Choose Your Weapon - Invisibility

 

"Timely, relevant, and genuinely terrifying, Leigh Whannell’s The Invisible Man recontextualizes a classic Universal monster into a modern examination of abuse, toxicity, and gaslighting." - Jeffrey Zhang

What is Invisibility?

Today we are looking at another weapon used in the Fantasy genre: invisibility. Simply stated, it is the state in which you are not seen.

Types of Invisibility

There are myriad ways of being invisible in Speculative Fiction.

Consider Magical rings, cloaks, potions and spells. Or magic conferred by a mythical creature, sorcerer, witch, or perhaps an ancient curse. 

And then there is Psychological, as in mind control, glamours ... your basic smoke and mirrors.

Also, we think of technology, which is seen mostly in SF via things like stealth tech, futuristic camouflage, DNA manipulation and advanced refraction of light.

Now, let's look at how these types of invisibility play out in our history of storytelling.

Early Fiction

Invisibility as a Weapon appears in very early fiction. Think of Hades (the god, not the destination) and his magic-imbibed helm of invisibility. Homer (circa late 8th or early 7th century BC) tells us he wore it when emerging from the underworld. In the light of day, Hades sees us but we don't see him.

Things are complicated with this helm when Perseus borrows it from Athena and uses it to assassinate the sleeping Medusa...

Later, in 1897, HG Wells gave us The Invisible Man, a SF novella about a scientist who turns himself invisible through technology. He uses his chemical inventions to lower the refractive index of a substance to that of air. This makes the substances, ie. his body, invisible to light. Although he intends to use his invention for self-indulgence, he ends up overwhelmed by isolation and falls into a mental spiral of madness and terror.

More Recent Fiction

Along the lines of The Invisible Man, Translucent, an original character from the Amazon series The Boys (not known in the comics series but replacing the alien Jack From Jupiter). Translucent can become invisible and repel bullets with his carbon metamaterial skin. It's pure technology, not magic. Like many, he is known to misuse his superpowers on unsuspecting innocents. He also gets depressed.

Forget-me-nots

Some writers give characters the ability to become so obscure they are forgotten or never noticed. Terry

Pratchett does this in Discworld, a comedic fantasy book where Granny Weatherwax and Tiffany Aching remain visible, but are extremely difficult to notice. The Grey Men in Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time have this skill as well.

This technique appears in the Arcane Ascension, a series by Andrew Rowe. We also see magical objects with similar abilities.   

Oh, and for a more contemporary/mystery/thriller/fantasy, The Sudden Appearance of Hope by Claire North is riveting: "... the tale of a girl no one remembers, yet her story will stay with you forever."

Magical Items

Night Angel by Brent Weeks has a character who is given a magic device that makes him the perfect assassin. Is it a call back to JRR Tolkien's LOTR? Of course, I must mention this cursed/magic ring forged in the Cracks of Doom.

The Crimson Shadow trilogy by RA Salvatore is also an example. Here, the MC has a cloak that grants him invisibility, but when he uses it, it leaves behind a crimson shadow burnt into the ground.

Deals with Devils

In David Eddings' Elenium series, two of the knights, Tynian and Ulath, make a deal with the Troll Gods whereby they can exist in the smallest fraction of every moment, meaning no one can see or hear them yet they can perceive everyone else. The narrator acknowledges this as faulty logic, the explanation being it works because the Troll Gods are so neurologically divergent they think it will work.  So it does.

More recently penned, though set in the 1800s, we meet a young woman who makes a Faustian bargain to live forever but is cursed to be forgotten by everyone she meets. I'm talking about The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue by VE Schwab. Poor Addie can interact with others, but after a while, they forget she ever existed. The psychological repercussions are, at times, devastating. 

Mind Control

In the Books of Raksura by Martha Wells, one of the Queens has the ability to turn off people's awareness of her presence, and she becomes invisible in social and/or action sequences. Of course, we all remember this technique from Star Wars when Obi-Wan uses the Force to 'erase' himself when convenient.

Fun, Fear and Folly

The ability of invisibility can help our beloved characters get through a tough spot, but in most cases, they suffer consequences as a result. From Frodo's stolen ring to Rosette in the Quantum Enchantment series who uses a glamour to hide herself from danger, the actions come with a price. They hear something they shouldn't. They see an unforgettable horror. Or they are exposed unexpectedly, at the worst possible moment.

