4.1 Blurring Boundaries: Some Examples
Plausible science-fictionality and otherness point us toward an understanding of scientific and magical imagery respectively. When an image possesses one of these properties, it is scientific or magical accordingly. Although this discussion of metaphysical properties is rather general in practical terms, it does offer considerable insight into how we understand the imagery of a work, and even the work itself. In recent years, encounters, exchanges, and conflicts between “scientific kingdoms/civilizations/worlds” and “magical kingdoms/civilizations/worlds” have become a very common subject. Perhaps the most typical example is A Certain Magical Index, which clearly establishes a distinction and an opposition between the “science side” and the “magic side.” The two kinds of imagery are easy to recognize. On the science side, we see superpowers that can be explained and controlled scientifically, various institutionalized research bodies, hypersonic jets, supercomputers capable of molecular-level computational precision, large numbers of artificially created human clones, and so forth. On the magic side, we see forces of magic users under the command of different religious sects, flames controlled through runes, familiars summoned by various sorcerers, grimoires recording mysterious powers, Saints and Magic Gods with various mythological backgrounds, and so forth. These are all very typical scientific or magical images.
As the original A Certain Magical Index novels show, however, the difference between the scientific and magical things expressed by these images may not in fact entail a sharply drawn boundary. According to the novels, the opposition between the science side and the magic side actually originated in infighting on the magic side. Aleister Crowley, head of Academy City’s highest governing body, was originally a member of a magical society and is the author of The Book of the Law, an important grimoire in the series. Aiwass, the guardian angel Aleister summons, in some sense seems more like a disseminator of knowledge who stands above both science and magic. If an unbridgeable gulf really separates scientific from magical things, then interaction between their technical practices would be inconceivable. Yet, as we see, Aleister’s intention to create an “artificial heaven” demonstrates that such interaction is feasible. How can physical things interact with mental things? This puzzle, dating back to Descartes, now confronts us in a new form, with scientific and magical things. Whether we think both can be subsumed under a more fundamental level, or that one can be reduced to the other, a sharply drawn boundary must be abolished.
So far, it may seem that we are discussing the blurring of scientific and magical imagery in one particular work. In fact, this blurring is more than an interesting feature of a fictional plot: it is an inevitable outcome for scientific and magical imagery in all works. Some might think it occurs only in works like A Certain Magical Index, whose worlds explicitly allow science and magic to coexist. In works that show only scientific imagery or only magical imagery, they might argue, there is no blurring—after all, a category cannot blur its boundary with itself. Yet some works show that this blurring does not require an Index-style fictional world. In any work, whether it presents scientific imagery alone or magical imagery alone, an attempt to show and explain an image in sufficiently concrete detail will almost certainly produce this blurring.
The 2017 anime Knight’s & Magic is an excellent illustration. It presents only magical imagery. Although the “silhouette knights” look like giant humanoid robots, every aspect of their construction is plainly full of magical imagery: their internal magical formulas, the magic wands mounted on their bodies, the ether reactors that power them, and so on. The world the work constructs is also filled with typical magical imagery, from otherworldly architecture to the magical beasts commonly found in the wild. Clearly, all we see in the anime is magical imagery—on the surface, at least. But once the anime begins explaining the machines’ internal construction in detail, their identity as magical imagery itself begins to blur. When we hear Ernie discussing “power output,” “stability,” and “strength,” we know perfectly well that these concepts, at least, are not exclusive to magical worlds. When we see what an ether reactor does, it is hard not to associate the image with a real-world engine. When we see the Kingdom of Jaloudek deploy airships on the battlefield to considerable effect, we are reminded, to some extent, of historical airships and the opening of warfare in the skies.
As we keep noticing these things, the magical image seems less clear-cut. If machines in a magical world actually use power systems resembling those in reality, does this mean their power units could be plausibly explained within real-world science? If mechanical design in a magical world also requires concepts from classical mechanics, does this mean the world obeys classical mechanics to some extent? Our thoughts may even move to more abstract levels: if the arrival of airships brings significant military success, will this magical world one day enter an era of struggles for air superiority? These questions may go unanswered, but ultimately they all point toward the same result. The magical image itself becomes less clearly magical; we are no longer certain that a sharp boundary really separates it from scientific imagery.
An even more interesting example is Falcom’s Trails series. When playing its first game, Trails in the Sky, many people may, like me, have thought this was a magical world with a slight steampunk flavor. After all, “orbal energy” was such an unfamiliar term, and the characters could even use a form of magic called “orbal arts.” Moreover, at least until we reach the workshop city of Zeiss, most of the scenery along the way has the medieval-fantasy look familiar since DQ. There are even various slime-like monsters. Yet the Trails series has always included worldbuilding elements such as the “Orbal Revolution” and orbal energy’s replacement of steam engines. The games following Trails in the Sky do indeed seem to portray an industrial revolution. From the completed IBC bank building in Trails from Zero and Trails to Azure to the orbal locomotives and mechanized forces that appear frequently in Trails of Cold Steel, it is hard not to think of the historical Second Industrial Revolution. Perhaps even the so-called “orbal arts” amount to no more than the efficient use of some kind of electronic device. Falcom may have intended its worldbuilding as a “homage” to the Second Industrial Revolution from the start. Whatever the case, we certainly cannot simply slot these games’ imagery into a division between science and magic.
