Posted by Kromey at 3:24pm Nov 2 '07See [private]'s thread below if you don't know what NaNoWriMo is.
Anyway, my story is primarily a sci-fi setting, but there are elements of fantasy that are central to the plot, the Oracle and Prophecy being chief among them.
We've just met a group of magic-users (they call themselves Evocators and as a group are the Hand of Prophecy, although we don't know that yet), and we've seen them stop time (actually, bring it to an imperceptible crawl, although technically they accelerated themselves and Gunnar to the point that everything else seems to have stopped - picture Hammy drinking the energy drink at the end of Over the Hedge - but the end result is the same), summon spheres of light to destroy machines, and teleport (or maybe just turned invisible and walked away? or maybe manipulated the time-stop thing so that from Gunnar's point of view they only seemed to disappear?).
In this setting, magic is fairly common but is only practiced in secret - with the exceptions of the Oracle and of Prophecy, the general populace is completely oblivious to the existence of magic.
So, what I need: Some explanation for the source of these and similar powers that would be plausible in a soft-to-hard sci-fi setting (soft sci-fi doesn't attempt to explain its technology; hard sci-fi seeks to ground everything in terms of current scientific understanding and theories, albeit with some extrapolations of what may be discovered in the future). It doesn't need to be scientifically sound, just plausible. I don't want to just say "It's quantum mechanics, foo!" either - that's such an over-used cop-out these days - I want to have a more full explanation (a specific application of an aspect of quantum mechanics would be acceptable). Again, though, it doesn't need to be scientifically sound, just plausible within a predominantly sci-fi setting.
Anyway, my story is primarily a sci-fi setting, but there are elements of fantasy that are central to the plot, the Oracle and Prophecy being chief among them.
We've just met a group of magic-users (they call themselves Evocators and as a group are the Hand of Prophecy, although we don't know that yet), and we've seen them stop time (actually, bring it to an imperceptible crawl, although technically they accelerated themselves and Gunnar to the point that everything else seems to have stopped - picture Hammy drinking the energy drink at the end of Over the Hedge - but the end result is the same), summon spheres of light to destroy machines, and teleport (or maybe just turned invisible and walked away? or maybe manipulated the time-stop thing so that from Gunnar's point of view they only seemed to disappear?).
In this setting, magic is fairly common but is only practiced in secret - with the exceptions of the Oracle and of Prophecy, the general populace is completely oblivious to the existence of magic.
So, what I need: Some explanation for the source of these and similar powers that would be plausible in a soft-to-hard sci-fi setting (soft sci-fi doesn't attempt to explain its technology; hard sci-fi seeks to ground everything in terms of current scientific understanding and theories, albeit with some extrapolations of what may be discovered in the future). It doesn't need to be scientifically sound, just plausible. I don't want to just say "It's quantum mechanics, foo!" either - that's such an over-used cop-out these days - I want to have a more full explanation (a specific application of an aspect of quantum mechanics would be acceptable). Again, though, it doesn't need to be scientifically sound, just plausible within a predominantly sci-fi setting.
Help me out with my nanovel! - Kromey