Preliminary Mailbag #135

I’ll have a full mailbag for you later on Monday, but I wanted to quickly address something from the newsletter that went out earlier today.

Just a short email to let you know that Derren Brown's Notes From a Fellow Traveller contains an effect basically identical to Key Flightless, down to the idea of throwing a similar sounding / looking metallic object.—ND

Now, I don’t think anyone assumes I lifted something from a book by our most prominent practitione that was released just a couple of years ago, but I wanted to say a few words about it, if only to acknowledge that I’m aware of the similarity.

I own Notes From a Fellow Traveller, but I haven’t read it yet. I ordered it when it came out, but before it even arrived, people were already messaging me to say it sounded like something I’d write.

And honestly, hearing that made me not want to read it—at least while I’m still actively doing this site. I don’t want to be influenced by things that are too similar to my own approach.

The method for the trick I described in the newsletter came together back in 2020, through an email exchange with Steve Thompson (creator of Flite). That conversation was sparked by Marc Kerstein sending him a segment from this post, where I first started toying with the idea of doing Ring Flight with a key.

[One of the other things discussed in that exchange was a version where their key appears on your keyring, and your key appears on theirs. And the method actually seems pretty workable. I’ll let you know if anything ever comes of that.]

To be clear, I’m not trying to claim ownership of the concept. I doubt I was the first person to think of doing Ring Flight with keys. And throwing a coin somewhere unreachable has long been a classic way to “vanish” a ring in routines like this.

I just wanted to note that if you enjoyed the idea from the newsletter, you should check out Derren’s book. I imagine his version is conceptually far more layered. While my premise was a straightforward magical transformation—your house key turning into theirs—Derren’s version apparently involves a forgotten previous reality, which sounds fascinating.

Okay… maybe I’ll finally go read that part now.