# Not-quite-magic users AKA Any sufficiently nuanced magic is science. V.2.0.



## Stormcat (Jun 12, 2019)

I posted this a while ago in the main writing discussion feed, but I just realized it would be better here.


My story features a race of not-quite-humans who can use magic-type abilities. It turns out there's a scientific explanation for these creatures being able to use "Magic" while normal humans can only do smoke and mirror illusions.


Problem is... I can't come up with the science behind the magic. Or even which "magical" abilities seem more plausible than others. I came up with a list of ideas, but I need some help sorting through.


Here are my notes for the type of abilities I want them to have ("Chimerids" is my working name for the magic users):




> - ability to transform humans into chimerids via bite
> 
> 
> - FMA-style alchemy via channeling energy
> ...




As you can see, there's a lot of energy manipulation stuff in there, as well as a few biological differences that make my Chimerids different from a normal human. I just need an explanation as to how the energy powers work. Any ideas?

Also, the only responder to the original thread indicated that he thought these creatures are too powerful. Any ideas on what to trim down?


----------



## seigfried007 (Jul 8, 2019)

[DIVINE DECREE]Ephana Nagi, Witch Queen of the Mortiviventi, She With Eyes Called Sky and Ocean, has heard your plea and issued this decree: "Magic is just science you don't understand yet." [/DIVINE DECREE]

Okay, back to be writing as regular old boring author now. 

1) Avoiding PIOMA Power Syndrome: Powers don't have to be explained entirely, but they should have a consistent and inviolable internal logic (or you risk "pulled it right out of his ass" magic). The less it feels pulled out of a rectum, the more likely it will be satisfying and interesting for readers. 

2) Unless there is a darn good reason for a power to exist in the story, it shouldn't be there. Don't pile on powers no one ever needs or uses. 

3) Don't use powers to defuse tension. Treat tension like gold--hoard it up and let nothing snitch it. 

Regarding your specific dilemma, pick which elements *need* to be there and stick with those. Does this condition need to be contagious? Why? If it simply must be contagious, you're probably dealing with a retrovirus, which can alter its hosts genes (though not generally to such wild effects). 

"Eyeshine" and night vision are no problem, but there is a separate law of equivalent exchange for biotic systems, so to speak. What you refer to as "eyeshine" is probably the tapeta lucidum, a reflective blue-green layer situated behind the retina. The purpose is to reflect light which hasn't been picked up by the retina back onto the retina, so it thus improves low-light vision by giving the eye another chance to pick up light in very low-light circumstances. As mammals have a largely nocturnal ancestry, it's not uncommon (humans have one of the longest diurnal ancestries, however, which is why we have much better color vision but no tapeta lucidum). Keener vision means packing light receptors as closely together as possible, but there's a finite number that can fit. Generally, a species can specialize in either black-and-white or color vision, however, so you need to pick one. Predominantly black-and-white focus suits animals which live in very dim environments (unless they're marine, in which case blue/green vision works best) because the receptor cells are exceptionally sensitive but may not provide the best resolution. 

Purring doesn't require any new physiology (nor does meowing) though you'll want a good reason why people that used to be regular old humans are suddenly purring. Interestingly enough, the exact reason cats purr or meow is kind of a mystery and might be a learned behavior of sorts because strictly wild felines don't do a lot of things that domestic cats do, and if they do them, it might not be for the exact same reasons. Not sure why your former-humans need to purr though (or presumably show other animal traits).

If they aren't born that way, I don't know why they would have a longer lifespan suddenly. Brings up messier questions like "if someone's turned into a Critter X at an advance age, does he get an extra 20 years?" Probably an easier thing not to mess with. The physiological stresses of changing species I can't imagine would lengthen anyone's life though.  

