Conceptual Universes

We exist in a common physical universe but in different conceptual universes. I say that I learn from the consequences of past actions whereas a theist might say that God teaches us about the consequences of actions. What a theist calls his experience of God I have to call his experience of life, theistically interpreted. With some, not all, theists, it is possible to converse.

Poul Anderson sympathetically treats characters with different world views. Adzel, the Wodenite convert to Mahayana Buddhism, and Axor, the Wodenite convert to Jerusalem Catholicism, live in different periods of the Technic History but might meet in the Old Phoenix - or in Axor's idea of a hereafter.

Anderson also shows us the responses of characters living in universes where supernaturalist believes are demonstrably true. Contrast Steve Matuchek with the Johannine clergy. (Steve's daughter, Valeria, shows up in the Old Phoenix.)

(The obstacle to hassle-free blogging today has been virus alerts as a result of which this laptop was switched off for a while.)