If Jim Butcher can do it so can I

If Jim Butcher can do it so can I. What am I talking about you may ask? Magic I answer! What exactly does Jim Butcher do with magic that interests me so?

Well I'll tell you.

In every fantasy book I have ever read there has been magic. However in almost every fantasy book I have read magic has been treated in 2 ways. 1) the world in which magic exists is static and never changes. 2) Magic fades away as the world changes (think LOTR). Now I have no qualms with the later case as it is a logical solution to having human behavior interacting with magic. The histories of those worlds can progress and develop as expected when one deals with humans.

As to the first assumption, I have great reservations. Although the stories written with this kind of telling can be well done (even to the point of my completely forgiving for this transgression), it leaves an assumption about history and human behavior that I do not buy. In a world where Gods are real and magic exists, how could humans, being intensely curious creatures and incredibly intelligent, not find ways to rise to the top of whatever power structure there was or be destroyed trying? I find it hard to believe that books written in a fantasy world the culture/history etc never changes or develops as long as magic exists (or it is conveniently dropped as the second case). If there are rules for magic in a story then why haven't humans mastered those rules? Or developed systems for exploiting them? Now I'd like to turn to real history for a moment. Humans have never remained static in terms of culture, technology, science, philosophy, etc. The idea that humans would not burst out of the bubbles that many fantasy writers put around them is a bit disquieting. What I want to know is how do these worlds pan out. I want to know what this same world would look like a thousand years in the future when science is being developed and human culture has developed. I want to know how the 'fantasy' races deal with all of this and what their part is in the future of these worlds. As I said above, Tolkien and many other writers have used a time honored assumption that magic and all fantasy elements fade away to nothing. Like many other plot devices, this can be handled good or bad, but the ones who just let the outcome be assumed to be static or simply say 'it all goes away' are the ones I want more from. As a short example, though I enjoy R.A. Salvatore's Drizzt books, the world in which the stories take place seems static, or that the assumption is that 'it all goes away.' I want to know what happens in the future. In Tolkien's case he was writing a mythology for our world so, the ending was assumed in the best sense. Terry Pratchet however assumes and builds a world that is static on purpose and this I like. Pratchet's honesty is refreshing when the future of these worlds is addressed.

Now I come to Jim Butcher (it should be noted that at the moment I have only read his first Harry Dresden book and I am assuming his others are of similar quality). In the fantasy stories I want to write I want to address what happens when humans are in a world where magic does not fade away to nothing and does not create a static level of development. Included in that goal is discovering and interpreting how magic fits in to the present day. How does magic fit in to a world where there is the internet, jet planes, World Wars, etc? Jim Butcher's Harry Dresden books address this interaction in one possible way. Butcher's view is that magic has been on a downslope in history, pushed onto a back-burner and it is hinted that it might be on the rise again. The way Butcher writes about the cohabitation of magic and mundane in these stories gives me hope to write an even closer interaction between the two. I love how normal he makes the interactions seem and how totally believable the book's 'present' is; how it came to be. This brings me to my first statement, but elaborated; If Jim Butcher can write an exciting and believable account of magic existing in a present day setting (that takes into account human nature to discover, manipulate, use and explore) then there is hope that I can do so as well. I want to explore what happens when humans use magic in conjunction with what we already have....how can I explore our humanity when it is paired with such a force as magic?