What's the Name of That Book??? discussion
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SOLVED: Adult Fiction
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SOLVED. Sci-fi: Magical engineering, secret society
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Have you read Walter Jon Williams' Metropolitan Metropolitan? It's got magical engineering so you might like it.
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Andy: Yup, read Metropolitan, and the sequel. Still hoping for a third, the cliffhanger was immense.Lobstergirl: This is an original thread. I was trying to find this story (which I did find, and thus marked it as 'solved', and included the answer).
The backstory to this thread/request was that I'd originally learned about this story via another thread on GR. I included that information, as it was relevant (ie: with a good enough search, or someone who was reading everything in this group would've seen that thread, and thus know which story I was talking about). If you're asking if I found the original thread - no, I did not - but that original thread is not relevant to this request, anymore than a card catalogue or review is to a book that it references. If someone finds it, that's cool - link it up. But no need to search for it.
Justanotherbiblophile wrote: "Still hoping for a third, the cliffhanger was immense."Me too.
I just spent 40+mins doing a search on GR, and I'm 95% positive that I originally found this via a suggestion on here. (ie: Andy, where are you?)
Original suggestion/request was something about magical engineering. What if magic was treated with the rigor of engineering. And someone said, This isn't your book, but someone did do something like this... [linked the story I'm looking for/named it specifically so it was easy to find via google]
Okay, that link sucked up like a whole bunch of my life. Story goes:
PhD student (female) beats off attackers with magic. But stirs up legal debate, because she's one of the most advanced magical students, and this is the first time magic has been used as a weapon (self-defense) - she's in the UK. She's following in her mother's footsteps - trying to move the science of magic forward - because of her mother. Student wants to go to space. Space shuttle that had some of the first magic on it blew up, and her mother did impossible things (view spoiler)[(able to auto-assemble her staff, and fly fast enough to catch(!!) the shuttle, breathe while flying, and was attempting to prevent it from crashing (like, wtf)) (hide spoiler)] when they were watching the disaster unfold, and as far as MC can tell, disappeared or died. But body was never found. Current state of magic is... can be used to cool pipes, complex spells to direct energy (force and heat), which MC has built into her jewelry with ways to use it very quickly.
Lots more happens in this story, and I could recount a *LOT* more (view spoiler)[Secret society of 600 people who were only survivors when real vs. virtual humans fought over the energy output of the sun, and had 1000s of Earth surfaces engineered around the solar system. Giant magical mech battle with nasty human possessing secret sword weapon(s). Aerospace engineering corporation guy. Asides to the first guy to learn about magic in 1970 in India. Magic is a distraction. Teleportation circles that disintegrate. Deep core energy processing platforms. 56,000 year old regeneration/hospital rings of power. Dreamscape for magicians that has nasty demons in it. (hide spoiler)] - but that's the opener. This story was written online, in quite a few different chapters - over quite a space of years. Some of the things didn't make sense when you read it straight-through, but boy was it engrossing.
I read it within the last 2 years, and I think within the last year.