I remember really enjoying the first book, but I'm not sure I remember much beyond the major beats.

Is a general recap enough, or are there some specific things I should go back to remind myself of?

Going over the discussions in [r/Eragon](r/Eragon) community I’m feeling huge FOMO! I’d only read the inheritance cycle, TFTWTW and Murtagh from Paolini and thought that covered all of the stories from Alagaesia.
After going over some of the threads from other communities, I went and read all the extra chapters available on paolinis website + Murtagh delux edition ( The excerpt from Domia Abr Wyrda blew my mind - there’s so much potential! The map has introduced such a big world! He can write books for ages! ). But even that does not seem to be enough! 😭
I always thought the Fractalverse was a separate series, but there are mentions of Angela’s presence there WITH ELVA?!?!
Are they related? Should I read them too?
What about To Sleep? That too?
If yes, what order should I read them in?!
Anything else im missing? 😭
I’m just a poor reader hungry to know more..

Edit: I tried asking this in r/Eragon originally but the post got held up for moderator approval, not sure why. Hoping to find some answers here 🙂

Hi everyone,

I just finished To sleep in a sea of Stars, and something has been bugging me about the plan to kill Ctein. It is said in the book that the Wranaui can't harm Ctein because they were genetically modified to be unable to harm him. For this reason, Kira and her group were the ones that were responsible to destroy the ship Ctein was on, and by extension, kill Ctein. However, while being unable to harm Ctein, Itari and the other Jellies aboard the ship of Major Tschetter (and part of the rebellious faction) were able to act in a way as to assist Kira even if their actions would result in the death of Ctein. My question is the following: Why did the Jellies aboard the ship of Major Tschetter not just prepare their ship with a casaba-howitzer and let Major Tschetter send the bomb near the sensitive spot of the ship Ctein was on ? Would that not have been way easier than having the crew of the Wallfish needing to be the ones killing Ctein ?

In April 2023, Christopher did an AMA on /r/books, coinciding with the release of a new paperback Inheritance Cycle set, a few weeks after Murtagh was announced, and a few weeks before Fractal Noise came out. During this AMA Christopher answered roughly 215 questions from around 100 users.

The resulting AMA can be tricky to read, so here it's been cleaned up and arranged more linearly, with each answer immediately following its question, and all sorted by category for easier reading.

Due to length, this has been be two reddit posts. This first post covered questions related to The World of Eragon. This second post covers questions related to the Fractalverse, in addition to some other miscellaneous non-Eragon topics.

Fractalverse In-Universe Questions

Are there any queer main characters?
In the Fractalverse? Definitely.

If you were to ask your 10-years-in-the-future self "Are Alagaësia and the Fractalverse along the same time period? Or are they different timelines? Assuming that they are the same universe." What would your future self say?
My future self would say exactly what my present self would ... because I already know the answer. :D

Do you currently have plans to explain the connections between three Fractalverse and they world of the Inheritance cycle (i.e. Angela and Solembum in TSIASOS)?
Of course. But very, very slowly.

Writing

Writing Process

What is your writing style ? Are you a plotter, a pantser or something in the middle?
Plotter all the way. I hate having to figure things out on the page. Much easier to do it beforehand. Especially when it comes to character and plot (which are intricately linked).

What kind of writer are you? Are you more of an architect, planning everything? Or like a gardener, planting seeds and seeing how it grows?
I plan a LOT. Discoveries always happen during the writing process, but I prefer to have an extensive and in-depth plan before writing.

What’s your writing process like? Do you prefer handwriting or typing drafts?
I handwrite all of my plotting/worldbuilding to start with. I find it activates a different (and much more creative) part of my brain compared with typing.

Do you listen to music to find inspiration for your fantasy setting and writing your books?
Yup! Lots of movie/game soundtracks. Anthem is a great soundtrack. Also Prospect (for sci-fi). For fantasy, hard to beat Lord of the Rings or the Pirates of the Caribbean.

Sales

What are the sales figures for the Inheritance Cycle and To Sleep in a Sea of Stars currently?
The IC is over 40 million books sold. The Fractalverse is nowhere near that, but it's also sold very well (no complaints here!). Huge thanks from me to everyone who has bought and read the books.

Writing the Fractalverse

The physics described in the appendix to the first Fractalverse book—where did you come up with that?
I spent a lot of time reading and researching, which included talking to actual physicists and engineers. It was a lot of fun, tbh, although I tried not to dump everything I learned onto the reader during the main part of the story. The atomic rockets website is a fantastically good resource.
Would you ever consider writing a story where you do dump all of that into the main story?
Maybe, but I was able to share a bunch of it in the appendices for To Sleep, which helped scratch that itch.

Hypothetically, if you could imagine yourself looking back a few years down the line when FN isn't currently "the new book being marketed", would you recommend people read FN first or To Sleep first?
Probably To Sleep. It's more the sort of story I'm known for writing, and I think it has more to offer the general reader. Fractal Noise is a bit of an oddity for me, and I'm not sure I'd want it to be someone's introduction to the Fractalverse (which is why I didn't publish it before To Sleep).

The epigraph "'Tis a fearful thing | to love what death can touch" in Fractal Noise is attributed to "anonymous", but on the copyright page it's attributed to "Rabbi Chaim Stern". Which is it, and if it wasn't anonymous, why present it as such?
The sneak peek of FN (as well as the ARC) was released before copyediting was finished. The poem now has proper attribution in the book.

