SPOILER: Road to Hell

brnicholas wrote:You are saying that the physical laws can't be too different or people couldn't survive in the other's universe. The problem with that is that the fact that the rifle works differently on New Arcana depending on who is holding it implies that physical laws are not identical within one universe when there are people from two different universes in it. I see no reason to assume that everyone's body is following the same set of physical laws in processing food. If the mind is going to effect any physical laws I would expect it to be those governing how things work within a persons own body.

Nicholas

That rock I was referring to earlier must have hit me on the head, because now I really have a pounding headache.

I am just going to let the subject go until I have access to the full book. One way or the other, it's still a good story.

Don

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PeterZ wrote:Don,

Perhaps the default laws of physics in the multiverse are the same as in our universe. Mental Talents and the magical energies operate in another dimension just as each universe is another dimension. Those psychic and magical energies touch the physical universe through thoughts or even the soul. This assumes thoughts or the soul exists in some other dimension.

So the rifle is prevented from working in Arcana because magical energies that touch and surround humanity interfere with natural chemical reactions of the gun powder. Gadriel ordered the magic about her so that the gun powder worked normally. I suspect enough people who believe Sharonian physics would also order the magical energy sufficiently to enable the natural chemical reaction of gunpowder.

That's Gadriel's fear.

Absent sentients, I suspect that these reactions would occur just as they do in our universe. It is the presence of sentients that disrupt the magical energies and the default physical laws locally.

Forget the rifle for a moment. Remember Gadriel's recalling reports from the first Arcanan explorations that said magic didn't work quite the same in the first universes explored.

Now, reread Gadriel's explanation of how she made the rifle work:

“Jasak,” she gripped one of his hands in both of hers, “Jasak, what I just did—” she gulped. “I just took everything we thought we knew about reality and turned it inside out and upside down and raveled out half the garment we call physics.”

To this, add the way dragons come in for a landing and stop much too suddenly (something Shaylar or Jathmar noticed in one of the first two books), and Gadriel's remark that they don't let recoil "get in the way".

“Not here. Half of what we do on a daily basis wouldn’t work if that was a physical law underlying everything. Heavens above, dragons couldn’t fly if we had to worry about silly things like recoil all the time!.”

The Arcanans magic works in large part because they believe it works, and it overrides physical laws with arcane energy. The Sharonans technology works because they believe in physical laws that can't be altered by will. Both civilization have altered the laws of physics in the universes they've moved into. What Gadriel has realized is that if enough people on Arcana believed what the Sharonans do, magic would cease to work.

At least some of this will be explained in the rest of the series. If sales are good enough, the follow-on series will explain *OUCH*! Damn snerk collar.

At first Saintonge I thought as you do. The Gift and Talents suggests that some people do not influence the world's physics. So while you may be right and I may be crazy, its the ordering of magic that I am looking for(to answer this question).

I just finished the e-arc and it was excellent and the next book cannot come soon enough - we seem to be guaranteed at least 4 in the series and a resolution so one more for sure.

As for magic, talents, universe laws, I am more and more inclined to believe that Arcana is the future, Sharona a side-way and our universe an unopened door; namely, the "magic" field is actually everywhere and there are always some people that can manipulate it (the gifted - which in our universe would correspond to people able to work miracles) and some people that can use it (the talents - or in our universe people with psy powers) but not understand it; once there is a threshold of gifted and magic constructs, the "magic" field (a fundamental feature of the universe) comes to the fore/becomes "manifest" like in Arcana; once talents develop in quantity enough, they become easier to develop (channels are dug through the field so to speak) and we get Sharona - and then obviously when Sharonians get into an universe infused with magic their "channels" get "drag" but once they stay there enough they may become gifted - so for example i predict that in the next book, Shaylar as a powerful Voice in the center of Arcanan magic infused reality, will develop a very strong gift (which will manifest obviously at the right time under tremendous stress and saving an otherwise impossible situation)

our universe on the other hand never had enough gifted (mostly burned at the stake or generally hunted and killed) or talents (scattered and taken as frauds as obviously they wouldn't be fully reliable to start with), so it remained mundane and high tech developed (the magic field once becoming manifest will control energy releases, so for example the gunpowder will work only with "permission" so to speak, which is what Gadrial does when she understands how things translate)

as hinted, there is an unknown power around (not the Mythalans or Chava for sure), so I would say that book 4 will end with a truce (Chava and the Mythalans getting busted at least to some extent in the process) and a sort of "reality exchange" (eg Sharona gets compatible magic, Arcana gets compatible technology), while future volumes if written will deal with the "real" enemy when it materializes (presumably with both magic and tech, so our universe will come into play as noted by DW himself when he was talking about Dragons erupting in Georgia if i remember it right)

Developed worlds in Arcana have magic/power nets but no broadcast information nets. They still require hummers to transmit information. This suggests that they do not broadcast power or information.

