William Holz

Are we 100% sure David Bowie hasn't just moved into another dimension and isn't slowly populating it?

Yay, we've almost killed 2016! AND I'm now officially the Chief of Robot Operations at a small startup making something really cool! (My real job pays more, but the title just can't compete)

When I read the title I thought maybe people here had gone a bit over the top and started writing fan fiction about Brandon. *whew*

Or one that points in both directions!

I DO! Well, several, but I'm trying to narrow it down a bit. What I REALLY want to do is spend a week theorycrafting with him. Love that dude's brain.

So much this. I thought she was a nuanced, complicated character that made quite a bit of sense. She's in WAY over her (or anyone's) head and her being cautious about what she communicates is pretty in-character. Kaladan seemed a bit overly anti-lighteyes there for a while and it seemed like he was a bit slow to grow up, which for a while made him one of the few characters Sanderson's created that I thought felt more controlled by the needs of the story than his own persona.

But has he said definitively the Earth is not the origin of the Cosmere? Every answer I can find is either. 1) The Recokers isn't part of the Cosmere (which I totally buy, though the end of Calamity makes me wonder occasionally) 2) The Earth isn't IN the Cosmere. Which, if I had nuked the Earth to make Cosmere, are pretty much what I'd be saying too while being completely honest and direct. The Earth and Cosmere couldn't exist simultaneously at all in fact. Is there an answer anywhere that says definitively that Hoid was never on Earth for example? I've been looking all day (and looked a bunch a while ago) and can't find a thing that hits the question directly.

This is one of the best headcanons I've read in months. Mind if I steal it in my brain? Great minds think alike (and so do we!) Oh, I've read all the quotes on the topic I could find. And so far every one sounds EXACTLY like what I'd say if I didn't want to reveal that a shattered Earth was the origins of the Cosmere and our home is long gone. Not saying I'm right...but I haven't seen him say anything that firmly contradicts that, and a few things that hint at there having been an Earth sometime in the past (especially Shinovar!) It is! And I may be WAY off. In fact I honestly doubt that the Reckoners universe is connected at all, that's more idle speculation on my part. But it's FUN speculation. Besides, I'm the sort of guy who makes up deliberately wrong theories when I decide something lets me down. Instead of pretending the Midi-chlorians don't exist, I make them awesome and turn 'a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away' into a warning. I fake-think the Game of Thrones takes place on the ruins of the Forest Moon of Endor and Battlestar Galactica is the last humans fleeing the Star Wars galaxy after the Droid Revolution (because they're jerks to droids! OMG!). Sometimes deliberately disrespecting the creators and letting their creations take on a life of their own is far more fun, right? But with the Exodus/Earth/Cosmere bit, I'm actually thinking Sanderson might be very clever and a teensey bit devious.

As somebody who is very into biology, that level of convergent evolution doesn't make sense. Sure, it works for a lazy author, but Sanderson has shown that he's capable of creating things that don't specifically reference Earth with little effort. And why reference them in such detail? And AFTER creating things like the chull, yet on the same world? Chickens weren't previously associated with Yolen, were they? Sure, I could see other authors being that lazy, but not Sanderson. And I'm still not seeing anything close to 'validation' other than 'I can rationalize this'. I see a LOT more that contradicts the 'there never was an Earth' theory than I do that contradicts the 'Exodus' one.

I don't find that very convincing. Brandon has demonstrated that he's fully capable of creating animals that are clearly NOT Earth-related. It looks more like he's deliberately planting seeds to me, especially with how specific some of the references are. I haven't seen a statement that 'there is no connection', just that one is not 'in' the other. That doesn't preclude the Cosmere being the result of some cataclysmic event on Earth and the things that sound like they're from Earth actually being from Earth. Also, as I mentioned... So, I'm not saying 'It can only be the Reckoners!' (In fact if not for Obliteration and the proto-shards I'd not go there) I'm saying ... 1) It very much appears there was an exodus from Earth 2a) Technically, there are a number of scenarios that spawn from the events at the end of Calamity that could create that exodus. 2b) If not, given Brandon's history, it seems likely that something interesting happened to the Earth. 3) (supplemental) There are a number of interesting (and even science-based) ways for the Cosmere to exist that either involve it being very distantly shifted in time or (I think more interestingly, as it allows for the creation of Realmatic theory) existing in a different substrate than the one we exist on (something like Benford's Etsy)

