Time Travel

[AshBorn she/her]

Is time traveling something that happens in the Cosmere? Or are Worldhoppers immortal/can expand their life. Also, is there a chronological list to read the Cosmere books with dates and everything?

[Weltall]

Here's a list of all the books (including major planned but unwritten works) and their rough timeline, for some details.

As far as time travel goes, we've seen multiple characters make use of time dilation whereby they don't actually experience all of the years they've been alive in absolute terms and so live longer than they should be able to. We know from Word of Brandon that Marasi (or any Pulser) with a sufficient supply of cadmium could also push themselves a good way into the future with just their powers. However, it and all other methods of 'time travel' we've seen are a stricly one-way process moving foward, not backwards. Brandon has conflicting WoBs on this (which may be the result of paraphrasing more than any inconsistency on his part) but he's answered pretty definitively on occasion that travel into the past is not happening and we shouldn't expect to see any serious time travel shenanigans in the Cosmere. Other WoBs are more open ended and have said that nobody has figured out how to do it, but that one is pretty definitive and it's verbatim.

Now, time 'travel' via the Spiritual Realm is something else entirely and is definitely possible without violating anything Brandon has said. We see a form of it in Mistborn with A-Gold and A-Malatium showing you the past and in Warbreaker Lightsong had a vision of a key event from the Manywar centuries before. Someone able to peek into the Spiritual might be able to 'see' the past but they couldn't bodily travel there and affect things. We also see some screwy things with Syl and Kaladin's bond manifesting before the relevant Physical events happened. Kaladin's spear proficiency and Syl taking the form of Shallan at the beach (well before the latter first met the former two) are illustrative of how the Spiritual Realm can be brain-breaking.

For the worldhoppers, there's a method that most of the Seventeenth Shard uses (Demoux included) which greatly slows the aging process but doesn't stop it. Brandon has said that there are many methods, this just happens to be one of them. Other ways we know it can be done include attaining the Fifth Heightening (stops aging completely). compounded atium (which has an upper limit and is noted to be inefficient) and becoming Invested enough that you become a Cognitive Shadow upon death, then figure out a way to reconnect to the Physical Realm ('The Sovereign'). And then there's naturally immortal (or at least very long-lived) peoples like the Siah and Dysian Aimians, the kandra and dragons.

Edited June 9, 2018 by Weltall

[RShara she/her]

There's time travel into the future/time dialation, and that's how some worldhoppers have lived so long. There are also a lot of ways to actually manage immortality in the Cosmere.

 

For Chrological, publication order works. All his books were published in order of chronology until Mistborn Era 2 and White Sand.  There's a reading order chart floating around here somewhere too. This is what the Coppermind lists

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A rough chronological ordering of current cosmere works is:

• White Sand^[182]
• Elantris and The Hope of Elantris
• The Emperor's Soul^[183]
• Mistborn Era 1
• Warbreaker^[184]
• Shadows for Silence in the Forests of Hell^[185][186]
• The Stormlight Archive
• Mistborn Era 2^[162][187]
• Arcanum Unbounded essays^[188]
• Sixth of the Dusk, which is in the age of Era 4 Mistborn books, the science fiction trilogy^[189]

(Beware of following the links, there are spoilers!)

[Zelly]

Brandon talks about some types of "immortals" here:

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Iceblade44

So White Sand [than Elantris] is earlier... Then how the heck old is Kriss then? Will we ever get an answer as to why every worldhopper is flipin immortal?

Brandon Sanderson

There is some time-dialation going on. I'll explain it eventually; we're almost to the point where I can start talking about that. Suffice it to say that there's a mix of both actual slowing of the aging process and relative time going on, depending on the individual. Very few are actually immortal.

Faera

Implying that some are actually immortal?

Brandon Sanderson

Depends on which definition of immortal you mean.

Doesn't age, but can be killed by conventional means. (You've seen some of these in the cosmere, but I'll leave you to discuss who.)

Heals from wounds, but still ages. (Knights Radiant with Stormlight are like this.)

Reborn when killed. (The Heralds.)

Doesn't age and can heal, but dependent upon magic to stay this way, and so have distinct weakness to be exploited. (The Lord Ruler, among others.)

Hive beings who are constantly losing individual members, but maintaining a persistent personality spread across all of them, immortal in that as long as too much of the hive isn't wiped out, the personality can persist. (The sleepless.)

Bits of sapient magic, eternal and endless, though the personality can be "destroyed" in specific ways. (Seons. Spren. Nightblood. Cognitive Shadows, like a certain character from Scadrial.)

Shards (Really just a supercharged version of the previous category.)

And then, of course, there's Hoid. I'm not going to say which category, if any, he's in.

Some of these blend together--the Heralds, for example, are technically a variety of cognitive shadow. I'm not saying each of these categories above are distinct, intended to be the end-all definitions. They're off the cuff groupings I made to explain a point: immortality is a theme of the cosmere works--which, at their core, are experiments on what happens when men are given the power of deity.

Shagomir

Heals from wounds, but still ages.

Would Bloodmaker Ferrings exist in this category as well? If not, what about someone compounding Gold?

Brandon Sanderson

Yes, you are correct.

Shagomir

As a Bloodmaker ages what keeps them from healing the damage and carrying on as a very old, but very healthy person? Do they come to a point where they can't store enough health to stave off the aches, pains, diseases, and other things that come with old age?

This makes sense for traditional Feruchemy as it is end-neutral, so storing health becomes a zero sum game - eventually, you're going to get sick and you're not going to be able to overcome it with your natural healing ability no matter how much you manipulate it with a goldmind.

...Unless you've got a supply of Identity-less goldminds lying around. Would a Bloodmaker with a sufficient source of identity-less goldminds (or the ability to compound, thus bypassing the end-neutral part of Feruchemy) eventually just die from being too old?

Brandon Sanderson

Basically, yes. They can heal their body to match their spiritual ideal, but some things (like some genetic diseases, and age-related illnesses) are seen as part of the ideal. Depends on several factors.

source

Also have a link to my favorite cosmere overarching timeline link, with lots of potential spoilers.