As a fantasy writer, magic is always a part of my worlds. I revel in designing magic systems and exploring how they might change the world around them. Nothing quite stirs the imagination as magic. Yet, with a degree in physics and a long-running fascination with the secrets of nature, I can’t help but feel a mild frustration at the whole enterprise now and again.

It is easy to find people who are obsessed with the idea of ancient lost knowledge, remedies or truths of ages past… Atlantis, Egyptian pyramids, forgotten cures, mythical secrets, etc. I get it. Mystery and magic are beautiful things, and certainly, relics of lost civilizations are ripe with both. But the problem – – the thing that frustrates me – – is that we haven’t lost magic at all. The problem is, we now dismiss the real thing as if it were banal.

Magic is real.

The truth is our ancestors did find magic. It wasn’t forgotten in obscurity, it was studied, poured over, its rules and patterns and abilities painstakingly studied for centuries. It has allowed us to bend reality to our will in ways that are totally unprecedented in our solar system, possibly our galaxy.

Look around. People are zipping by at extraordinary speed along endless smooth pathways of black pavement, encased in large metal machines. Above, thousands of people are looking down at the clouds from above – – probably bored – – as they roar through the atmosphere in airplanes, higher than any bird, faster than any living thing has a right to go. In much of the world, one need only walk to the sink and flick a metal lever, and cool, drinkable water presents itself in unthinkable supply. The marvels of medicine are a blog post of their own, from repairing small valves in the hearts of babies to replacing missing limbs with prosthetics. Phones, the internet, rockets, plastics, solar power, scuba suits, artificial intelligence … within arms reach of you now are a dozen devices or artifacts of pure magic. Things that manipulate the very roots of nature, and result from decades of arduously unfolding deep – – often inscrutable – – secrets and carefully leveraging them to serve some purpose that would make past humans gape.

And you probably don’t give it a second thought.

Consider:

Yeah, the pyramids are pretty amazing. But air conditioning is unfathomably more mind-bending. We can change the temperature of entire buildings, having harnessed the magic of thermodynamics. We can do that. We don’t care for cold either, so when it gets cold outside… we can heat whole buildings as well. Buildings, by the way, are giant artificial structures of metal, concrete, and glass. I think if Pharaoh Khufu was shown his pyramid and then the Chrysler building, he would quickly declare which was the most impressive. And that’s before anyone told him one has working toilets.

We live in a culture and age of magic, but unfortunately, it’s lost its mystique… lost its sexiness. Unlike many fantasy stories, real magic is not intuitive and not all powerful. Nor does it answer to the wave of a hand. It is complex – – exceedingly so. It requires math of frightening obscurity and concepts so abstruse it makes the brain hurt. Manipulating it requires precise instruments and sensitive machines (themselves built from more rudimentary understandings of the magic) and the resulting abilities are slow to learn and even slower to leverage. Expanding the magic is incremental. Millimetric. By the time new powers arrive, they are all but taken for granted.

< / End Rant >

Every time an airplane takes off, you should fall to your knees with tears of amazement. How could anyone take for granted that doctors can see through your body, without injuring you, and determine what is wrong inside? The list of truly stupendous, every-day, examples of magic is near enough endless when you stop to reflect upon it.

I love me some history and the mystique of lost cultures deserves the fascination it inspires, but don’t lose track of the facts: We are surrounded by magic. It wasn’t lost in the past. The secrets that worked ultimately prevailed and helped uncover more secrets, and we are now light-years ahead of anywhere our species has been before. Revel in the beauty of it. You are one of the very few lucky enough to see it all happening, to see so much of it come to fruition.

Delight in the magic.