Patrick asked L.E. Modesitt Jr.:

Hello Mr. Modesitt and thank you for doing this Q&A. Where did you get your original idea for a system of magic based on Order/Chaos? And how do you decide what the interaction of the two looks like to each character?

L.E. Modesitt Jr. I was looking for a unique and logical basis for a magic system, and I wondered why in so much of folk magic that iron was a barrier or protection against magic. Then I recalled my rather basic astronomy, and the fact that certain classes of suns go nova as the result of the build-up or iron in their core because iron fusion is an endothermic reaction that takes energy, rather than creates it, which in turn cools the solar core, causing it to contract and the outer layers to collapse.

In short, iron is an energy sink, and it could easily become a magic sink. From that I roughly equated the structure of matter to order, and entropy to chaos... and one thing led to another.

I've always wondered whether I really see what you see. This isn't a simple or stupid questions. For some time, scientists have known that most women see a wider range of colors in the blue-green spectrum than do men, but while they've determined that people can "identify" and differentiate various wavelengths, that doesn't mean that our brains necessarily interpret them in the same fashion.

Based on that... I thought mages might just see order and chaos differently.

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