The Kirkasanters believe that they have travelled between continua. A man called Vandange on the frontier planet, Serieve, thinks that this is impossible. Daven Laure says, of Vandange:
"'He really gets indignant. Says the notion of interspace-time transference is mathematically absurd. I don't have quite his faith in mathematics, myself...'" (p. 717)
The Kirkasanters turn out to have travelled from a different part of the same continuum inhabited by Vandange, Laure etc. However, Laure's lack of absolute faith in mathematics opens a possibility and in fact we know, from other works by Anderson, that:
Nicholas van Rijn lived in a period earlier than Vandange and Laure;
van Rijn visited the inter-cosmic inn, the Old Phoenix;
other guests in the Old Phoenix included travellers from universes where gods exist, magic works, there is a hereafter etc.
Of course, Anderson does not compromise the hard sf genre of "Starfog" by mentioning any of this within the text of this story.
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
Vandange's attitude seems rather odd, even unscientific. Physicists and other scientists of the Commonalty should know, or have rediscovered, the theories and speculations about alternate worlds or parallel universes derived from quantum mechanics. He would have been on sounder ground if Vandange had stressed no evidence had ever been found of it being possible to physically transfer from one alternate reality to another.
Ad astra! Sean
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