Electricity requires a flow of electrons. If they can't make them flow, they can't power something. The few animals that use electrical discharges don't use them willy-nilly or to power electric devices. The anatomical apparatuses to sense/charge/discharge electricity aren't one-size-fits-all and do have costs associated with them. To my knowledge, fish are the only animal kingdom that employ such hardware (and for different reasons and in different ways). Sensing electric fields is common for sharks/rays and some other fish species. Electric eels basically function as capacitors, so they can discharge electricity but have to build up that charge in the first place. Biological systems don't like to build up the electrical gradients necessary for the kinds of skills you're talking about (though chemical/electrical gradients and the biological capacitor are actually intrinsic and necessary for life... but we're talking _millivolts_ across cell membranes). Shearing electrons off atoms turns them into ions, which are more reactive generally. The more electrons are sheared off, the higher the charge difference (something is getting more positive, something else is getting more negative, and both parties are likely to be more reactive). If your critter can't get those electrons back, it will actually lose mass (even though electrons don't weigh much) and a lot of bodily havoc is going to happen because of necessary charge differences getting screwed up. It's more believable (if this power simply must exist) that your critter is able to pick up those electrons and thus keep the circuit closed that way, but this requires a special + and - pole to be set up in its body. There is at least one fish species that uses a constant stream like this between its tail and anus (basically) to sense electrical fields of something that might be alive/sneaking up on its blind spot. But again, it's not a big animal or using big charges, and it does require special sensory apparatuses for this ability. It's also not a "free" ability and takes a metabolic toll.


----------



## seigfried007 (Jul 8, 2019)

For the most part, readers will take fine to powers so long as they're played consistently and set up early. Let the reader know that such elements exist early in the narrative. 

I've written some characters and races throughout the years which are similar in some respects, and so long as I set it up early that fantastic/futuristic elements and mind powers/advanced technology were around in that literary universe. Since I wrote the works in limited perspectives, the reader was limited to the facts presented to the viewpoint character. Bluntly put, a character doesn't need to know exactly how something works to use it. Ask any person on the street exactly how the internal combustion engine of their car works, and they probably won't be able to tell you. It gets even worse for more complicated systems like cell phones and the human body. A character doesn't need to know _exactly_ how they're using mind powers in order to use them. For them, it's like walking or breathing and talking. Play it straight. Don't treat it like a big deal, and the reader is less likely to get tied in knots, needing to know exactly how this happens. Some readers will be like that, regardless, but don't sweat that. 

Another thing to consider is that powers don't come with manuals. A character won't necessarily even know the meaning behind what he or she is sensing. They might goof up the meaning, misread the signals, even be misled on purpose. It's okay to have them make mistakes. A mentor character might help explain some aspects of a given power and guide a younger user, but a mentor might not be available for all powers or all the time. Powers may manifest differently in different individuals (like a colorblind person, or someone with an especially refined palate). Maybe they don't all have the same abilities at all, but certain abilities might run in some families/strains of contagion so the culture might try to match people up or cross-infect/inoculate to spread valuable strains/genes/whatever. 

All powers can be their own double-edged swords, so try to figure out how to wield those blades both ways in your narrative. I give some examples farther down. 

So, in trying to come up with a helpful illustration of how I've handled a similar problem, I wound up writing some really long bit about how I wrote a similar character. Hopefully you can take something from this (feel free to skip, I know reading about other people's characters in this kind of format can get really boring). OP mindpowers are a tricky thing to handle well--but I happen to have written about an OP mindpower part-animal man in the past--from a nice lineage of other part-animal-people who occasionally developed mindpowers. They weren't contagious in the sense that they could infect humans to shapechange them (but were asymptomatic carriers for a host of human pathogens). 


*Playing Mindpowers Straight*
The first doozy mindpower character I ever wrote was Ira, who was a telepath/empath. While he eventually met another telepath that was about as powerful as him and could explain somethings about that power (new ways to exercise, strengthen and use that power), he was the only empath in that universe, so no one was around to guide him on using it. He was using these powers before he was even born; they've always been a part of him, so he doesn't act like they're anything weird and treats them dispassionately as a POV character. Most other characters in that story have also been around him for a very long time and not only don't act like he's weird for having said powers, they'll actively rely on him to use such powers. Despite being one the most potentially OP Swiss Army knife characters, readers haven't called me on making Ira too overpowered because I play him straight, hobble him in lots of ways, and don't use him all the time as a POV (he's part of an enormous cast and one of about 20 POV characters in that series). He doesn't gain new PIOMA powers throughout the series at all, even if he might discover something about one he already had. He doesn't have to work on his mindpowers and tends to take them for granted, in favor of physical and medical training (despite being one of the two telepaths in an organization, he's utilized more as a BAMF scout and field medic--skills he picked up during a ban on telepathy). Since mindpowers came automatically to him, he takes them for granted and spends effort on skill sets that personally useful (like BAMF medic because his greatest fear is not being able to save people he cares about). The emphasis of his character is never "OMG he's so freaking cool! Look at all these crazy cool powers he has!" nor is the reader ever set up to think he can develop any new powers that might mystically get him out of trouble. This keeps him from feeling too stereotypically shonen, I think. The mindpowers aren't specifically central to his character arc, internal struggles and motivations.