4.2 The Paradox of Concreteness
It is important to note that the blurring of the boundary between images does not arise from imperfect worldbuilding. Even the most complete worldbuilding we can imagine cannot avoid it, so long as we attempt to show and explain the imagery in concrete detail. We can imagine a magical world without Newton’s second law. But if we try to establish rules for the objective aspects of that world, something must take the place of Newton’s second law, even if it is a capricious deity. In that case, whenever the creator tries to show and explain in sufficiently concrete detail how the deity affects the objective world, the deity’s identity as magical imagery will inevitably blur once again.
Unless, that is, we imagine a magical world in which Newton’s second law, F = ma, does not exist at the ontological level; nor do mass, acceleration, or force. Nor, indeed, does anything referred to by any of the words we use to describe things in reality: no people, no earth or sky, no colors, not even extension in space. The result would be a magical world in which nothing could be described. There could be no work about such a world, and consequently no magical imagery either.
This applies not only to magical imagery. Scientific imagery can face the same blurring. At first glance, that may seem to contradict the very concept of scientific imagery. If it seeks the possibility of explaining what an image refers to through our existing knowledge and beliefs, why should it avoid too much showing and explaining? We must remember that plausible science-fictionality is, after all, only “plausible.” Its explanatory context always goes beyond reality; it never entails logical deduction from an actual body of knowledge. Which components produce the hot air coming from the Gundam’s vents as it stands up? What material is the VF-22’s flexible skin made of? What lubricant does the Scopedog’s sliding structure use when absorbing an impact? If answers to such questions are shown and explained in sufficiently concrete detail, sooner or later the image will lose its scientific plausibility and take on a tinge of otherness.
In this sense, the only way to preserve a sharp boundary between scientific and magical imagery is to show and explain as little as possible. The maxim found in many works, “Magic’s essence is mystery,” is therefore genuinely instructive—for scientific as well as magical imagery. The question, of course, then becomes: how can a creator tell a good story well while showing and explaining as little as possible?
4.3 Diachronic Heterogeneity and the Mnemohistory of Science
Finally, we must discuss the diachronic heterogeneity of imagery, a question touched on in our separate analyses of scientific and magical imagery. So far, we have only described the blurring between images. An adequate explanation of this phenomenon must rest on an examination of diachronic heterogeneity, drawing on the two ontological properties we have identified and on a historicist perspective.
In analyzing the two kinds of imagery, we identified their respective ontological properties as plausible science-fictionality and otherness. As we have already noted, these properties are of little practical use, chiefly because the ways they are actually realized always exhibit diachronic heterogeneity. The simplest illustration resembles Asimov’s “elevator effect.” Imagine a science-fiction writer in 1850, with no actual skyscrapers in his everyday world to draw on. He might imagine a future in which climbing stairs is so exhausting that people living in skyscrapers seldom venture outside them. Restaurants, supermarkets, hospitals, and other facilities would be provided every few floors to meet residents’ needs within the building. But this writer has failed to anticipate elevators, making his entire conception absurd and laughable.
The “elevator effect” chiefly concerns the limits of experience in writing science fiction. Its implications, however, also illuminate the diachronic heterogeneity of concepts such as “plausibility,” “reasonableness,” “otherness,” and “absurdity.” Consider the earlier example of slimes existing in reality. From the scientists’ concealment of their existence, through its announcement to the world, to their inclusion in compulsory-school curricula, an originally magical image becomes nonmagical, and may even become scientific. This exhibits diachronic heterogeneity. How otherness is actually realized in a given context is particular to each moment; we cannot propose a universal way for it to happen. The same is true of scientific imagery. In many celebrated science-fiction works of the last century, scientific imagery often took the form of bulky flat-faced monitors, multicolored indicator lights, reflective silver clothing, and so forth. We may still recognize these as scientific images today, but they clearly no longer offer typical instances of what we now demand of plausible science-fictionality. Indeed, we regard many of them as scientific imagery only because they have become cultural symbols with fixed interpretations.
How does this diachronic heterogeneity arise? If it consists in differences over time in people’s views of how ontological properties are realized, its causes must also be traced through time. Why do people in different periods have different views of how these properties are realized? We have already mentioned the influence of context. More precisely, the public’s mnemohistory of science exerts the most important influence. The mnemohistory of science is understood very broadly here. It includes not only people’s impressions of scientific research and theories in a given era, but also their impressions of technological products, and even impressions produced by imagery in the works of that era. This last aspect is extremely important. For many Chinese people in the 1980s, for example, a pair of sunglasses may have been a more typical scientific image, thanks to the science-fiction television series Man from Atlantis. In short, the mnemohistory of science is itself a concept with blurred boundaries. In examining it, we should focus more on its role in shaping knowledge and systems of belief. What it chiefly changes is how people view the conditions under which an image’s ontological property is realized.
Although the term refers to the “mnemohistory of science,” this does not mean it has nothing to do with magical imagery. The ontological property of magical imagery is otherness. From any perspective, an other cannot exist independently of the “mainstream,” “normal” world; it can exist only in contrast to it. In this sense, the way magical imagery acquires otherness also entails a deliberate avoidance of the mnemohistory of science. At a simpler level, this avoidance takes the form of changes in wording—for example, using “orbal energy” instead of “electricity.” At a more complex level, it takes the form of abandoning familiar rules of interaction: using fire magic, for example, to avoid making fire with flint.
The only perfect way to avoid it is to say nothing at all. As our account of blurred imagery has shown, once creators attempt to show and explain these images in sufficiently concrete detail, they must return to the mnemohistory of science, return to remembered ways of organizing rhetoric, beliefs, knowledge, and rules of interaction. Diachronic heterogeneity tells us that history inevitably projects itself into every image we construct, and that the boundaries must consequently blur. This is the limit of imagination.