"The Laws of Conservation of Reality" and "The Law of Conservation of Magic"

Today's tip involves pointing you to a discussion on the Esoteric Science Resource Center.

Last weekend, the Czarina and I had a discussion along this line, talking about Stephen King's The Stand, among other horror novels. In particular, we talked about what Alan Dean Foster once referred to as "The Laws of Conservation of Reality" and "The Law of Conservation of Magic" when reviewing Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom twenty years ago. In that film, Foster pointed out that viewers had regular bailouts of the characters that made no sense from a realistic viewpoint, such as the asinine concept of making a safe leap from a flying airplane to the ground via an inflated liferaft. Foster pointed out, quite succintly, that if a couple of seconds had been spent at the beginning showing Jones getting a magic talisman, and if he'd said a few syllables over the talisman as he and his cohorts were falling to the ground and the talisman magically lowered them gently to a perfect landing, the audience would have accepted the whole thing. Instead, the general litany in theaters and in home video ranges from "Oh, come ON" to "Oh, BOLLOCKS!"

I think this is something writers should consider when working in the realm of the fantastic.
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Posted by JeremyT at October 20, 2004 03:22 PM