*Double-edged Telepathy/Empathy*
His particular brand of empathy causes colorful coronas/auras around the heads of feeling creatures (including animals), but he has to learn what the variation between said coronas means. Colors, sizes and patterns mean different things, and unless he's willing/able to concentrate more heavily and open himself up to the feelings of this other creature, he might not ever figure out exactly what that particular aura meant. He can "see" auras through solid objects so long as the creature is within a given radius of him, but he's most likely to use this ability to get headshots on sneaky foes. He can't see auras on things that don't feel--robots, remotely operated weapons, bombs, cameras, unconscious creatures (which can totally blindside him later), dead creatures (unless they're a ghost, in which case he could hear thoughts and see an aura... with no dang body). Ira also senses "fields", and neither one of us know much about what fields mean because no one's around to explain them to him. Unlike auras, very few creatures have fields, which are linked to the awareness and power level of other very unusual, powerful creatures. While lots of readers are curious about what exactly fields are, we're all sure they're important because Ira always takes note of them (even if he doesn't know exactly what they mean). His confusion and notice, however, has a narrative purpose and helps build tension around specific characters and events (for instance, if a field is noticed or changes around a character which hadn't seemed powerful or important before). 

His empathic powers can be a huge nuisance because he's left open to the emotions of others, and thus social environments or interaction with passionate people can alter how he feels to the point where he's not sure how he actually feels at all and may start acting on the emotions of other people (their feelings can drown his out, especially if he's not very careful about putting up some kind of psychic barrier and shutting down his own emotions). He's so subject to the emotions of others that he is known to be "moody" and "creepy" when he's not being "cold". If he's drunk/injured/ill/tired, he's even more impressionable and unable to defend himself from the emotions of others (and a lot more likely to lose his cool). Conversely, in those same states, he can accidentally (or drunkenly) inflict his emotions on everyone around him. 

His telepathic powers also have drawbacks because some characters have a much better defense against telepathic manipulation and eavesdropping. Sometimes other characters will purposefully try to obfuscate what they're thinking around him (forcibly be as uninteresting as possible until he's out of range). Also, even though he can't help but overhear thoughts, most characters hate the notion that he might overhear them thinking, and this leads to confrontations and distrust. Much like with overhearing normal conversation in a crowded plaza, just because he hears something, doesn't mean he's consciously paying attention to it, either. Most thoughts are junk and not worth paying attention to, and he does have his own problems to be thinking about anyway. While most people worry that someone might find out what they're thinking at specific moments, I came to the conclusion that being able to hear these sorts of embarrassing/alarming thoughts all the time (especially when such things are rarely acted upon anyway) would actually lead to more boredom in a telepath of this caliber. He's seen/heard it all before, so a pattern of thought, obsession, and actually planning out something is a lot more likely to make him listen in than just thinking of something weird/bad/wrong/etc. Because he hears thoughts in a similar manner to how we hear speech, he sometimes responds to questions people thought instead of said (or, to counter, won't answer questions asked of him) if he can't see the speaker. 


*Animal Characteristics & Heightened Senses.*
 Like your chimerids, Ira (and the whole race he sprang from) does have a lot of more animal characteristics and heightened senses, but these can lead to him being alienated from humans or viewed as "less of a person". These heightened senses and abilities also lead to him sometimes tuning out the wrong stimulus or relying too heavily on one sense. With so much sensory input, it's easy to get overwhelmed, but the defense for that is to tune out what is perceived to be irrelevant (this may be why your chimerids do that "hyperfocus" thing--hey're often overwhelmed). While using bright and/or strobe lights to debilitate a character with very good low light vision is an option, you might also try deafening them with loud noises or doubling them over with debilitating smells (like thioacetone). Something we perceive as unpleasant or overstimulating might be a horrendous obstacle to something with heightened senses. Since you like electric fields and such, these might be likewise debilitating for chimerids (for instance, stronger fields repel sharks, but smaller ones can attract them). Every sense has its limits. Below the threshold, the stimulus can't be perceived, and above a threshold it can be painful/harmful/debilitating and can lead to permanent or temporary damage and disability. The reader doesn't have to know the exact limits, but those limits do need to be reasonable and consistent. If chimerids are sensitive to ammonia, for instance, they might be able to track a mouse at night in a open field but would probably be weakened/debilitated/handicapped/flee if someone accidentally broke a jug of it at a department store. 

