there is an inn between the worlds;
there is an inn at the end of all worlds;
the future Buddha lived many lives before he was born as Gautama;
Jesus fulfills the Law and the Prophets;
Muhammad is the Seal of the Prophets.
See The Value of Fantasy.
In the Worlds' End Inn, a man has heard of centaurs - as myths - and a centaur has heard of telephones - but does not think that there is one in the Inn. Different worldviews meet in the Inn.
But they also meet in our conversations. I am able not only to read these five narratives but also to converse with people who live conceptually inside three of them.
Poul Anderson's fiction prepares us for the diversity of the world that we inhabit. In the inn between the worlds, Valeria Matucheck meets a man for whom Hamlet was a historical figure...
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
There were other men who claimed to be prophets after Mohammed, which means denying he was the "seal of the prophets." Such as the founder of the Bahai religion (I can't remember his name), or Joseph Smith, who founded the Mormon religion. And there were other "prophets" as well, both real and fictional.
In THE DAY OF THEIR RETURN we see a false prophet in the future deliberately manipulated into believing he was a prophet. Whereas, of course, poor Jaan had his mind telepathically "adjusted" by Aycharaych as a tool to be used for shattering the Terran Empire.
And Robert Heinlein, in REVOLT IN 2100, showed an America ruled by religious dictatorship founded by Nehemiah Scudder as the first of a line of "prophets."
Sean
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