Monday 7 July 2014

Multiverse: Second Impressions

Greg Bear and Gardner Dozois, Editors, Multiverse: Exploring Poul Anderson's Worlds (Burton, MI, 2014).

Rather than read through from cover to cover, I am trying to get an overview. The fictional works include:

3 Time Patrol stories;
3 Technic History stories;
2 stories set on the planet Roland in the Rustum future history;
1 Operation... story;
1 Holger Danske story plus another somehow connected;
2 others?

"The Far End" by Larry Niven wrongly locates Nicholas van Rijn and the Polesotechnic League in the timeline guarded by the Time Patrol. I do not understand:

how Manse Everard can be a name that a Danellian used for a while;
how, with the apprehension of the last Exaltationist, time "now" becomes stabilized or frozen so that there are no more quantum effects, emergencies, choices or need for a Time Patrol (pp. 314-315).

My understanding is that, in that timeline, whenever someone who has traveled, e.g., from 2014 to 1914 sets out to return to 2014, it is possible that he will arrive in a 2014 that has been altered either by the pre-2014 activities of a time traveler or by space-time-energy randomness.

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