Also, since you're dealing with what are apparently part-animal people, don't be afraid to add some weirder quirks. Everyone has purring cat-people seemingly, but what about ones that sun themselves, scratch posts, use litter boxes, lick themselves, scratch behind their ears using their "back feet", mark territory, go into heat, rub their faces on everything? Don't be afraid to add lots of other weird little personality quirks. Don't be afraid to have quirks that have nothing to do with the story. For instance, Ira is a dancing prodigy (never plays into the story but makes for fun stories that the characters tell each other) and is the worst cook in my battery of characters. He seriously threw unopened cans and someone's drapes into a pot during an attempt to make a romantic dinner once. Despite having a a superhuman sense of smell, he has next to no sense of taste because he lost his tongue as a child, and his sense of "tasty" is based more on what a starving dog would eat than what a sane person would eat. Just because a creature has a superhuman sense of taste doesn't mean they have a "good taste", so to speak. Dogs have a much better sense of smell than we do, but they will straight up stick their noses in each other's butts and eat cat poop. Cats arguably have a better sense of smell than dogs, have no sweet tooth whatsoever, and will lick their own genitals and butts. Even if granted a higher sense of reason and decorum, a culture of creatures with improved senses might not come to the same conclusions about what smells/tastes/looks/feels/sounds "good".


----------



## Stormcat (Jul 9, 2019)

seigfried007 said:


> Electricity requires a flow of electrons. If they can't make them flow, they can't power something. The few animals that use electrical discharges don't use them willy-nilly or to power electric devices. The anatomical apparatuses to sense/charge/discharge electricity aren't one-size-fits-all and do have costs associated with them. To my knowledge, fish are the only animal kingdom that employ such hardware (and for different reasons and in different ways). Sensing electric fields is common for sharks/rays and some other fish species. Electric eels basically function as capacitors, so they can discharge electricity but have to build up that charge in the first place. Biological systems don't like to build up the electrical gradients necessary for the kinds of skills you're talking about (though chemical/electrical gradients and the biological capacitor are actually intrinsic and necessary for life... but we're talking _millivolts_ across cell membranes). Shearing electrons off atoms turns them into ions, which are more reactive generally. The more electrons are sheared off, the higher the charge difference (something is getting more positive, something else is getting more negative, and both parties are likely to be more reactive). If your critter can't get those electrons back, it will actually lose mass (even though electrons don't weigh much) and a lot of bodily havoc is going to happen because of necessary charge differences getting screwed up. It's more believable (if this power simply must exist) that your critter is able to pick up those electrons and thus keep the circuit closed that way, but this requires a special + and - pole to be set up in its body. There is at least one fish species that uses a constant stream like this between its tail and anus (basically) to sense electrical fields of something that might be alive/sneaking up on its blind spot. But again, it's not a big animal or using big charges, and it does require special sensory apparatuses for this ability. It's also not a "free" ability and takes a metabolic toll.



I was thinking of making these creatures more "direct the current" type rather than have them build up the electricity within themselves. Therefore, external phenomena such as moisture and heat would have some effect on the "spell casting". After all, energy cannot be created nor destroyed.


