World Building And The Potterverse

[Ken Hutchinson]

No: HPFGUIDX 167283

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "Zara" <zgirnius at ...> wrote:
>
> > Ken:
> > Fictional works don't have to be set in
> > any specific year and stories that don't span more than a year can't
> > have some of these issues. But when an author does take the time to
> > mention these details I expect her or him to get them right.
> > 
> 
> zgirnius:
> So Rowling should not have let Nick name the year of his death, in 
> your view. 

Ken:

Actually no, I rather like having the stories set in a specific time
period. It is just that having done that she should have sat down with
a calendar while she plotted out each book. It wouldn't have been
difficult to make the plots match the calendar. In any event a story
that spans seven years cannot have months start on the same day of the
week for several years running no matter what the starting year is.
And every week does have to have seven days. Even in 1582 when Pope
Gregory added 10 *dates* to the calendar to bring the date of the
March Equinox back where he wanted it Friday, October 15 followed
Thursday, October 4, there were seven days in that fateful week!
Rowling is an intelligent and often meticulous woman. Her famous
"inability" to do the "maths" is not an inability at all, it is
laziness. That is what is so grating to me.

Ken


> > Ken:
> > 
> > I suppose I should admit that I just hate time travel stories in
> > general. It is patently obvious to me that it is impossible. Human
> > nature being what it is our "descendents" would be constantly strip
> > mining earlier time periods and generally making human life as we 
> know
> > it impossible if time travel really existed. I am confident that it
> > will never be invented for this reason alone.
> 
> zgirnius:
> Unless you can't really change time. 

Ken:

But then what's the point? You give an example, snipped, of a story in
which someone time travels to change the *future*. But the change was
effected by removing people from the *past*. So really the past was
changed even though the story focuses on what happened upon their
arrival in the future.

If we, or more importantly Dumbledore, truly believe that time travel
changes nothing then Dumbledore should not have sent Harry and
Hermione back in time to "save" Sirius, Buckbeak, and Harry. It was
totally unnecessary if time travel changes nothing. You might as well
rip those pages out of the book if time travel changes nothing.
Hermione apparently really can carry that course load and be in
several classes at once if time travel changes nothing. I just don't
buy it, in real life or in the context of the Potterverse.

Ken

> 
> Ken:
> > Then there is the problem I have with a Harry Potter who is de-
> souled
> > in a dementor attack coming back from the future to save himself. 
> How
> > is that possible? 
> 
> zgirnius:
> It is my opinion that Harry was always saved at the nick of time by 
> his future self, his soul was not sucked out on the pages of the 
> book. Hence, no paradox. 

Ken:

No, it really is a paradox. Harry has no future self if he was
"killed" by dementors some hours previously. Harry's future self
cannot save him from the dementors without creating a paradox. So
either Harry did *not* save himself from the dementors (Snape was
nearby after all and I don't rule out this possibility) or this time
travel episode is whacky. It is the same situation as if Harry were
revealed to be his own father, by means of time travel, Oedipus taken
to absurdity. It's a hoot when Zaphod Beeblebrox claims to be his own
grandfather due to an accident involving a time machine and a condom
but I don't buy it in a story which, though fantasy, is meant to be
taken seriously.

Ken

> 
> Ken:
> > This either requires enormous amounts of energy
> >  
> 
> zgirnius:
> You must therefore have an equally great problem with 
> Transfiguration, Conjuring, Refilling Spells, and a host of other 
> magic we have seen in the books, which also seem to violate the law 
> of conservation of energy. But it seems to me you are judging a 
> fantasy with an SF meterstick. Such impossibilities in SF are 
> explained with a slew of technobabble and reference to novel 
> exceptions to the laws of physics invented by future scientists and 
> the like.
> 
> But not in fantasy. In Tolkien, for example, (my personal gold 
> standard for fantasy worldbuilding...) there are beings of great 
> magical power who can conjure flames, cause fordable rivers to turn 
> into raging floods, and the like, and the only explanation we have of 
> this is that they are Maiar or High Elves who once lived in the 
> presence of the Valar in the Uttermost West. This is very nice and 
> poetic and mythic, but seems to me, from a scientific point of view, 
> to be logically equivalent to "Harry can Apparate because he is a 
> wizard". 
>

Ken:

You are absolutely right about other feats of magic requiring
prodigious amounts of energy. I got somewhat off track I suppose, the
energy requirements are a general problem I have with time travel
stories but they are not unusual in the Potterverse. I know of *some*
time travel authors who address the moving Earth problem with time
travel stories but I don't know of *any* who address the energy
problem, except I suppose that Rowling actually has since we have to
believe that similar amounts of energy are available in order to
explain some of the other magical accomplishments that we see. Point
conceded.
 
Tolkien does not have this problem either since the Maiar, good or
bad, are what we would call angels and are able to tap the power of
God. The high elves have been trained to do that by the Valar.

> 
> zgirnius:
> That last was not intended as a criticism or defense of Rowling at 
> all. It was in response to the prediction you made, that someone else 
> would someday publish a work of fiction about the Potterverse, 
> because that fictional world's flaws just beg for correction and 
> someone will be unable to resist.
> 
> I was just stating a personal preference. As a reader (and writer of 
> fan fiction) I am far more tempted by works about characters in the 
> Potterverse about whom we have limited information owing to the 
> constraints of time and point-of-view that Rowling chose for herself. 

Ken:

I didn't realize that this was the point you were trying to make but
it is certainly valid for you and many others. I am sure that there
are SF writers who are driven by a fascination with the bones that go
into the stew as Tolkien put it. If none living take the Potterverse
on as a project I am certain that some to come will.

Ken