Master of the Five Magics
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Secret of the Sixth Magic
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Riddle of the Seven Realms
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Lyndon Hardy's Website
fantasy with a dash of science
Master of the Five Magics
Order from:
Secret of the Sixth Magic
Order from:
Riddle of the Seven Realms
Order from:
Congratulations!
I loved Master of the Five Magics back when I first read it in the 80s. So happy all three books are now in Kindle format!
I loved all three books and took the first book m as a satire on the various types of physicists (experimental, theorectical) and chemists. Was that your intent?
Paul, you are right that the magics are associated with sciences in our world.
Thamaturgy – physics
Amchemy – chemistry
Magic – mathematics
Psychology – sorcery
Wizardry has no correspondence
My intent was not satire,however. Now, I do not believe in magic in the slightest, but the underlying concept of MFM was that back in primitive times on another world the laws of magic were discovered and the technology of civilization was built upon them. Our sciences got stiffled. In our world it was the other way around. So to me, the magics are substitutes not satires.
:yndon,
thank you for taking the time to reply.
At the time my guess was Wizardry was university politics with
– funding permeates ALL
– Ivory tower dominance or submission
But it didn’t fit as well as the others, so I am glad to know it was not your intent.
I also wandered whether you were also talking abut economics and the gold standard
regards Paul
I am so happy to see these back in print. Thank you for bringing an old favorite back in a new edition. This was an instant purchase as soon as I saw it available!
David, thanks for the comment. There have been some (small) changes. I hope you like them.
Lyndon Hardy
Thank you; just … thanks!
My physical copies were destroyed beyond readability (mainly just age–mine were already used when I obtained them–but also much thumbing of pages), so I am really looking forward to reading these again to remind myself whether they are as good as I remember.
David
Thanks for the kind words. If you elect to get ahold of the ebook versions, they might last a bit longer.
Lyndon
What are the nature of the changes in the 2nd editions?
Hi Keith
Thanks for asking the question. Before publishing the 2nd edition, I did go back and re-edit the first edition texts. Here is the summary of the changes.
MFM: Added explict back story chapter for Alodar. Expanded the final confrontation with Elezar, the prince of demons in the conclusion. Made minor edits along the way.
SSM: Changed the background of the protagonist to be a scribe who is suffering from writer’s block rather than a frustrated misfit. Made minor edits along the way.
RSM: Edited the explanation of the two competing realms making moves on an hexagonal grid. Hopefully made the struggle more clear. Made minor edits along the way.
For all three, redid the author’s afterward, added a glossary of perhaps unfamiliar terms with urls to wikeipedia entries for more explanation, added easy links to other books in the Magic by the Numbers series.
Hope this helps.
Lyndon
Thanks Dr. Hardy, that’s really interesting. I’ll have to check out all the 2nd editions.
I’ve just purchased the Kindle version of the 2nd edition Master of the Five Magics and began my 4th or 5th reread in anticipation of moving on to the most recent three books. I noticed the chapters in part one are scrambled in a different order than in the first edition. Is this a side effect of the ebook format? Or an intentional change to break up the narrative structure? It was a bit confusing at first until I could put the pieces in sequence.
Hi Chuck
Sorry for taking so long to get to this to you. But I think that I have fixed the problem and instruced Amazon to alert everyone who had purchased Secret of the Sixth Magic that they can download a version with the scramble fixed. If this has not happened, please let me know and I will send you a corrected version directly.
You do not have to do anything more about this, but if you are so inclined, I would really appreciate a “review” on the Amazon website for the page that states that the error has been corrected.
You can get to the review page directly by clicking on:
https://www.amazon.com/review/create-review?asin=B08MMLXT7Y
regards
Lyndon