----------



## Stormcat (Jul 10, 2019)

seigfried007 said:


> *Animal Characteristics & Heightened Senses.*
> Like your chimerids, Ira (and the whole race he sprang from) does have a lot of more animal characteristics and heightened senses, but these can lead to him being alienated from humans or viewed as "less of a person". These heightened senses and abilities also lead to him sometimes tuning out the wrong stimulus or relying too heavily on one sense. With so much sensory input, it's easy to get overwhelmed, but the defense for that is to tune out what is perceived to be irrelevant (this may be why your chimerids do that "hyperfocus" thing--hey're often overwhelmed). While using bright and/or strobe lights to debilitate a character with very good low light vision is an option, you might also try deafening them with loud noises or doubling them over with debilitating smells (like thioacetone). Something we perceive as unpleasant or overstimulating might be a horrendous obstacle to something with heightened senses. Since you like electric fields and such, these might be likewise debilitating for chimerids (for instance, stronger fields repel sharks, but smaller ones can attract them). Every sense has its limits. Below the threshold, the stimulus can't be perceived, and above a threshold it can be painful/harmful/debilitating and can lead to permanent or temporary damage and disability. The reader doesn't have to know the exact limits, but those limits do need to be reasonable and consistent. If chimerids are sensitive to ammonia, for instance, they might be able to track a mouse at night in a open field but would probably be weakened/debilitated/handicapped/flee if someone accidentally broke a jug of it at a department store.
> 
> Also, since you're dealing with what are apparently part-animal people, don't be afraid to add some weirder quirks. Everyone has purring cat-people seemingly, but what about ones that sun themselves, scratch posts, use litter boxes, lick themselves, scratch behind their ears using their "back feet", mark territory, go into heat, rub their faces on everything? Don't be afraid to add lots of other weird little personality quirks. Don't be afraid to have quirks that have nothing to do with the story. For instance, Ira is a dancing prodigy (never plays into the story but makes for fun stories that the characters tell each other) and is the worst cook in my battery of characters. He seriously threw unopened cans and someone's drapes into a pot during an attempt to make a romantic dinner once. Despite having a a superhuman sense of smell, he has next to no sense of taste because he lost his tongue as a child, and his sense of "tasty" is based more on what a starving dog would eat than what a sane person would eat. Just because a creature has a superhuman sense of taste doesn't mean they have a "good taste", so to speak. Dogs have a much better sense of smell than we do, but they will straight up stick their noses in each other's butts and eat cat poop. Cats arguably have a better sense of smell than dogs, have no sweet tooth whatsoever, and will lick their own genitals and butts. Even if granted a higher sense of reason and decorum, a culture of creatures with improved senses might not come to the same conclusions about what smells/tastes/looks/feels/sounds "good".



I am on the spectrum and am quite familiar with sensory overloads, I've actually written several instances where the villains use sensory torture like extremely bright lights and loud noises to incapacitate my protagonists and various filler characters.

As for the part animal bit, I'm afraid we're not on the same page here. These creatures aren't supposed to be more beast-like, they are actually supposed to be "humans plus", a theoretical branching path for the future of human evolution. (Many fiction writers seem to think that in the distant future humans will develop psychic powers) The eyeshine and purring _ARE_ the quirks that developed along the way, in addition to the lesser hair and extended lifespan. The "magic" is supposed to be the main focus of these creatures, not beastly ones.

Anyway, I can tell already I can drop the telepathic powers, as I realize they don't add anything to the story. I'm keeping the "transforming bite" and other story-important biological abilities. This leaves...

- FMA-style alchemy via channeling energy
- Hyperfocus
- clear mind
- energy sensing
- bio-electric aura/ tactile telekinesis
- psychic (brain) surgery and therapy
- psychic energy manipulation (including vampirism)
- ability to project and detect “auras” that naturally form around living things
- energy bolts (unstable)
- energy conduction/manipulation including electric, magnetic, and even radiant
- Can use self as a living battery to power machines.

...on the chopping block. I'm sure browsing the Superpower wiki might reveal some secondary abilities, but it's late and I need to sleep.


----------



## seigfried007 (Jul 10, 2019)

Stormcat said:


> I was thinking of making these creatures more "direct the current" type rather than have them build up the electricity within themselves. Therefore, external phenomena such as moisture and heat would have some effect on the "spell casting". After all, energy cannot be created nor destroyed.



Ah, but it can be transformed... or equal mass times the speed of light squared *wink*. Mass itself is basically an illusion formed by the complex interactions of little charges (the bigger mystery is why a positive charge has more mass than a negative charge, as far as I'm concerned). Quantum mechanics studies "the dreams that stuff is made of."   

The current has to start from somewhere, and in biological systems, you've always got ions. Nerve impulses are basically electric... but it's still generated chemically (and complicated... and also dependent on very small fluctuations of charge). People conduct electricity because we largely consist of polar and charged particles anyway. 