I ask because there have been many references to passing information between PCs and between other crystals, like transferring data to a message crystal requires the hummer handler to physically take the crystal to the hummer. Would the crystals have to physically touch to transfer information? Is there a broadcast range that is VERY limited? Is some level of Gift required to transfer data?

Any inability to broadcast information would strike me as a massive limitation on Arcan's ability to exploit their technology.

Many of the analyses proposing that Arcana has military issues relative to Sharona assume tht the Arcanans can only fight with their current weapons ranges, when they have had no reason to deploy weapons having larger ranges. Given customary habits, there is no particular reason to believe that there are not development groups, perhaps in private industry, that having been building prototypes as blue sky projects, on the grounds that if a need appears the profits will be enormous or whatever.

Also, the distances are so enormous that it will be necessary to colonize as well as entrain, if only because the supply situation will otherwise become impossible. At some point all of the coal or gasoline headed downstream goes to moving the locomotives and pumps further downstream. Coal mines do not open overnight and need a large base to sustain.

phillies wrote:Also, the distances are so enormous that it will be necessary to colonize as well as entrain, if only because the supply situation will otherwise become impossible. At some point all of the coal or gasoline headed downstream goes to moving the locomotives and pumps further downstream. Coal mines do not open overnight and need a large base to sustain.

Question, why are all the steam burners designed to use coal/kerosene?

A decently efficient wood burner seems very useful for stuff in the back of beyond. Although in this books offensive the wood smoke would of been a give away and does make it use questionable towards the front. I mean sure, petro fuel is pretty condensed, but it requires way more infrastructure.

Also bets that each of the portals in Hell's Gate ends up intersecting another human civilization? I'm pretty sure our mixed band in the Jungle is going to run into another civilization.

phillies wrote:Also, the distances are so enormous that it will be necessary to colonize as well as entrain, if only because the supply situation will otherwise become impossible. At some point all of the coal or gasoline headed downstream goes to moving the locomotives and pumps further downstream. Coal mines do not open overnight and need a large base to sustain.

A historical example to illustrate your point: in 1944 the allied armies ground to a halt because the weather has turned against them, the supply lines were over extended, and the German forces were regrouping. Some US units had to stop because they ran out of gas.

I do think that perishable food will cause morale problems before fuel to power the supply lines consumes them. Think of the reaction of a unit that has been subsisting on cornbread and beans for 2+ months to getting a shipment of strawberries.

I will go out on a limb and guess that at least one civilization will be advanced and non-human. I can see a magic using cetacean or simian civilization. Perhaps a humanoid civilization descended from the ancestors of gorillas. I can see a civilization where gorillas develop magic and Talents but humans develop only tools and Talents where both are comparable in intelligence but develop their intelligence differently.

That will put a twist in Mythal's tights!

Of course we can have a purely technological society far in advance of our reality but populated by relatives of raccoons with opposable thumbs.

PeterZ wrote:Developed worlds in Arcana have magic/power nets but no broadcast information nets. They still require hummers to transmit information. This suggests that they do not broadcast power or information.

I ask because there have been many references to passing information between PCs and between other crystals, like transferring data to a message crystal requires the hummer handler to physically take the crystal to the hummer. Would the crystals have to physically touch to transfer information? Is there a broadcast range that is VERY limited? Is some level of Gift required to transfer data?

Any inability to broadcast information would strike me as a massive limitation on Arcan's ability to exploit their technology.

Question, have we seen anything with the Sharonians using electricity? just thinking that in this equivalent time period, electric trucks were actually somewhat popular for deliveries, not to mention light rail. Because the telegraph seems like something that's an oh duh for them to speed up transmission times across their more developed routes, since it should be able to go across portals.

The same goes for if a technological society shows up that radio should go across the portal interface. Unless it turns out electricity is one of those things interfered with by the interfaces.

If it's like MWW usually likes to mess with, I'm thinking complex electronics might be where there's tech issues. (With Quantum effects being part of our paradigm, thus stuff like a potential well in a microchip working differently across the multiverse.