scrape_r_rational/data/cache2/2wzdqs.md

[RT] [HF] "So You Want to be a Wizard"

• Author: u/None *

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• Score: 16

• Created: 2015-02-24T12:21:57

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u/okaycat [+15] (an hour later)

This is one of my favorite young adult fantasy series. Its not strictly rational fiction of course, but few fictions recommended on this sub truly are. Its also one of the few settings that has entropy as the big bad and a pretty awesome afterlife.

If you like interesting magic systems with interewting world building you should defiently check it it out.

u/None [+11] (2 hours later)

It's "rational" but not "rationalist", in the sense that the characters are do things that a real-life person would think to do in their circumstances, and think about their problems in genuinely effective ways.

So, to give an example, when a white hole pops out of their spell for finding a lost pen that accidentally transported them to some kind of freaky other dimension and gave them a vision, and the white hole says that a named artifact of some sort has gone missing... what do our two young wizards do? That's right: they go find some Senior Advisory Wizards and ask for their help and expertise.

u/trifith [+1] Man plans, god laughs. Like the ant and the grasshopper. (4 hours later)

Point of order

They were only Advisories at the time. The did not become Senior Wizards until Book 2

u/None [+5] (7 hours later)

Well, time to go commit fanboy seppuku.

u/None [+9] (53 seconds later)

After /u/eliezeryudkowsky referenced it in the last HPMoR chapter, it turned out some people still have not read this series. That's terrible, since we totally need to have a LessWrongians meet-up at CrossingCon 2016. Thus, ALL OF YOU READ THIS NOW.

u/alexanderwales [+8] Time flies like an arrow (2 hours later)

How "young adult" is it? I've read a few young adult books in the past year, and have become increasingly disdainful of the writing style that most of them have chosen to go with.

u/None [+1] (2 hours later)

I read it when I was a kid. What kind of style are you referring to?

u/alexanderwales [+11] Time flies like an arrow (2 hours later)

What I mean is that quite a bit of young adult writing is written at a much lower writing level than I'm comfortable reading, not just in terms of vocabulary, but also required reading comprehension. Characters show their emotions on their sleeves, plots get laid out three times over so the young adult never misses anything, there's no complexity to the sentence structure, all subtlety is thrown out the window, etc. That might be fine for young adults, but as a full-grown adult (with an English degree no less) I find that style a little maddening to read.

u/Arandur [+4] (3 hours later)

It is definitely young adult, but at the high end of the spectrum. Think Golden Compass or Pendragon.

u/DaystarEld [+3] Pokémon Professor (3 hours later)

Dunno about /u/alexanderwales, but you have sparked my interest with the Golden Compass reference.

u/alexanderwales [+8] Time flies like an arrow (3 hours later)

I've read Golden Compass. I highly reccomend it. It's part of the His Dark Materials trilogy. The most non-spoiler version of it I can give is that it takes place in an alternate universe Oxford where people have a personal animal companion that acts as a physical manifestation of their soul. And if you're worried about religious themes ruining a good time, read this quote from the author:

I suppose technically, you'd have to put me down as an agnostic. But if there is a God, and he is as the Christians describe him, then he deserves to be put down and rebelled against.

u/DaystarEld [+2] Pokémon Professor (4 hours later)

Oh I know it well :) I meant that he sparked my interest in "So You Want to be a Wizard" by referencing it in comparison.

Glad you explained it though, for those who haven't read it yet. Seriously people, do yourselves a favor.

u/Arandur [+3] (4 hours later)

Good! Then my comment functioned as intended.

u/Nevereatcars [+3] The Greatest Is Behind (a day later)

As somebody else mentioned in the Ch 112 thread, and which I will repeat here because he phrased it so well:

This is the series that taught me that entropy was something I should oppose.

u/Manthyus [+2] (8 hours later)

[Spoiler-ish, but not really]

I loved the series as a kid, though EY's reference to it didn't quite make sense to me. Unless I'm misremembering, the book was notable for its LACK of traditional big, powerful, magic (ex: wish granting). Wizard spells didn't just come from thin air, they needed components and work, and they weren't that powerful. They were just more tools for the protagonists, which is one of the things I most liked about it.

Can someone elucidate?

u/PeridexisErrant [+2] put aside fear for courage, and death for life (10 hours later)

Examples of the big stuff below - but note that everything has a cost, and for the most impressive stuff it's often someone's life. Or there are special circumstances... but even then, someone will probably die of it.

In the first book Nita casts a spell to permanently separate a volume of space from creation, rendering it immune to everything up to interdimensional travel or retroactive changes to history - at the cost of an unspecified portion of her lifespan.

In the third, various people travel more than ten trillion lightyears - they're trying to escape their pursuer by getting outside the observable universe... and it works for almost 24 hours.

Book four features the Four Treasures of Ireland, weapons or devices that embody the ideal of a classical element. The Spear (Luin, fire) is reforged using iron portalled in from the heart of a first-generation star - any newer iron has lost too much of it's potency to survive the forging.

Five includes lessons in finding and commanding the "kernel" of a planet or universe, which grants control over the fundamental rules of that place - from gravity to possible topics of conversation.

Later we see management of stars, creation of universes, halting the expansion of space, moving civilisations millions of years through time, and more.

u/MindwormIsleLocust [+1] (9 hours later)

weren't that powerful

This is awfully debatable. as you said, nothing was as simple as "swish and flick", and generally carried some pretty hefty price tag, but some of the things done are definately on par with those traditional world shaking spells.

Examples

u/None [+1] (18 hours later)

Linear fighter, quadratic wizard.

u/linkhyrule5 [+1] (9 days later)

They were tools, yes, but the tools were the hex codes for the universe. It is possible to [High Wizardry](#s "stop the expansion of the universe temporarily), but the requisite spell is merely extreme difficult to write and prohibitively long to speak and cast.

u/saitselkis [+0] (14 hours later)

I nearly shit a kitten when this got a shout out in the most recent chapters of HPMOR. Its an amazing series.

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