Eifelheim - Michael Flynn [219]
Recently, variable light speed (VLS) theories have become a hot topic among cosmologists. One prominent advocate is João Magueijo, whose gossipy book Faster Than the Speed of Light is a good introduction, as well as an entertaining narrative of how physics actually gets done. I was pleased to read in his book that he considered the “Kaluza-Klein” model that Mohsen and I came up with back in the 1980s, though unsurprised to see him reject it. I decided to keep it, just because.
In all fairness, the historical decline in light speed really does seem due to changes in measurement methods. VLS theories address a change only in the aftermath of the Big Bang, as a way of getting around the kludge of inflaton fields. The inflaton, invoked simply to save the appearances of the theory and afterward allowed to disappear from the universe, would never have passed muster with Buridan, and Will Ockham would have howled about the needless multiplication of entities. VLS theories nicely resolve the “cosmological problems” using inherent feedback loops that homeostatically fine tune the universe. No new entities are needed.
When we last spoke, Mohsen and I discussed also the quantization of the redshift. Some physicists see it; others don’t. Same data. One explanation for a quantized redshift is that time is quantized just as space is supposed to be. Since I had already invented the fictional chronon for the original “Eifelheim,” the redshift business fits right in. If it’s true, we may have to revise the universe, again.
A NOTE ON TERMS AND SOURCES
CERTAIN GERMAN terms, idioms, and turns of phrase employed from time to time have been written as if they were English: thus “gof” and “doodle” instead of Gof and Dudl. But for the most part, English equivalents have been used. So, Bear Valley and Stag’s Leap instead of Bärental and Hirschsprung. Wiesen Valley instead of Wiesenthal. Birds like Waldlaubsänger and Eichelhäher are woodleaf-singers and acorn-jays; flowers like Waldmeister are “woodmasters,” and so forth.
The feudal and manorial systems were common across Western Europe although by the time of the story both had been breaking down for some time. The terminology is equally strange, whether German, French, English, or Latin. I have used the more familiar term unless there is good reason otherwise. So, castle, manor, steward, dungeon instead of schloss, hof, verwalter, or bergfried. Where the English term would have sounded “too English,” the German was employed: buteil, vogt, junker instead of heriot, reeve, or squire. The German for a joust was buhurdieren, so I used the archaic English word, bohorts.
Manfred’s speech on page 173 is adopted from the fourteenth-century biography of Don Pero Nino, El Victorial (“The Unconquered Knight,”) by Gutierre Díaz de Gómez, one of his companions.
The description of Manfred girded for war on page 172 is adapted from the medieval epic, Ruodlieb.
Fr. Rudolf’s sermon on page 195 is from Peter of Blois, 1170. Max’s complaint about sportsmanship on page 196 is likewise taken from life.
The story of Auberede and Rosamund on page 120, which took place in France, is recounted in Régine Pernod’s Those Terrible Middle Ages! and combined with that of another peasant. That two medieval women serfs could own a house in town and go off there to live together may startle some.
The famous stink of Brun, brother to Otto, and the attendant bathing practices mentioned on page 194 are from the epic Ruotger and applied to Manfred’s neigbor. We often read that people did not bathe in the Middle Ages, yet we have the evidence from Ruotger and also, more offhandedly, from the flagellants’ oath not to bathe for the duration of their service. It would seem contrary to swear an oath to avoid something that one never did. More likely, in Transalpine Europe in a time before hot water heaters, bathing was a sometime thing.
“Falcon Song” on page 222 was modified and adapted from Franz H. Bäuml’s Medieval Civilization in Germany, 800–1273, (Ancient Peoples and Places, v. 67).
Dietrich’s discussion