I don't see a way of an organism actually making enough charge over a long enough time to power and use an electronic device. I don't advise even trying to sell it scientifically. You can just call it a big, fancy mindpower/superpower and not bother explaining it. Just keep it consistent and make sure it doesn't come off like you pulled that power out of your butt to make something more convenient for a character. Set it up as a possibility or reality early. Yeah, it won't be hard science fiction material on that front, but who cares if you spin a good yarn? If you need a science-y explanation, however, you can base it on some of the critters I've mentioned, talk a good game about how much better/faster/thicker their nerves are, have them chug electrolytes before/after their big trials, feel drained of energy after episodes, give lip service to a special gland or anatomical apparatus that allows them to store charge in a non-polar, fatty cyst or such that would segregate the charge and keep it from screwing up the rest of their body (just be sure to have a positive and negative terminal so they can direct that current through wires), or maybe even lose some weight (as though fission/fusion on a very small level might be something they can do to charge). 

Also, if the power isn't really needed, why bother with it? Why not just have a character be able to fix the power grid or haul in a battery? Why can't someone be an electrician?


----------



## seigfried007 (Jul 10, 2019)

Stormcat said:


> I am on the spectrum and am quite familiar with sensory overloads, I've actually written several instances where the villains use sensory torture like extremely bright lights and loud noises to incapacitate my protagonists and various filler characters.
> 
> As for the part animal bit, I'm afraid we're not on the same page here. These creatures aren't supposed to be more beast-like, they are actually supposed to be "humans plus", a theoretical branching path for the future of human evolution. (Many fiction writers seem to think that in the distant future humans will develop psychic powers) The eyeshine and purring _ARE_ the quirks that developed along the way, in addition to the lesser hair and extended lifespan. The "magic" is supposed to be the main focus of these creatures, not beastly ones.
> 
> ...


Eyeshine is specifically a nocturnal adaptation and purring is a totally irrelevant quirk (unless you're writing _Oryx and Crake_, in which case the act of purring was mystically found to improve healing for no darn reason). 

What purpose does it serve the vector to make humans +? There's no way this vector wasn't engineered because it's not remotely natural. The sorts of genes that would have to be introduced/modified to make a regular old human into a chimerid would be astounding. If a vector introduces the genetic manipulation (aka: it's contagious) there has to be some reason it was made, and it's definitely not the next phase in natural human evolution. Viruses don't modify host organisms to better them unless this change benefits the virus (or it's had it's usual genes chopped out and replaced with beneficial gene cassettes designed for this transfer). It can't be contagious and represent the evolution of humanity (because humanity wouldn't be doing the evolving--it'd be the virus). They don't usually change big things or make anything for the better. HIV is a virus that will change its host's genome, for instance.

Most scientists don't think we're going to evolve cool new mindpowers. Generally, the big trend is to think we're evolving more like the blobmen of Wall-E. We are evolving via technology. The tech is doing more and more for us, so weaker and weaker people continue. Superpowers are just sci-fi coating over modern fantasy, when it comes down to it... unless we're taking our superpowers from real life creatures (the beast-men, a concept based on admiration for animal traits and maybe a bit of jealousy), in which case, it's just science fiction. Unless something has a good reason to stay in the genome, it probably won't. Normal genes outnumber those weird mutations and are more likely to continue in a species just by probability--unless some selective pressure is forcing the issue (like the case with pesticide and antibiotic resistances).


----------



## JustRob (Jul 10, 2019)

My comments here are generic rather than focussed on your particular choice of exceptional powers so that you can apply them to _how_ you make and justify your choices rather than me suggesting which to work with. 

My solitary novel revolved around not-quite-human powers, but I presented these as dormant powers in all humans that needed to be unlocked rather than something that had to be added. The process of such an individual passing the powers on to a normal human then simply involved transfer of the key that unlocked them. Hence no major spontaneous modification of the human was involved. 

Science is about what we understand of how the universe works. It would be arrogant to assume that there isn't more to discover. This was a subject addressed in John Horgan's non-fiction book _The End Of Science_. In the past scientists have believed that they knew all the answers and then something new has been discovered that expands on their model of reality. The question is whether our current belief, that our understanding of reality is almost complete, is yet another such illusion. Hence in fiction there can always be "something else" as my novel put it.

