Diversity And Entropy

Continuing to reread Tim Powers' The Anubis Gates, we find that this novel is mostly neither sf in general nor time travel in particular but fantasy. Gods exist. Magic works. To become the nineteenth century poet, William Ashbless, whose photograph he has seen, Brendan Doyle must not only time travel but also switch bodies by means of a magic potion. Of course, Powers' fantasy, like his time travel, parallels works by Poul Anderson although a completely different set of works by Anderson. The latter writer's distinguishing features include his vast output, his consistent combination of quality with quantity and his comprehensiveness. Whereas many other authors specialize in hard sf, alternative histories, fantasy, historical fiction or detective fiction, Anderson wrote all of these although some more than others.

It is unthinkable that time travel would intrude in a heroic fantasy like The Broken Sword or that magic would work in the Time Patrol series although characters from the different kinds of universes can meet in the Old Phoenix Inn between universes. How much might the real universe (or multiverse) encompass? A lot, although mothing like what has been imagined. Scientists have had to discover the laws of motion, the electromagnetic spectrum, biological evolution, sub-atomic particles, the strong and weak nuclear forces, quantum mechanics, mass-energy equivalence, relativity including the light speed limit, other galaxies, cosmic expansion, curvature of space, black holes, dark matter and dark energy in a universe where consciousness is not (like gravity etc) a fundamental force of nature but instead is a by-product of natural selection within temporary, local, negative entropy. This real universe is the setting of Poul Anderson's hard sf, including his Technic History where civilizations are entropic. In Norse mythology, which Anderson celebrated, the conflicting but interacting forces of heat and cold are basic whereas consciousness, including deity, is emergent. The entropic and Norse universes come together when an explorer of a globular cluster at the far edge of another spiral arm remembers the myth of fire and ice. See:

Cloud Universe And Ginnungagap.