Thursday 4 November 2021

Poul Anderson's Cosmologies

In War Of The Gods, Odin is hanged on Yggdrasil.

In Operation Luna, Virginia Matuchek consults Mimir at the roots of Yggdrasil.

In A Midsummer Tempest, Valeria Matuchek visits the Old Phoenix Inn between universes.

In "House Rule," Nicholas van Rijn visits the Old Phoenix.

In "Flight to Forever," a time machine traverses the circle of time.

In Tau Zero, a relativistic spaceship time dilates into the next cycle of an oscillating universe.

In The Avatar, the oldest intelligences in this universe survive into new universes.

In Starfarers, the universe began in a quantum fluctuation.

In the Harvest Of Stars Tetralogy and Genesis, there are plans for consciousness to survive the heat death of the universe.

Observations
Multiple cosmologies.
Some interact.
There is a (very) indirect link between Odin and van Rijn.

3 comments:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

And, to be less solemn, I also thought of that parody in the style of the Eddas, composed by Poul Anderson and one of his friends, called "The Childish Edda." Some of its verses were quoted by Anderson for OPERATION LUNA.

Ad astra! Sean

S.M. Stirling said...

Note that the pagan religions were very localized, and didn't have written scriptures; therefore local stories differed sharply.

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Mr. Stirling!

That is true, altho I thought the Egyptians came close to having "scriptures" of their own, because of texts like THE BOOK OF THE DEAD, plus some of their wisdom literature.

Ad astra! Sean