Hell is believed to be a postmortem state administered by incorporeal demons. However, in Poul Anderson's Operation Chaos, corporeal, and mortal, organisms called demons inhabit a "hell universe" which is an entire low energy/high entropy physical cosmos with dark stars and chaotically orbiting planets - although surely random orbits would require more energy than Newtonian ones? Demons, when summoned, make an inter-cosmic transition from one particular planet in the hell universe to Earth. Similarly, human beings can travel bodily from Earth to the surface of a hellish planet - always the same one?
Just as Steve Matuchek, the narrator of Operation Chaos, was a werewolf, Anibal Vargas, the narrator of Eric Flint's sequel, is a small were-dinosaur. He and his traveling companion, Sophia Loren (not that one), find their way to the top of a great pit which she recognizes as a Mayan hereafter or at least as a close analog to it. This suggests that Flint's version of Hell is not a planet in another universe but a composite projection of human beliefs. See here.
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
Well, I don't think the highest (or lowest?) ranking demons in the OPERATION books, such as the Adversary, have such limits. These demons probably could probably appear in any universe they wished by an act of will. The Adversary, and others like him, would be truly supernatural beings.
Ad astra! Sean
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