Eh . . . hmm. Okay, this is just speaking from personal preference, but there are a LOT of problems with your hypothetical magician. We'll start here:
1) Until Columbus in 1492, people thought the world was flat.
2) People thought Europe was the only land there was until Marco Polo (1200's), and then they knew only about Asia. In fact, one reason Marco Polo traveled over land when water would have been faster was [see #1].
3) Where, exactly, did your magician come by this knowledge? Seeing an empty land in a seeing stone doesn't mean he knows its location, and even being a magician would not tell him that the earth is round.
4) Even granted that he *did* somehow know the world was round, and also that America existed, is he really such a moron that he automatically assumes there are no people in this land who would be able to put Excalibur back together and wield it? Pretty stupid magician, to not think of something like that.
If you want to suspend disbelief, I'd go with something like he knows the world is round, but doesn't know about America, and so he drops it on the other side of the world believing it will go into the sea and be swallowed by a sea serpent or something. The premise as it stands is kind of thin, and suspension-of-disbelief in the real world is a much trickier thing than suspension-of-disbelief in, say, Middle Earth.
I'd think through your basic premise and tweak it before you worry about anything else. I mean, the idea is pretty cool, I just think you need to rethink how you're doing it.
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2008-10-09 07:52 pm (UTC)1) Until Columbus in 1492, people thought the world was flat.
2) People thought Europe was the only land there was until Marco Polo (1200's), and then they knew only about Asia. In fact, one reason Marco Polo traveled over land when water would have been faster was [see #1].
3) Where, exactly, did your magician come by this knowledge? Seeing an empty land in a seeing stone doesn't mean he knows its location, and even being a magician would not tell him that the earth is round.
4) Even granted that he *did* somehow know the world was round, and also that America existed, is he really such a moron that he automatically assumes there are no people in this land who would be able to put Excalibur back together and wield it? Pretty stupid magician, to not think of something like that.
If you want to suspend disbelief, I'd go with something like he knows the world is round, but doesn't know about America, and so he drops it on the other side of the world believing it will go into the sea and be swallowed by a sea serpent or something. The premise as it stands is kind of thin, and suspension-of-disbelief in the real world is a much trickier thing than suspension-of-disbelief in, say, Middle Earth.
I'd think through your basic premise and tweak it before you worry about anything else. I mean, the idea is pretty cool, I just think you need to rethink how you're doing it.