I love this essay because I've loved spending countless hours discussing this exact thing with you!
I recently brought up in a class about AI and Ethics that I thought Minority Report felt more deeply entrenched in fantasy so as to take the more realistic, fearful element of technology - government - control, and make the basis of it someone's psyche. The following movie (Minority Report 2?), I believe is about the siblings who can predict crime, except they're out in the world instead of in a vat. There's a more mystical element to this that almost clouds the dystopian fears we have around things EXACTLY what Minority Report shows.
Plus, I feel the need to point out that for Mistborn, the magic system develops the way our science has developed too! You see the elementary use of metals in the first series, with enough dabbling in some experimentation. The following series (set in the Wild West) shows a more complicated version of the magic we're already familiar with, due to social and technological change over centuries. I think the third series in the Mistborn saga is meant to be set up as a space exploration; completely believable and also just so cool for a fantasy author to do.
I did NOT know there was a sequel to Minority Report what the hell??
Brandon Sanderson does such an excellent job of making the magic in his world feel like the forces of nature we feel and know in our everyday life. There's a reliability to them that makes them feel natural, but also an epicness to them that make them feel fantastic. On top of all that, he ties the systems so naturally to the thematic question of each of his stories that the whole book, the whole trilogy, feels like it has always been leading to the same conclusion. It's truly stunning.
I love this essay because I've loved spending countless hours discussing this exact thing with you!
I recently brought up in a class about AI and Ethics that I thought Minority Report felt more deeply entrenched in fantasy so as to take the more realistic, fearful element of technology - government - control, and make the basis of it someone's psyche. The following movie (Minority Report 2?), I believe is about the siblings who can predict crime, except they're out in the world instead of in a vat. There's a more mystical element to this that almost clouds the dystopian fears we have around things EXACTLY what Minority Report shows.
Plus, I feel the need to point out that for Mistborn, the magic system develops the way our science has developed too! You see the elementary use of metals in the first series, with enough dabbling in some experimentation. The following series (set in the Wild West) shows a more complicated version of the magic we're already familiar with, due to social and technological change over centuries. I think the third series in the Mistborn saga is meant to be set up as a space exploration; completely believable and also just so cool for a fantasy author to do.
I did NOT know there was a sequel to Minority Report what the hell??
Brandon Sanderson does such an excellent job of making the magic in his world feel like the forces of nature we feel and know in our everyday life. There's a reliability to them that makes them feel natural, but also an epicness to them that make them feel fantastic. On top of all that, he ties the systems so naturally to the thematic question of each of his stories that the whole book, the whole trilogy, feels like it has always been leading to the same conclusion. It's truly stunning.