Could Lyra and Will have failed?

[Peter Regel]

Oh sorry man! I was trying to start a new topic, seeing as I am new. Thanks a lot, though!

[The Funny Man]

You guys are seeing this from Michael Chrichton's point of view from Timeline. In that book, every alternate of a decision broke off into a new world, even at the quantum level. That's not what was going on in this series. Here, it was as if we had different planets, with just the atmosphere dividing them. It wasn't branched off of one world, they are all individual. They just have similarities.


Sorry, Jamie, if you don't want me to continue this thread, but your link just opened this thread up again. Couldn't get anywhere.

[Sketch]

I remember in the book a character, possibly a witch I'm not sure. Who said that when Lyra's job is done it will bring about 'the end of destiny'. Surely meaning that destiny existed at the time. So I can't help thinking that no, they couldn't have failed, seeing as destiny still existed.

[moyeongsu]

Just because Asriel said it, doesn't make it absolute. He was simply trying to explain to Lyra in an easy way about the existence of other worlds. I don't buy the idea of a million Lyra's and Will's running around.

If it is the truth tho, then I think another Multiverse is created for an alternate outcome, one that can't be reached...by any means existing presently in their worlds.

Universes and Multi-verses separated from each other.

[shruikan_shade]

According the the infinate universe (multiverse) theory which Pullman uses in this trilogy: Yes, in some universes, Lyra and Will did fail, but it was only in those universes that the consequences would have occurred, we just happened to read about one of the universes in which they did not fail.

The problem here is that it was implied in the book that if they succeeded they would save the whole multiverse, this cannot be true if the multiverse theory is to be sanctioned within the book, so we must imagine that either the multiverse theory which PP used is different to the widely known multiverse theory, or that they did not in fact save the multiverse, but only the universes in which they traveled and therefore had an effect on.

Confusing stuff eh?

[krebbe]

It's really quite simple: the subtle knife lets you travel between universes within your multiverse, but you can't get to other multiverses in the multimultiverse. Therefore they saved THEIR multiverse, but not the multimultiverse.

NB: the multimultiverse may have no literary or scientific basis aside from that pap I just made up.

[shruikan_shade]

That still does not explain how they saved their multiverse when according to the multiverse theory they would have both failed and succeeded in different universes in their multiverse....so how did they save the multiverse?

And PP seems to imply that there is only one multiverse, and no multimultiverse thought he may have just not mentioned them as they were not particularly essential to the book.

[Huginn]

This is the reason it doesn't make sense to say that there are many (even finitely many) probabilistically determined universes in HDM's multiverse. Eventually, you come up on just such a contradiction.

There's nothing either way to indicate that there is only one multiverse.

[Vicinity of Obscenity]

Well PP is obviously not an expert in physics and in multi-verse so I at least applaud him for doing enough of his homework to make me follow a comprehendible story line.