Remember that "Star of the Sea" was published after The Shield Of Time.
Until "The Year of the Ransom," past events could be changed only by time travelers. In "The Year of the Ransom," 3 November 1885, it is suggested, although not yet demonstrated, that such events could change themselves. The text states that:
conditional reality is like a pattern of waves on the surface of a sea;
there is "...ultimate underlying quantum chaos..." (ibid.);
if the probability-waves change their rhythm, then one tracery of ripples and foam-swirls is abruptly transformed into a different tracery.
I have tried to paraphrase rather than to quote but also to preserve Anderson's imagery with the result that my attempted paraphrase is more of a direct quotation than it ought to be. I hope that blog readers will also read Anderson's text so that they can see what I mean.
The word, "abruptly," and the phrase, "transformed into another," are in Anderson's text. These are temporal terms. If one state, or "tracery," is transformed into another, then there is a relationship between a state changed from and a state changed to. That is a temporal relationship of before and after: the second temporal dimension that is implicit in all such discussion so we should make it explicit. We already know that we will die/cease to exist/come to an end in the first temporal dimension. Why should it concern us that we might also cease to exist in the second temporal dimension? We will still have existed. We exist now. ("Now" means the moment in which I am speaking or writing, irrespective of how many temporal dimensions there are.)
The idea of temporal quantum changes is present in different ways in "The Year of the Ransom," The Shield Of Time and "Star of the Sea" and I meant to discuss its development through these three stages when I began this post but maybe tomorrow? The subject shows every sign of being endless.
No comments:
Post a Comment