciate properly), shouldn't pretty much everyone be uber wizard?
Then I looked around what we do every day and how it would look like magic / witchcraft to someone a couple of hundred years ago. How much effort / cost would have have expended to have light in their home? Warmth or coolness? Communication? Food? Clean water / sanitation? To an outside observer we get this for "free". Of course it isn't actually free, but the act of me working and being able to pay for being able to have electricity to the home to be able to turn on the kettle is so removed and abstract, it would be difficult to explain. Which, like all tech, always seems to follow Clarke's 3rd law.
Tech is magic is something that I think of almost every night when Laura comes into the darkened bedroom using her phone's flash as light. Every single time I think of the Phial of Galadriel and Frodo using it in Shelob's cave. How does a black piece of glass light up like the brightest star with a mere touch of the hand? Magic.
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