School of Magical Engineering Postmortem
By Ray Tabler.
I hope you enjoyed reading the recently-concluded The School of Magical Engineering, my first fantasy novel. And that’s worth sitting back to ponder. Although I’ve enjoy reading fantasy since I stumbled on Lord of the Rings more decades ago than is comfortable to remember. Science fiction has been my writing focus to date, as evidenced by 4 published and 2 upcoming novels in that genre.
Understandably, The School of Magical Engineering is something of a science fiction writer’s fantasy. I borrowed heavily from fantasy books. There are wizards, orcs, elves, and dragons. Alright, I stole all of those tropes. It’s okay. They’re all in the public domain. Then, these elements were dragooned into constructing a story about engineers cataloging, theorizing, and manipulating the magical realm they inhabit. Different universe. Different laws of nature. Same job description ==> magical engineering. If someone wants to argue that isn’t technically fantasy, I won’t disagree, too much. Speculative fiction is a big enough tent to shelter all flavors of tales. I’m just disappointed the label of science fantasy is already taken. Maybe “technical fantasy” is available.
If you’ve read some of my other essays about writing (https://www.debrahgoldstein.com/writing-science-fiction-and-fantasy-by-ray-tabler/), you might recall my view is that you need a setting, a story (a plot), and characters to glue those two together. A fantasy world university campus serves as the setting. An innocent man trying to clear his name is the story. The 2 main characters, Paulus and Bubba, turn this into a magical, odd couple, buddy cop tale. Didn’t start out fully formed. Just sort of grew into that along the way.
Soon after I began here on Substack, I was feeling my way along, trying to figure out exactly what shape my corner of the platform would take. School of Magical Engineering’s 1st chapter (Shattered) appeared as a short story. It was well received, with some readers asking what happened next. Up to that point, the idea of serializing novels on Substack hadn’t occurred to me. But Shattered planted a fertile seed.
Since I still had my science fiction blinders on, a science fiction novel was my initial serialized novel, Containment Protocol. Full disclosure, I’m a discovery writer. A pantser, to use the pejorative term those outliners fling at us. I had very little clue where Containment Protocol was headed one chapter to the next. But, it’s about tanks versus dinosaurs. Can’t go far wrong with a setup like that. Then throw in some sexy, passionate cave women, and it all worked out rather well. The same for my 2nd serialized Substack novel, Planets 4 $ale. About an interstellar con man scamming his way across the galaxy one shady real estate scheme after another.
All that time I was writing and posting Containment Protocol & Planets 4 $ale, School of Magical Engineering stewed, brewed, and marinated away in the back of my head. It took a while (over a year), but I formed more of an idea of where the story would wind up than for any of my other books. The task was to reach that that endpoint from the fixed point of the Shattered short story. And I stumbled over a few surprises on the path from A to B.
School of Magical Engineering follows a format I call “black pebble among the white pebbles.” That is, plop a stranger down in a strange land. (https://raytabler.substack.com/p/strangers-in-strange-lands). Bubba is the black pebble. He’s literally from another world. This affords the writer the opportunity to explore the setting through fresh eyes. Things have to be explained to the newcomer, which (somewhat) justifies data dumps, if judiciously employed. In addition to contrasts, similarities between the white and black pebbles are inevitable as well. That’s what builds a relationship between Paulus (Pedro) the scholarly wizard, and Bubba, the hell-raisin’ cowpoke. Through shared adventures and dangers, they become unlikely compadres, pardners.
And that’s where we leave the tale. Or at least we could. Will Paulus find a way to get Bubba back to Texas? Or will this world’s only cowboy remain in East Trendleshay? Do Paulus and Vayla live happily ever after? Will things work out between the librarian and Gilbert? What about the dastardly LeRuvoir? Defeated, incarcerated, but still around, and surely seething for revenge. I don’t have answers to these questions, yet. Have to let it stew, brew, and marinate away in the back of my head. Time will tell. 😉
END.
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