How much real-world science from things like biology physics and chemistry should be brought into fantasy worlds?

[TheEldritchGod]

Generally speaking, its not actually possible to write a story where science works in a vastly different way than for reality.

Sounds like a skill issue.

Look, you just need to know your shit. For example, most people accept gravity is a force, however, it could be an emergent property of entropy, or a result of planck tetrahedrons. Magic can be made up of fundamental particles that connect via rings. Each ring could be a series of knots and the number of knots could be an indication of magical complexity. Then you'd have a periodic table of mana.

Bet you didn't know there was a periodic table of knots, did ya?

How does magic make so much shit? Well, if E=MC2, then make mana=thought and thus E=TC3. So you have Energy, Matter, and Thought being interchangable via scientific principles. Also it helps if Time doesn't really exist and is a localized phenomenon plus you should get rid of infinities. "An Infinite Number of Alternate Realities" gets old very quickly.

Of course then you have the problem of Magic creating matter that sometimes exists and sometimes vanishes when the "spell" is over. That's easily solved by including Mirror Matter and Negative Matter into your cosmology.

See, if you want to include "science" in your magic, just go look up real world theories. I mean, there are so many new ones as well as old ones that have "died" that all you have to do is say, "Oh? Light travels through Ether? Huh. Well, I guess then people could breathe Ether as they fly around the galaxy on their magic swords."

If you think "its not actually possible to write a story where science works in a vastly different way than for reality", then you CLEARLY have not read anything published in the 18th or 19th century. That shit is WHACKED and so fun to say, "Okay, let's assume this shit was REAL." Because, TRUST ME, most of the stuff they came up in that time period was straight up magic. What people thought Radioactivity did back then was basically a very dangerous version of New Age Crystal waving BS.

Let's not even get into REAL WORLD quantum Bullshit.

Do you know that sometimes when looking inside a proton, they find extra quarks? Not just virtual quarks, but fun ones, like Charm Quarks. Imagine you go to the store and buy a KitKat bar. As you pulled back the wrapper, you find a full sized watermelon UNDER your KitKat.

That is what finding a Charm quark inside a proton is like.

Seriously. You don't need to change science for a fantasy story.
Science is already frickin' magic.

 

[SternenklarenRitter]

You have me at a disadvantage. This is a skill issue indeed. Theoretically possible, but for most authors prohibitively difficult in implementation. Probably something anyone can do if they are struck with compulsive inspiration, unlimited financial resources, and maybe a personal media research team put together by Harvard. Writing a story where science works completely different may have even been done already. How many plot holes do you need before "science works different" becomes "science does not work"? Is there a length requirement? The goal is a little poorly defined, so only the author themself can be the judge of their success. If someone reading this is set on writing a story where science works completely different, then I can only cheer you on.