"If you stepped into a world where matches failed to strike, you would cease to exist as organized matter."
Okay, I can see your point here -- if I ask you to imagine being transported to another planet where things are kind of the same, except the matches don't work, you'd be justified in being skeptical. I always worried about this when I watched Star Trek -- how come the crew never accidentally vaporized after beaming down to a planet with just slightly different local laws of physics?
But mythology is different from science fiction -- mytholo... (read more)
It may well be a "tightly-laced reality". It's just not this one. Perhaps the answer to a match not working in the world the hero is transported to is that the fundamental chemistry of the universe is different and our protagonist's body has obviously been modified to match. Or else the difference is some specific alteration where human metabolism can still work, and yet phosphorous can't generate a high enough temperature to ignite cellulose. The fact that he still has a match after transportation to such a different world where probably only his mental pattern is actually making the jump is the harder part to explain.
Similarly it might be possible to create a world where firearms and engines don't work by changing how much effect temperature has on the expansion of gasses without wrecking other things too terribly much.
But... we're talking about fantasy, not hard sci-fi... It's about the people, not the specifics of the physics of the universe.
7[anonymous]
The laws of physics are constant between planets. Everywhere in the universe, in fact.
"If you stepped into a world where matches failed to strike, you would cease to exist as organized matter."
Okay, I can see your point here -- if I ask you to imagine being transported to another planet where things are kind of the same, except the matches don't work, you'd be justified in being skeptical. I always worried about this when I watched Star Trek -- how come the crew never accidentally vaporized after beaming down to a planet with just slightly different local laws of physics?
But mythology is different from science fiction -- mytholo... (read more)