SPOILERS The Long Cosmos **SPOILERS**
- Thread starter Tonyblack
- Start date
I sure don't remember that explanation from any of the series books, but I'll take your word from it it was somewhere. It still makes no sense to me. You can move gold, copper, bronze, uranium, titanium, plutonium, cobalt, and lead from one "world" to another in metal form, but not iron? It makes no scientific sense.
Even the "body iron" doesn't pass but metallic iron does pass argument makes no sense from a scientific point of view. Assuming that "moving" from one world to another is occurring at the atomic level, why would another "world" care whether a particular iron atom is bound up in an anvil or in the blood?
Even the "body iron" doesn't pass but metallic iron does pass argument makes no sense from a scientific point of view. Assuming that "moving" from one world to another is occurring at the atomic level, why would another "world" care whether a particular iron atom is bound up in an anvil or in the blood?
I agree. It doesn't make sense scientifically. But, from a narrative point of view it kind of makes sense. If people are moving from one world to another and essentially building societies from the ground up, one of the first things they'd need to be able to do is forge iron. Excluding iron from the "passage" forces people to embrace old-timey professionals like blacksmiths, since so many tools and materials needed for building, farming and defense are made from iron.
It's not really Sir Terry's folklore (sorry!).
The "special" nature of iron to repel the fey and similar evil spirits is entrenched in Ancient Irish folklore.
Plus, scientifically Iron is the "end" of radioactive decay; many radioactive elements decay to it and I believe it is a damper for fusion reactions. Nigel Kneale used this property as part of the plot in Quatermass and the Pit.
Metals behave oddly when complexed with organic materials; it's not beyond the realms of "real" science that it would be somehow exempt from the rules that keep elemental iron from being "stepped"..
The "special" nature of iron to repel the fey and similar evil spirits is entrenched in Ancient Irish folklore.
Plus, scientifically Iron is the "end" of radioactive decay; many radioactive elements decay to it and I believe it is a damper for fusion reactions. Nigel Kneale used this property as part of the plot in Quatermass and the Pit.
Metals behave oddly when complexed with organic materials; it's not beyond the realms of "real" science that it would be somehow exempt from the rules that keep elemental iron from being "stepped"..