When I read a SF/fantasy story I always wonder how alien creatures evolved rather than how they are capable of what they can do. There had to have been an ecosystem that nurtured them and unless they were artificially created by relative numbskulls like us then their powers must have given them a better chance of survival there. Survival of the fittest, which may actually be the fittest combination of creatures rather than a single species, is surely paramount in any ecosystem. Something that puzzled the humans in the classic SF film _Forbidden Planet_ was that the monster attacking them had a combination of characteristics that were very unlikely to have evolved together, implying that it truly was a monstrosity dreamed up overnight, which of course was exactly what it was. To make any species plausible give some clues as to its origins and the scientific discrepancies are more likely to be overlooked by the reader. 

Conventional science may be circumvented anyway though. A favourite ploy to explain apparent creation of power or mass out of nowhere is to make the creatures multidimensional. This also explains paranormal abilities like telekinesis and telepathy because the strings and communication channels are invisibly located in a fourth dimension. In my novel I tweaked that approach by implying that that extra dimension was a second dimension of time rather than a fourth dimension of space. You have to dig into genuine paranormal research to find that a second dimension of time is something that has been proposed on the outer fringe of science in the past. 

As humanity has come up with a very specific solution to survival, in the form of reasoning combined with technology beyond our own capabilities, we have gradually lost or repressed past animal abilities no longer needed. Indeed some possible survival mechanisms, like say being able to sense future events, would be so detrimental to our current social structures that we vehemently, maybe even irrationally, deny their possibility even though animals may still benefit from using them. It may be hard to think that there is a fashionable aspect to science, but whether a researcher can investigate any phenomenon actually depends on whether there is a perceived benefit in their doing so. In other words science projects need funding in practice and funding is predominantly about survival specifically within our chosen economic system.

The relevant question then is not so much whether there is a scientific explanation for your fictional species but whether they appear to be monstrosities artificially created for some purpose by a more naturally evolved species (mad scientists or fiction writers for example). If you feel that you can get away with saying that we can't imagine where they originated from then surely equally we can't imagine the science behind their abilities.


----------



## Stormcat (Jul 10, 2019)

JustRob said:


> The relevant question then is not so much whether there is a scientific explanation for your fictional species but whether they appear to be monstrosities artificially created for some purpose by a more naturally evolved species (mad scientists or fiction writers for example). If you feel that you can get away with saying that we can't imagine where they originated from then surely equally we can't imagine the science behind their abilities.



In my story it's implied they were artificially created, but none of the characters of this species are 100% sure. However they came to be, it was hundreds of years ago and all the "creator's" records have been lost. All they have to work with are the writings of second or third generation Chimerids who compared their anatomies to human anatomies and tried to master these abilities.



> I don't see a way of an organism actually making enough charge over a long enough time to power and use an electronic device. I don't advise even trying to sell it scientifically. You can just call it a big, fancy mindpower/superpower and not bother explaining it. Just keep it consistent and make sure it doesn't come off like you pulled that power out of your butt to make something more convenient for a character. Set it up as a possibility or reality early. Yeah, it won't be hard science fiction material on that front, but who cares if you spin a good yarn? If you need a science-y explanation, however, you can base it on some of the critters I've mentioned, talk a good game about how much better/faster/thicker their nerves are, have them chug electrolytes before/after their big trials, feel drained of energy after episodes, give lip service to a special gland or anatomical apparatus that allows them to store charge in a non-polar, fatty cyst or such that would segregate the charge and keep it from screwing up the rest of their body (just be sure to have a positive and negative terminal so they can direct that current through wires), or maybe even lose some weight (as though fission/fusion on a very small level might be something they can do to charge).



I was thinking about making the abilities directly proportional to sanity, since a whole lot of the book uses themes of psychology and psychotherapy anyway. Its one of the few rules I've managed to work out for the system. However, Physics was never my strong suit so I need help to keep the powers in the realm of suspended disbelief.


----------



## seigfried007 (Jul 10, 2019)

I hadn't gotten around to the multidimensional thing yet. It's also hypothesized that time and space are the same thing (which is one I struggle to get my head around). 

