Fiscal Fantasy

One of the central conceits of my novel Three Parts Dead is that, in the world in which the novel takes place, money as we think of it doesn’t exist.  Magic does.  Money, if you think about it, is essentially a system of points people use to obtain things they desire: a farmer tills a field, and she gets paid because people want to eat.  A journalist writes an article, he gets paid because people want to know the news of the world.  An engineer invents a new valve, she gets paid because people don’t want their fuel system to explode.  The same relationship holds in Three Parts Dead.  Create a thing someone wants, and they will give pieces of their intangible selves, the spiritual essence they have cultivated and accumulated by creativity and sweat and long study, in trade for it.

Money and mystic might are very similar to one another: they’re both fungible resources freely convertible into goods or services.  In modern life, both even have a certain moral taint associated with them.  Like a dark magus, people often think an executive with billions of dollars in the bank must have done something morally questionable in his (or her) struggle attain that point, though they might not know what, and certainly no one would dare accuse either magus or billionaire of malfeasance to their face (or skull-like visage, as the case may be).

In Three Parts Dead, like in real life, most people just use their power to satisfy immediate desires, because that’s all they know how to do.  Some people, tradesmen, invest their power in pacts and partnerships to acquire even more power.  Apart from both are the Craftsmen, who learn the rules that underlie thaumaturgical manipulation and are called upon to fix problems when they arise.  Tara, the main character of Three Parts Dead, is an apprentice Craftswoman.

The analogy extends further; I intend to write a short sequence of posts talking about the way this system looks and feels, and sketching out the way I’ve tried to reflect it in the world I’ve built in and around the city of Alt Coulumb.  Comments appreciated!