After Abtacha posted a comment on the release date question of
Cold Days I browsed around
jimbutcheronline.com a bit (as I hadn't been there in a while) and noticed the below (old) comment from Jim and thought it interesting enough to re-post here.
Quote:
On September 30, 2007 Jim Butcher wrote this (below) on jimbutcheronline.com.
Could J.K. Rowling's World exist within the world of The Dresden Files?
Nah, the very foundations of the story worlds--their magic--are fundamentally incompatible. Potterverse magic is based largely upon the dictates of story drama. It's irrational, capricious, finicky, and generally doesn't make a lot of sense from any rational perspective. (Flick your wand like THIS not like THAT and say the word like THIS and not like THAT and it works.) Magic is a force unto itself, a law unto itself, and while it /does/ operate with absolute fidelity and consistency within the story world, it's beholden to no one.
Dresden universe magic is modeled more closely upon physics. Magic still has to pay attention to fundamental universal laws--such as "matter and energy can neither be created nor destroyed, only rearranged." The energy for all those magical effects has to come from somewhere. There ain't no free lunch.
For instance, you could fly someone on a broom in the Dresden universe, but you'd have to be providing the same kind of kinetic energy you'd see from one of those James Bond rocket packs that they fly into the Superbowl from time to time--IE, a buttload. (Those packs are good for about twenty or twenty five seconds of flight, if I remember correctly, and that's it.) In the Potter universe, dozens of children who know next to nothing about magic can gad about on brooms in the afternoon for fun and recreation, and no one thinks anything of it. There's a foundational difference in the approach to how magic interacts with reality.
And yeah, Voldemort wouldn't have graduated high school in the Dresden universe. Once Tom Riddle started playing with the evil juju, someone in a grey cloak would have shown up to whack off his head and nipped him in the bud.
Unless, of course, someone more highly placed in the Council intervened on Riddle's behalf, and maybe gave the kid a little more guidance and maybe even a chance to choose a different path. Then, who knows.
Old Tom might up and do something else entirely with all that potentially-dark talent. >
Jim
|
