Tag: Magic in fiction (soft vs hard)

The butterfly sucks mud water in the gemsbok national park, Kalahari South Africa

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post

Gary Varner
Date
November 22, 2025

Categorized
Science Fiction

Tagged
Magic in fiction (soft vs hard), Time travel (in science fiction)}

How To Write a Time Travel Story That Keeps Making Sense, Part 1

_{Here in Part 5, I offer an approach that allows for time travel without obvious giant plot holes} _{Gary Varner
November 22, 2025

6

Science Fiction}

To keep the story under control, the time machine itself should be a hard system even if the concept of time is soft and pliable.

Time travel in different dimensions. AI generated.

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post

Gary Varner
Date
November 15, 2025

Categorized
Science Fiction

Tagged
Butterfly effect in fiction, Charles Dickens (1812-1870), Christmas Carol (1843), Fate in fiction, Groundhog Day (1993), Magic in fiction (soft vs hard), Michael Crichton (1942‒2008), Terminator franchise and time travel, The Butterfly Effect (2004), Time Machine (book 1895), Time travel (in science fiction), Timeline (movie 2003), Timeline (novel 1999)}

Time Travel in Science Fiction: Now For Some Examples That Work…

_{Here in Part 4, we look at how to make time travel work as either soft or hard magic} _{Gary Varner
November 15, 2025

7

Science Fiction}

Time travel into the future is not as tricky as travel into the past because altering the future does not create so many complex story problems.

Time Travel: How and Why the Terminator Series Worked—Then Didn’t

_{Part 2: Time travel works well enough as a soft magic system but time-travel stories run into problems when it is treated as a hard magic system} _{Gary Varner
November 1, 2025

8

Science Fiction}

Terminator 3 crossed into hard magic territory when it added the concept of fate to time travel, which means that specific rules began to matter.