Random question that came to mind after re-reading Lord of the Rings. LotR started a lot of fantasy tropes, but the magic as depicted in Tolkien’s work is generally pretty indirect and subtle. Gandalf lights fires and Saruman has his commanding voice. The One Ring’s invisibility is perhaps the most straightforward magic effect depicted.
So, historically, what books ramped up the level of fantasy magic? Or did it rather happen in D&D? #literature#fantasy
Interesting question! I'm not an expert, but I think I can say something worth saying.
While Tolkien is an important cornerstone for modern fantasy, it's not the only one. There's the "Weird Tales" -gang (sword and sorcery; Howard, Aston Smith et al), to whom magic was common, but usually a sign of a pact to some unspeakable evil.
Then there's Moorcock's stories from starting 1960s, where magic was more neutral, but still came from elemental (or worse!) pacts.
While D&D magic had its roots in Dying Earth, it wasn't terribly common in that either (afaik; and magic in BG3 owes more to Thieves' World from 1978). LeGuin came from (afaik) the wiseperson-bg, and I'd say the influence a subtle one.
My personal suspicion is that wizardy got more acceptable as academic education became more common starting the early 1970s.
But I do believe D&D was what made wizardy a more value neutral profession, not a curse or a sign of bad character.
As a sidenote: I find it interesting how the info-age has made us more ready to symphatise with geeks -- that wizards usually are -- over jocks in popular culture.
This isn't something that's limited just high fantasy: consider how "Revange of the Geeks" -series had intellectual hobbies as rather unpleasant counterculture (even as they were protagonists!), but by early 2000s geeks had became the sidekicks (Die Hard-series), and later the co-protagonists, as with Person of Interest.
@iju Also: Star Wars probably launched ”wizardry” into the cultural mainstream more than anything before it? Not sure what the cultural history of the Force is, but functionally very similar!
In Ursula K. Le Guin’s Earthsea world, there was the wizard who used magic to prevent an earthquake or something, and believed big magic like that is too dangerous and should be avoided if at all possible.
I guess that’s where my attitude to much of new technology comes from.
@zenfrt that also reminds me of N.K. Jemisin’s Broken Earth trilogy (where the magic system and how it functions is central to the plot). With LotR you could very nearly imagine an alternate interpretation where the ”magic” is mostly superstition.
Jack Vance’s Dying Earth series, begun in 1950 apparently influenced the D&D magic system, so it does seem the origin is in literature. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dying_Earth
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