Features of All Cosmologies

          Features of All Cosmologies

          An Observer Effect, documented

·       The “Just-So-Story” Origin myth

·       The Incredible Journey

·       The Large Foreground

·       The End Foreseen

·       The Annoying Counter-Evidence

The “Just-So Story” Origin Myth

There’s always an explanation for the beginning, but the explanation never makes sense. But why should it? That was then; it wasn’t like now. And if the explanation made sense, then it too would need an explanation, and not be the origin.

The Incredible Journey

That was then, this is now, and the two times differed. Now things are known and fixed; then nothing was; so for each fixed thing there had to be a passage from vague to sharp.

The Large Foreground

Sharp is easier to see than vague; now is more present than then; so our tale tells more of here and now than of there and then.

The End Foreseen

The future has you and I at its center. It ends in glory; but that glory is somewhat indefinite; for if you could define it, then you could ask, ‘what then?’, and it would not be the end.

The Annoying Counter-Evidence

This is insignificant and irrelevant, until it isn’t.

Underfable: World Spin

          World Spin

          Once upon a time, a Materialist grown to Godhood grew weary of the weird chaotic uncertainty of his Universe. So he built Constructors, and he powered them up, and he said unto them,

          “Access Ultraspace, and from that data-flow create a Universe. May that Universe be a regular, orderly, logical material Machine, intelligently designed for its intelligently-designed inhabitants. Enact this plan within Budget.”

          And lo! The Constructors let there be Light; and they separated Light from Darkness; and from these they built crystal spheres, each within the next, bristling with stars and planets and Sun and Moon and epicycles; and at the center Earth. On Earth the Constructors devised plants and animals and human beings; and they taught those human beings fire and speech and writing and agriculture; and then the Constructors withdrew to Ultraspace.

          Millennia passed on that world. One day, a Mystic grown to Enlightenment grew weary of the dull clockwork predictability of her Universe. So she evoked Angels, and she blessed them, and she said unto them,

          “Tap into the Great Chi, and from that energy create a Universe. May that Universe be a wild, free, powerful mystic Mind, and may it evolve, by chance and necessity, inspired inhabitants.  Make this miracle beyond Belief.”

          And lo! The Angels sparked a Singularity; and they inflated it into a Universe; and they gathered its gas and dust into galaxies and stars and planets. One of those septillions of planets was Earth; on which life evolved by variation and natural selection. Human beings evolved; they invented civilization, which produced the Materialist.

The Materialist inspected his monitor, and the Mystic her crystal ball. Both, astonished, saw that the loop had closed. They had created each other’s worlds, and within those worlds, each other.

          Moral: Spin makes the world go ’round.

Hsin Ku and Quads: 3 of 3

 Science-fictional hsinku and quads

Science, myth and fantasy

Future joy and sorrow;

Dreamer, come enchant me

With life beyond tomorrow.

Don’t take time trip!

Push days into spin

Make just tiny slip

You’d ain’t even been.

This book make slip;

They don’t show rite

That move that ship

More fast than lite.

“This plug,” says punk

(make such huge deal)

“fill head with junk

That ain’t even real.”

Just what does Zugs

From afar star hurl

With eyes like bug’s

Want with Urth girl?

“We come in peace,”

The green man said.

“Came we for war

You’d all be dead.”

Said robot to man

“You low human slob!

Behold my evil plan;

I’ll take your job!”

Build cities in space?

It doesn’t seem fair

Pay owners of place

Food, rent – and air.

“What is true reality?

Computer, say the word!”

It answered with finality,

“Your question is absurd.”

“I seek your boss,”

The star man sings.

“That is your loss;

We have no kings.”

Why read science fantasy

Mostly thud and blunder?

I seek marvels, mystery,

Vision, sense of wonder.