Wizard Space Program

Self-Published

Community Rating

Description

Vaughan is a middle-aged wizard who is about to have a wonderfully terrible idea to go as far up as he can. As he and his band of misfits will soon discover, having magic does not make the cold hard science of space travel any less dangerous. Major Editors:Shilic, Pink Mann,Guldringr, VoidTemplar2000, Sarge, Ebony Sable Updates monthly (currently). Published in several other locations, but the home area ismy site.Which leads to everything else relevant. -GM, master of SPAAAACE

Information

Status: Ongoing
Year: 2021
Author: GMSteward

Royal Road Stats

Rating: 4.6/ 5.0
Followers: 871
Views: 272,642

What readers say about Wizard Space Program

“Wizard Space Program is one of the most fun and creative stories I've read with lots of fun characters, interesting fantasy concepts and a great story. The style is good and understandable. The story is very fun and starts of off with our four protagonists…”
Astral CrystalRoyal Road5.0 / 5
“I decided I loved this just by reading the first two chapters. Under normal conditions, need a much larger sample to decide, but ok, wow. After reading more, all I can add is its getting better! Not your cup of tea if you would like to only read about singl…”
Dr SpamelotRoyal Road5.0 / 5

Reviews

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Community Reviews(9)

Astral CrystalRoyal Road
★★★★★ 5.0
Wizard Space Program is one of the most fun and creative stories I've read with lots of fun characters, interesting fantasy concepts and a great story.
The style is good and understandable.
The story is very fun and starts of off with our four protagonists making their own space program for fun. This is handled very well and it's one of the best parts of the story. As the story goes along the plot gets tied up with an increasing amount of world and continent changing events and I believe the space program will become increasingly more involved as the story goes on. There are shemes, conspiracies and lots of shenanigans going on in this world. There's also character development and serious moments throughout the story which help add to the characters. The worldbuilding is one of the most original I've seen with lots of interesting concepts such as the magic crystals, the plastic people and what I think are robots. At first the rules of the world seem pretty straightforward with the magic crystals but the story has been adding more powers seemingly unrelated to them. Personally the only part I wasn't too interested with story wise was when one of the characters ends up in a different environment and the story spends a good couple characters on this which is totally fine but I preferred the other parts, not that the part is bad or anything just not my cup of tea.
The grammar is great I don't remember seeing any errors.
The characters are very funny and charming each with their own distinct characteristics. Our main characters are lovable and charming and I always root for their success and happiness throughout their attemps to get to space and they also get character development. The side characters are also very charming and likeable with interesting backgrounds and personalities. Although something I'd like to mention is that every single character expect for like one is completely serious, every character has some serious moments but they all also have an inherent g
Dr SpamelotRoyal Road
★★★★★ 5.0
I decided I loved this just by reading the first two chapters. Under normal conditions, need a much larger sample to decide, but ok, wow.
After reading more, all I can add is its getting better!
Not your cup of tea if you would like to only read about single MC killing everything into submission through being OP.
I did not expect this. A cross between Pratchet and vsauce. If you don't know what either is, drop what you are doing and go look them up.
Imho Wizard Space Program is a really ambitious project that takes a lot of effort and talent to continue on its quirky science heavy though balanced with humor approach. [I think if it continues it will become exceptional. I only hope it does.]
...It does continue! There is now a plot behind the weirdness, the party has currently split, and there has been a lot of world building....
As a bonus, there is serious science at the end of each chapter for anyone who cares:) Some of it is simple, but can start an inquiring mind to some interesting Google /wikipedia topics. Othertimes, it is not that simple. However most often it is quite interesting and even exposes a few currently open questions.
If you think that going to the moon would be simple using *magic*, consider again. Even being indestructible and immortal, you are likely to perish. Consider for a moment how unbelievably huge space distances are, how incredibly fast celestial objects are moving and how easy missing your target is. I am not even going to consider the plannets, even their image is off by (millions of kilometers?) from what we see because of the speed of light:).
RaucanumRoyal Road
★★★★★ 5.0
A well-paced, fun story about fantasy aerospace engineering. If you're a sucker for exposition about crafting magical devices, it's great. There's some combat for flavor, but the master wizard put murderhoboing behind long before he set his sights upward. Most conflict is driven by the engineering challenges or the simple drama of different personalities.
The writing is solid and purposeful, and I haven't noticed any mistakes. There's more of a focus on explaining what the characters are creating than on describing the setting in vivid detail, but it works by using relatively well established fantasy tropes-- we can all imagine a wizard with a colorful hat or a unicorn.
The characters feel like they have complex pasts and motivations that haven't been fully revealed yet, but it's easy to feel each of their unique motivations towards reaching space. Each team member contributes unique skills, and the story makes you appreciate how large projects require many people working together.
The story already has a satisfying climax to the first arc, and I'm sure will only get more fun as they develop more complex spaceship designs. Surely a magical world's moon will have some magical alien life? How will the larger world react to this invention?
