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Multiverse/AUs in the cosmere


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Do we think that Brandon could go into multiverse or alternate universe shenanigans in the cosmere? He's already did some playing around with that concept, and with metals in Allomancy showing potentially alternate universe versions of people of they made different choices (assuming it's not showing their past and future which I don't think we really know for a fact?), there's a precedent for it being a possibility 

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Long story short, no.

Spoiler

kdt05b
Can Megan manifest a Cosmere reality? The Reckoners is not part of the Cosmere, but one of they main character's power is reaching into alternate dimensions. I want to see some epics on Roshar!

Brandon Sanderson
I wanted to avoid multi-verse theory type things in the Cosmere, in part because the Wheel of Time delved into these concepts, and even before working on the WoT was looking for ways to keep the Cosmere distinctive from it.
Beyond that, multiverses (along with time travel) really play havoc with continuity. I felt the cosmere was stronger if I kept to the three Realms--that's complex enough. Assume that in the cosmere, while different possible futures/pasts do branch (and can be seen) things like Allomantic gold are NOT looking at other realities--and there is only one reality, once events actually occur.
This does mean that time travel into the past is not going to be a factor in the cosmere.
This separation does let me divide these concepts off and play with them in other realms (like the Reckoners) where they're 'quarantined' so to speak.

https://wob.coppermind.net/events/361/#e11215

Spoiler

WeiryWriter
Does Snapshot take place on the Reckoners' Earth, or one of the other Core Possibilities? (Based on the reading you did I would assume the latter, but it doesn't hurt to get confirmation on that).

Brandon Sanderson
It's one of the Other Core Possibilities.
The idea of going meta-series with Reckoners is to offer me the chance to play with quantum possibilities and alternate dimensions, which is something to cosmere's not set up to do. We'll see how big this one gets, but I'm fond of silver age comics, and the idea of alternate realities they explored. (Often in goofy ways because...well, silver age.) This also gives me a realm to do some magic, like the Epic powers, that I can hand-wave a little more, rather than confining everything to the structure of the cosmere.

https://wob.coppermind.net/events/131/#e9227

 

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Well, there's always fanfiction for that; It wouldn't be hard to come up with a reasonably plausible method of making a multiverse work for fic purposes. Heck, there's another WoB where Brandon admits that if you realllllly want to you could imagine it happening (Reckoners spoilers in the link) so you could make a crossover of it and get your AU that way.

But yeah, canonically it's not happening and neither is time travel.

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100% In-world logic/Theory:

Forgery appears to support the idea of quantifiable Alternate Timelines, given that the effectiveness and the amount of Investiture required varies based on how far from "true" the revision is.  However, only the present shared Truth/Timeline is actually manifested as an existence with a Cognitive and Physical Realm, using and as a result of the sum total of  Investiture in the Cosmere.  Emitting a complete, functioning set of Realms would, I think, take a matching amount of Investiture to the Cosmere itself.  This would take all the Investiture of Adonalsium that was shattered, PLUS all the Investiture that was tied up in the Cosmere's functioning existence back in his time (which probably matches what's floating about today, hard to say).

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4 hours ago, Quantus said:

100% In-world logic/Theory:

Forgery appears to support the idea of quantifiable Alternate Timelines, given that the effectiveness and the amount of Investiture required varies based on how far from "true" the revision is.  However, only the present shared Truth/Timeline is actually manifested as an existence with a Cognitive and Physical Realm, using and as a result of the sum total of  Investiture in the Cosmere.  Emitting a complete, functioning set of Realms would, I think, take a matching amount of Investiture to the Cosmere itself.  This would take all the Investiture of Adonalsium that was shattered, PLUS all the Investiture that was tied up in the Cosmere's functioning existence back in his time (which probably matches what's floating about today, hard to say).

So basically, what you're saying is, we need to clone God. :P

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8 hours ago, Spren of Kindness said:

The Christian side of me says 'oh no, that won't go well', and the writer/reader side of me says 'as you do, now let's break the space time continuum!'

Although to go back in time properly, you still need infinite energy.

Or rather, to move normal, positive mass through space faster than light, you need infinite energy.

If mass could have imaginary values (square root of -1 kind of imaginary) then it would take infinite energy to make it go SLOWER than lightspeed. Those particles are the slightly famous Tachyons from sci-fi like the Tachyon Transmitter for FTL communication systems.

If you could have mass with negative values, you could make a stable wormhole. Then just use relativity to speed up one opening close to lightspeed for a while, and the 2 ends desync temporally, and thus you can go backwards in time through the wormhole.

If you could move a patch of space faster than light, with positive mass sitting inside it at rest, then you could move mass from point A to point B faster than light. (Alcubierre warp drive)

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