Is a reality storm possible in that multiverse?
Is the temporal displacement of Nantucket a consequence of such a storm?
Or is it instead caused by the same powerful intelligent beings that terraformed Mars and Venus in another universe?
Can natural laws differ between universes?
If so, could they change within a single universe?
Is that what happens in the Emberverse series (which I have not read yet)?
This has been an extended comparison of highly imaginative works by Poul Anderson, Neil Gaiman and SM Stirling. We may have exhausted the reality storm concept for the time being but you never know.
The Time Patrol series and the Nantucket Trilogy are sf.
The Sandman is fantasy.
The Old Phoenix Inn links fantasy and sf universes.
As I said recently, the sky is not the limit but the launchpad.
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
I don't think Stirling's alternate universe/timeline stories are all set in the same multiverse. Some series, like the Emberverse and Nantucket stories, do descend from a common origin or splitting off point, however.
If I'm recalling rightly, Poul Anderson speculated in one of his letters to me that natural laws in some alternate universes might be different from each other. E.g, the two OPERATION books.
I don't want to say too much about the Emberverse books, since you have not yet read them, but natural laws on OUR Earth were somehow changed.
And I still wish we could have seen Manuel Argos or Dominic Flandry at the Old Phoenix!
Merry Christmas! Sean
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