Oh! Yeah! Sorry! It's NOT a super-solid link and I honestly don't think it's the sort of thing to lay a theory on...but in Arcanum Unbounded in one of the follow-up sections Brandon talks about some of his personal origins for Hoid...which was actually pretty delightful. He always imagined him as a 'person behind the scenes' in movies and such. (I think that says some kind of cool things about Brandon honestly) Alone honestly I don't think it's that meaningful, but when you factor in a bunch of other Earth-like things (anachronistic things in Mistborn as well as that lovely picture, Alodin describing something very much like a lion, chickens and strawberries in Shinovar, and so on) it points to some sort of...I don't know, migration maybe? (That's how Raymond Feist did it in the Mistwar books). Then when you tie the two together with the fact that Hoid was present at the sundering, and that does kind of hint that maybe Hoid was on Earth before he was in the Cosmere. Tenuous and hints, but interesting and fun. (And JUST as interesting if there's no Reckoners connection, but given that they have 'mini' shards already and Obliteration's one idea away from a cataclysmic event, it's intriguing to see if that connects, right?)

I'm not seeing much of a weakness for Obliteration, and he's potentially got the ability to ramp his power up to 12. Up until now he only 'charged up' by hanging out and getting a tan. But in Calamity he had his first visit to space (AFAIK). If it occurs to him to teleport closer to the sun (even if it's just for little 'blinks') then we're potentially looking at literally Earth-shattering levels of power. Mind you, damaging the Earth too much would be just as bad for him as everyone else, but that's kind of his mission now, isn't it?

This is REALLY well thought out! You put a lot of work into this, sir!

That is delightfully wrong. I very much hope this is true. err...fantasy-true, you know what I mean.

It's not an 'at all costs' thing, it's just playing with breadcrumbs. We have humans, we have some intriguingly Earth-like references, we have Hoid having (in Brandon's mind) origins on the Earth, AND we have a place that by all appearances is millennia in the future of an Earth-like society. You hit the point where it's at least as logical, if not more so, for the Cosmere to be the result of something that happened to the Earth in a distant past (even if not the 'Recokners' universe) This one actually makes the whole 'big Apocalypse' bit make MORE sense to me, not lest. The Reckoners takes place in our own system and Quantum Theory is dominant. The Cosmere then becomes something not in our reality at all (at least not from the standpoint of time working the way it does to us), and instead becomes something isolated in spacetime one way or another. It's not subject to Quantum Theory and instead is a created reality from the memories of the galaxy we existed in before things went wrong. You have a number of 'remnants' of people combining their reality and their imaginings with their dreams and the realities of where they are and you could easily end up with something precisely as weird as the Cosmere. Again, just having fun theorizing...but that's what this joint is for, right?

What about a whole lot of time? [Spoilers form Calamity below]

Wouldn't that also be effectively true if Yolen was the planet in the Cosmere on which humans arrived from Earth? That seems to still satisfy Brandon's comments.

This is just begging for a proper timeline, isn't it? And the whole BSG-journey-to-Earth makes a great bridge! That'd put Blade Runner on not-Earth though...which might not work as well, there's lots of pretty Earth distinct things there. Oooh...and the Prisoner and Terminator bits are kind of genius. I've never really thought about either!