Invisibility is undeniably a powerful weapon, but would it be your first choice?

Let us know in the comments!

xx Kim

Choose Your Weapon Series 2024

Poison

The Perfect Storm

The Sword

Firearms

Ranged

Spells

Unarmed

Curses

Time Travel

Invisibility

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About Kim Falconer

Kim Falconer, writing also as AK Wilder, has released Crown of Bones, a YA Epic Fantasy with Curse of Shadows as book 2 in the series. Currently, she is working on the third book, out in 2025.

Kim can be found on AKWilder Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and KimFalconer.com. 

Throw the bones, read your horoscopes or Raise Your Phantom on the AKWilder.com site See you there!

Seers in Storytelling

Seers, psychics, oracles, mediums, prophets, diviners, astrologers, tarot readers, or even those with a smoking hot intuition, can play a powerful roles in speculative fiction. Our genre is rich with it, and has been for thousands of years.

From Homer's Pythia, priestess of Apollo, to Tolkien's Galadriel and her mirror, the Oracle in the Matrix to Whedon's River Tam in Firefly, the seer can move the story forward in tantalising ways. But writing a prognostic character has it's problems. All that foresight may just as easily ruin a plot as empower it.

If your protagonist can see into the future, the surprise is gone. 

The easy way to remedy this is to place limits, making the seer unreliable. They might be a novice, out of control, or their skill could require a ritual, tools or equipment they don't always have time for. Like the Greek sphinx, they might speak in riddles so ambiguous that no one can understand, save in hindsight

With the Oracle of Delphi, often the  urge to avoid the fate was exactly what fulfilled it. When King Laius and Queen Epicaste of Thebes had a baby boy, they asked Pythia his future. When the Priestess replied that the boy, Oedipus, would  kill his father and marry his mother, they abandoned the baby, but we know how that went...

In LOTR, Galadriel's mirror shows past, present and future events, from near or far, but is never clear on which is which. Both Sam and Frodo are invited to look, Sam seeing the destruction of the Shire and Frodo nearly touching the water with the ring (which would reveal his whereabouts to Sauron). In these cases, interpretation of what is foretold is critical to what comes next. Sam choses to stay with Frodo, even though he longs to rush back to the Shire. Frodo, on the brink of losing heart, soldiers on. Regardless of 'fate,' they make a choice, one of the key ingredients to plot propulsion.

From the Matrix, the Oracle's ability to "predict" the future is based on recognising choices before they are made. Yet telling Neo he is NOT the one is precisely what makes him begin to believe he is. In this way, the writers have created a character who can see the future but in doing so, creates a third choice that changes everything. 

In Cassandra Clare's City of Bones, if the tarot reader was on the ball, Clary's mother wouldn't have been kidnapped and the Mortal Cup never lost. Story over in chapter one. But instead, we get glimpses, hints and more mystery. Dorthea's seeing ability moves the story forward , without giving away the plot.

In Helen Lowe's The Wall of Night Series, the Derai prophecy says "If Night falls, all fall", which instead of foreshadowing future events, becomes a rally cry, or goad, to both sides, those who want Night to fall and those who don't. It's also a touchstone for Malian and Tarathan who have seer qualities of there own.

In the Quantum Enchantment and Quantum Encryption series, Jarrod's ability to extrapolate a likely outcome is based on infinite possibilities calculated outside of matter, and Kreshkali's understanding of astrology and synchronicity all play a part. But, like the Oracle of Delphi, Derai, and the Matrix, all seers perhaps, it is the free will of the characters that tips the scale. And we need it that way.

Otherwise, what would have us on the edge of the seat, wondering what will happen next? 

We'd love to hear about your favourite prophesies and diviners in books, film and TV. Drop a comment, and we'll see you there.

xxKim

Kim Falconer's latest release is out now - The Blood in the Beginning - and Ava Sykes Novel.

Learn more about Kim on Facebook and chat with her on Twitter. Check out her pen name, @a.k.wilder on Instagram, or visitAKWilder on FB and website.

Kim also runs GoodVibeAstrology.com where she teaches the law of attraction and astrology. 

Kim posts here at the Supernatural Underground on the 16th of every month, hosts Save the Day Writer's Community on FB and posts a daily astrology weather report on Facebook.