Thursday, 12 June 2025

Usual

What is "usual"? What we are used to which can be very different from what someone else is used to. 

Two fictional examples, the second from Poul Anderson:

(i) In a DC comic, a supervillain had found himself on a very peculiar parallel Earth where no one had gained any superpowers so that the only place to read about superpowered beings was not in the newspapers but in comic books. Another supervillain commented that that seemed unlikely and it was unlikely, to them.

(ii) In Poul Anderson's Operation Luna, Einstein and Planck cooperated to originate neither relativity nor quantum mechanics but rheatics, then Mossley degaussed the effects of cold iron, thus releasing goetic forces which we call "magic." Therefore, among many other consequences, it is usual to cross the Atlantic not in an airliner but on a flying carpet. I kid you not. 

Inhabitants of those parallels would find our everyday circumstances highly unusual. 

1 comment:

Sean M Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

And that makes me wonder how far physics could go if most scientists in the OPERATION universe focused on "goetics." Probably stay at about the level reached in our 1890?

Ad astra! Sean