SinfiniteRoyal Road
★★★★★ 5.0
So far so good, I've read 4 chapters and I felt it was time to write a review. The tale of man getting to the moon is one of the epics of modern history, and I love how this author recreates it with a twist of magic. The author has a physics degree, so u can rest assured that the rocket science in the story makes sense. Each chapter is nice and long too with lengthy explanations into the science by the author. Some stuff you may know, and some stuff you may not. Anyways I'll keep forging on and give this story a highly recommended.
fcojocaruRoyal Road
★★★★★ 5.0
One of the ( if not the ) best works I have seen so far. I put it on the same level with The Science of Discworld while being both original and standalone.
I love everything about it so far.
Only bad side is it got me start playing Kerball again.
Thank you!
Quantum1000Royal Road
★★★★★ 5.0
A unicorn, a cat, and a human team up to build a moon 'rocket' in a shed, and along the way discover temperature, air, calculus, the power of friendship, and unfathomably powerful magic beings. Starting from this unbeatable premise, the story somehow goes above and beyond, presenting deep characters with rich pasts slowly throughout the story, all in a well-realized magical and alien world, which sometimes generates suprisingly nuanced international intrigue. This can be slightly annoying, in the end nothing captured my attention like the eponymous wizard space program, but usually these diversions end up being interesting enough that I don't have a problem, and you could reasonably read the novel without any interest in wizards going to space and have a good time. My one minor worry is that many worldbuilding details look like they're building towards a twist I have never seen executed well and tends to have unfortunate implications,
namely, it seems very likely that the magic is clarke-tech which was involved in a global apocalypes
but that's probably a nitpick on my end that most people won't have problems with.
Kalle4421Royal Road
★★★★★ 4.5
So , i think the overall "first arc" was very good, i read this for a fun time with strange wizardy stuff, so i didnt really like the whole giant cube , strange mind controll , and everything in the middle, but i think overall just a fun time reading and if you dont like a storyline you can just skip it, thanks to the clear distinctions, so there wasnt really a problem for me.
Overall good story, fun, although i didnt like the more "epic adventure fantasy book" part, and mainly focused on weird wizards flying to space.
Not_A_HatRoyal Road
★★★★ 4.0
Or: How I learned to stop worrying and love the Bear.
This reads, at least to me, kinda like a big crossover fanfic, where the author pulled in a bunch of characters they liked and set them all questing together.
Don't get me wrong, it's plenty fun - but I sometimes have trouble focusing on the plot when the character quirks draw so much attention. In many stories the characters are too flat, but here it's opposite: they're exaggerated to nearly cartoonish levels. It does work, but it kinda clashes with the plot when things get serious. (The sourdough twins are the worst offenders, imo. Just how seriously are we supposed to take them?)
And things sometimes do get serious. There's rather more and deeper plot than I expected. I anticipated just enough conflict to hang exposition on, but there's not only a background political / religious conflict with at least three players, there's also hints at a deeply buried myth arc dealing with the lost history of an unknown cataclysm, both of which happen to directly impinge on the space program in their own ways.
All in all, it's fun, if a bit muddled. The pacing is kinda jumpy; the plot lurches a bit as it shifts from physics research to small town troubles to kingdom destroying plagues and back, but it's at least all relevant.
Read this if: you like colorful characters and world building enough to sit through short physics lessons. OR, you like physics explorations enough to sit through magical politics and religion. OR, you like magical intrigue and history enough to put up with a wacky cast of oddball caricatures to get it.
Or, you know, you like all three. Then definitely read it.
sohexRoyal Road
★★★★ 4.0
I really enjoy the concept of this story, wizard and crew want to go to space. That's a wonderful premise. The general manner of its execution is fine too, I'd expect such a story to be fairly heavy on exposition and the nitty gritty so to speak. Where we start to run into trouble is more so around the characters and some choices with regards to how the aforementioned exposition is presented. The grammar of the story is fine, I didn't notice any obvious issues with it or typos.
With regards to the characters I feel like they're all lacking a bit of texture. With the exception of one character who's deliberately styled as being distinctly otherwise all of the characters are incredibly similar. If you were to give me this story except with all the characters substituted as one individual's inner monologue I don't think it would sound much off at all. By and large the characters appear to be quite emotionless to me, the rare occasion of emotionality being presented is always done in broad strokes rather than with a fine brush as well.
There is one character that's written as being distinctly different than the others, but even then they fall victim to the same faults. Their motivation is quite lacking as presented and their whole situation comes across as incredibly unrealistic to me. Regardless of their past circumstances the manner in which they react to the way that the story develops regarding them just isn't sensible. (Leaving aside issues around the portrayal of language reacquisition.)
The style of the story as a whole seems to suffer from similar issues as the characters. At least to me it just comes off as a bit bland. I also have issues with the inline (foot?)notes and the afterwords. If you aren't going put a footnote at the end of the page there's no reason to mark it out as a footnote, it should just be part of the narrative. If you do want it set aside from the narrative then it shouldn't be set inside it. More importantly though these things should actua