Babel Clash

Doubting fence-sitters? What? I say we shoot one in ten. Pour encourager les autres.

Here’s the thing about The Magicians. I grew up reading the Narnia books. Also Tolkien, Piers Anthony, Ursula Le Guin, Anne McAffrey, Fritz Leiber, TH White, Norton Juster, etc. etc. etc. Just like you did. And when I was a kid I thought my life was actually going to be like that: exciting, heroic, epic, happy. Etc. etc.

Then I grew up. I kept on reading those books — well, not Piers Anthony, but the ones that held up. But funnily enough my life — spoiler alert! — was not like that. It wasn’t spectacularly bad, it was just a regular life — college, school, jobs, all the rest of it. Then it did start to get, if not spectacularly bad, then pretty sub-par. Not-so-good job. Unsuccessful marriage. In 2004 I got very depressed.

And I started writing a book like those Narnia books I loved. And, yes, like Harry Potter, of whom I’m also a fan (this was in the gap between Order of the Phoenix and Half-Blood Prince). But I folded in all that annoying complicated stuff about the real world that I was in the process of getting my nose rubbed in in real life — alcohol, sex, alienation, boredom, confusion, horror, disappointment, lousy apartments, all the rest of it. Without losing the magic school, and the spellcasting duels, and the demons, and the portals to another world. So the book became a young adult story but retold by an adult, with everything adults know about the real world.

Not that it’s depressing and dreary. It’s a fantasy novel, with all the fighting and adventures and whatnot left in. And it’s certainly not “let’s give up Narnia because we’re grownups now and we have to.” It’s more just, everything’s more complicated than we expected.

OK, now who are we shooting? Let’s go alphabetical.

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