The key with thermodynamics in science fiction like this is that "in a closed system" at the end of those phrases. There's nothing saying how big the system is. The system might include other dimensions, layers of reality--ones that humans can't see or even comprehend, necessarily. If the energy/matter is coming from some unseen dimension, it will appear "out of thin air" and as though it's busting the laws of thermodynamics. 

One of the things that really opened my eyes to how little we know wasn't delving into astronomy or physics but learning about comparative animal physiology. There are so many animals that can do and sense things that we can only try to imagine because we simply don't have the biological hardware necessary to sense these phenomena for ourselves. We have to use technology to even attempt understanding what the animal perceives. Humans like thinking of animals as base creatures which are so much less than we are... but it turns out that a lot of them can see colors that we can't and even in greater definition and resolution than we could dream. Often, they have the same senses that we do, but they use them differently, using a different apparatus, or tuned to a different degree/sensitivity. We also belittle other creatures for having smaller brains relative to body size... as though the computing power of our machines directly correlates to how big they are (*hint: this isn't remotely true), as though the measure of a creature's worth is purely related to brain size as opposed to other factors or even its knowledge and ability to think. Birds and cephalopods have very different brains, but that difference doesn't make them stupid so much as easily misunderstood by us. 

Of methods I've used to get mindpowers into people... Hmm, pretty much always splicing something in or they were always available (just untapped). I've spliced in varieties of aliens, dolphins and cats mostly. I grew up hearing a lot of stories about cats that seemed like they could sense what people were thinking or even events in the very near future. I've even seen cats respond to events in a similar, seemingly incomprehensible way. As creatures with a lot of myth and mystery built up around them, they make a nice biological scapegoat, and even if the cats themselves can't be proved or disproved to have mindpowers, I can always say that maybe they didn't but that the splicing in with Critter X caused the mindpowers to become accessible. Regarding dolphins, I figured their physique and limitations of habitat would be perhaps the most likely to yield telepathy--high reasoning creature, frequently low visibility, can't see their own bodies, large brains, higher reasoning, need to coordinate complicated strategies without being able to see each other or make as much noise as a terrestrial animal. And because it would be so useful for them, I said they had it all along in some form.


----------



## JustRob (Jul 11, 2019)

Stormcat said:


> > I don't see a way of an organism actually making  enough charge over a long enough time to power and use an electronic  device. I don't advise even trying to sell it scientifically. You can  just call it a big, fancy mindpower/superpower and not bother explaining  it. Just keep it consistent and make sure it doesn't come off like you  pulled that power out of your butt to make something more convenient for  a character. Set it up as a possibility or reality early. Yeah, it  won't be hard science fiction material on that front, but who cares if  you spin a good yarn? If you need a science-y explanation, however, you  can base it on some of the critters I've mentioned, talk a good game  about how much better/faster/thicker their nerves are, have them chug  electrolytes before/after their big trials, feel drained of energy after  episodes, give lip service to a special gland or anatomical apparatus  that allows them to store charge in a non-polar, fatty cyst or such that  would segregate the charge and keep it from screwing up the rest of  their body (just be sure to have a positive and negative terminal so  they can direct that current through wires), or maybe even lose some  weight (as though fission/fusion on a very small level might be  something they can do to charge).
> 
> 
> I was thinking about making the abilities directly proportional to sanity, since a whole lot of the book uses themes of psychology and psychotherapy anyway. Its one of the few rules I've managed to work out for the system. However, Physics was never my strong suit so I need help to keep the powers in the realm of suspended disbelief.



You didn't identify who wrote the post that you quoted above, so it appeared implicitly to be part of mine, but it wasn't. If a quote isn't attributed then the assumption is that it follows on from a previous attributed quote, but this one didn't. It was actually from seigfried007. When writing dialogue always check that it is clear who is speaking, especially when they are real people who might complain.


----------



## StickyKeys (Mar 1, 2020)

*Physics*



Stormcat said:


> Problem is... I can't come up with the science behind the magic.
> /QUOTE]
> 
> As others have stated, there is Alchemy and such, but to understand the Alchemy side, one must apply the common physics, on a completely uncommon level. Not uncommon in your writing style, but literally an uncommon application of common physics....


----------



## epimetheus (Mar 1, 2020)

Newton was also an avid alchemist. Delve into his works for inspiration.


----------