This was sort of an independent project up until recently, but there are so many great theorizers and thing-connectors here that I was wondering if some others might want to help create something richer and/or join in the fun. In a way this kind of started when I was a wee lad. I always thought the simulation theory was fun to play with and have half-jokingly referred to our creator as 'Player One', a fourth-dimensional geek girl with a great new life simulation game. This resulted in me adding 'layers' to things that can live together comfortably but look completely differently from different perspectives...things like ghosts actually being Rogue AIs and such. A few years back I was complaining about the Midi-chlorians (because...who doesn't, right?) and a friend challenged me to come up with a way to make them not suck...a challenge I started off grudgingly accepting but eventually really dove into with some zeal. Having recently become semi-obsessed with microbiology in general and RNA World in particular (Because wow...the tiny little machines that live inside cells that encode what are basically the first AIs (NIs?) are kind of mind-blowing) it wasn't that hard to make Midi-chlorians kind of cool...mix in a little Cordyceps for mind control, weave in a mechanic to give them the 'force' abilities (Dark Energy is the clock and Dark Matter is the code that runs the universe, and they just are more naturally able to interface with it than we are) and suddenly The Force isn't something mystical OR bugs, it's a plague that manipulates their hosts into fighting and turns 'A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away' into a warning. Fast forwarding a little, I articled that whole thing up and it became a little hit (Secrets of Star Wars and the End of Everything), and then I started doing it every time somebody's movie or other form of entertainment did something to disappoint me. It allowed me to keep my neurons going and add a layer of enjoyment to an experience that would normally cause me to put my hands over my metaphorical ears and go 'LALALALALA'. It saved Interstellar for me (it works beautifully as the other half of 'The Others') and even got me past the part of Arrival that bothered the heck out of me (Maybe it's not a magical time-travel language at all!) This has me wondering...can we have fun connecting ALL OF THE THINGS? Can Battlestar Galactica be in the Star Wars galaxy, and the result of the inevitable droid revolution? (because seriously, they treat their droids like crap!) Was Westworld the training program for Cylons? Are the Dilithium Crystals in Star Trek powered by the trapped souls of the murdered originals when a copy is made for transportation? Is the original Star Trek really in the future? Or is that just William Shatner with dementia? Are the Highlanders just Force Ghosts that escaped here? What are our Midi-chlorian equivalents? (I call them Linden Folk in Innermore, but that was just an arbitrary choice) Are they the source of magic? Does Game of Thrones take place on the ruins of the Forest Moon of Endor? (that would explain a strange amount of things) And so on. I think there's a big fun opportunity to try to weave something coherent together and then start writing the stories that connect them all. It's a project I'll be doing either way, but I thought it might be really fun to make it a team effort! -Will

Hi everyone! Forgive me if this has been discussed already, I couldn't find it in the recent discussions and while there were a couple that mentioned Earth in context I didn't see any that focused on how Earth is the possible/likely origin of all we see in the Cosmere. (Disclaimer, it's early and my Google-fu tends to improve as the day wears on) Now, I'm pretty new to Sanderson's work but I LOVE the way he approaches things and while I'm quite definitely not a writer of his caliber, I sense a bit of a kindred spirit when it comes to world design. And that has me wondering something... Brandon has a habit that I particularly enjoy...create a world with a well thought out integrated rule system, fast forward a little bit, and then break the poor little dear and play in the wreckage. I was just reading the Arcanum Unbounded and one of his side notes on the origins of Hoid got me thinking a bit more seriously about how the Earth may be the seed of the Cosmere. I know it's been said that The Reckoners doesn't take place in the Cosmere, but I wonder if that's perhaps a bit of a red herring. I could easily see a thought process that results in the destruction of the Earth in the Reckoners also creating the seeds for what eventually becomes the Cosmere. Earth post-Calamity is in an interesting place and it appears there's room there for both a level of ascension and devastation that would either lead to travel into the eventual Cosmere or else (less likely?) cause the sort of change that causes our cluster to resemble what we see in the Cosmere. Thinking back to the end of Calamity, Obliteration's continuing quest in particular seems to be the sort of thing that would potentially lead in exactly that direction. If, however, The Reckoners is completely unrelated, it seems to me that the origins of the Cosmere with respect to Earth are at least as interesting if not more so. No matter how I look at it, it appears that Earth as we know it is destroyed and/or forgotten in the Cosmere and future humans are the origins of everything we. Either way, it's Hoid's timeline that has me the most fascinated. Not to get into Mr. Sanderson's head, but if I had gone through the same thought experiments he described in Arcanum Unbounded (mine are a bit different) then I would most definitely have created a timeline that has Hoid existing on Earth and living through that entire transition. I could see him gaining his immortality as part of The Reckoners, or through another set of events...but regardless....it's got to be INTERESTING. Anybody have any insights there?

Thanks for the warm welcome, folks! I think I'll go with the consensus and avoid the cookies, if only because I make my own (and they don't have pumpkin in them). But I do accept cash, favors, and stories!

I'm usually not much of a fan-of-things but I discovered Sanderson's writing a couple of years ago and he scratches a certain itch that's often left unscratched. Seems like a lovely bunch here, and looking forward to speculating, theorizing, and just meeting cool people in general. -Will