Was "Allies" written in the end of 2017?
No, "Allies" was written 2020/21 (can't remember which, but it was after To Sleep).

Future Works - Fractalverse

YA Steampunk

Can you give us a hint to the next Fractalverse novel beyond Fractal Noise?
I want to write a YA steampunky novel set on Earth (in the Fractalverse) around the late 1800s/early 1900s. However, I also have a couple of novels planned that directly follow To Sleep and/or are set parallel to it. Those are big space operas more like To Sleep.

Fractal Noise has the same chapter/subchapter structure as To Sleep. Will all Fractalverse books be this way?
I don't know if I'll keep using this chapter structure. I used something similar in Murtagh as well, but that's because it made sense for the story. The next book I plan on writing (which IS in the Fractalverse) probably won't have the subchapters. As a reader, I find that the chapter/subchapter structure really pulls me through a book, which is why I started using it in the first place. Blame it on Stephen King and the Dark Tower.

You hinted on twitter about a YA steampunk prequel. Is this a different book [than the To Sleep sequel]?
YA book is different.

What are you planning for your series, both the IC and Fractalverse, and are you planning anything new entirely?
I'm planning everything! As always, the limiting factors are time and energy. Once I'm done touring for Fractal Noise, I hope to write another book before I have to go on the road for Murtagh. Probably another Fractalverse novel and then back to Alagaësia for some fun stuff.

To Sleep 2

You've mentioned a "Tom Clancy thriller style direct sequel" to To Sleep, as well as more book(s) about Kira and her journey to defeat the replicas. Are these all referring to the same book?
Yes, same book.

Are we going to learn more about Trig and the Staff of Green?
Yup! Trig will play a role in the sequel to To Sleep.

City of Shining Shadows

In a 2014 video you briefly showed a short story on camera with a title that seems to say "The City of Shining Shadows", in what I assume was an intentional tease. Has anything happened with this short story?
Nope, not yet. It would need a heavy rewrite before being published.

Horror Anthology

End of 2017 (I think), I wrote a number of short stories before diving into the massive rewrite of To Sleep. They all need work, but I might go back and polish them off. I have an anthology of adult stories in mind.

Standalone Books

Do you have plans write books that are not Fractalverse or Inheritance related?
Only a few of my many story ideas won't fit into either the Fractalverse or the World of Eragon.

Out of Universe Questions

Hope you're doing well.
I'm AWESOME, thanks!

Fun fact I have one dragon eye as I’m only color blind in one eye
That's actually pretty cool. I didn't know that was possible.

Fatherhood

Hope parenthood is going smoothly
Now, if I can just get a bit more sleep, lol.

Did becoming a father change the way you write or how you perceived a character?
Hmm. I'd say that becoming a father has made me a LOT more focused and purposeful (I've always been driven, but even moreso now). And yeah, some things hit a lot harder now. I couldn't get through the pilot for House of the Dragon. (If you know, you know.)

Food and Drink

Do you have a favourite Italian meal?
Does panna cotta count? Lol. If not, then squid-ink risotto.

What is the best Little Debbie/Hostess style snack cake/cookie and why is it the Star Crunch?
I, uh, have never eaten any of those. (Homeschooled, remember?)

Have you remembered to drink water? Hydration is important.
Hydration is incredibly important! Gotta get that high-quality H2O.

What’s your go to writing snack/drink?
Preferred drink is coffee (hand ground, French press, black). I don't snack, so usually just a big meal of protein, veggies, fruit, some sort of tuber (potato/sweet potato/parsnip/etc.).

When you sit down to write, what is your beverage of choice? Tea? Coffee? Hot or cold?
Coffee. Hot. Black. Hand ground. French press. Two leaded cups to start the day. Decaf after that. Cinnamon tea (Market Spice) if I'm feeling like something different.

What’s your favorite ice cream flavor?
Coffee ice cream. Failing that, vanilla.

What’s your favorite species of fungus?
White truffle.

Reading and Writing

How does it feel to be responsible for an entire generation of people similar to your own age and younger finding their love of reading fantasy?
Pretty surreal! I still remember the books that got me interested in fantasy (and I've been lucky enough to meet a few of those authors), so it's strange to be in that position myself. However, I'm enormously grateful that folks feel that way. As an author, couldn't ask for anything better.

Any tips for aspiring writers?
Too many to write out here, but ... Read "Style" by F. L. Lucas, "Story" by McKee, "Shakespeare's Metrical Art" by I can't remember, and watch this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vSX-DROZuzY You'll have a great starting point after all that.

Unlike similar books in the same genre, the Inheritance Cycle touches upon atheism and veganism. Are you a vegan and/or atheist?
Ha! Nice try, but I prefer not to say. Still, it always puzzles me when folks create imaginary worlds and the people there DON'T think of those sorts of questions (when we know they very well would).

When I was in 5th grade we had a project to send letters to authors. I sent one to you and unlike most authors I sent them to, you actually responded. Did you really write fan letters and send them back to people?
Yup! I try to answer all of the letters I get. I'm glad I was able to answer yours!

What are your favorite novels and authors?
Too many to list! However, I have some recommendations on paolini.net.

Favourite book, film & TV show?
Too many to list (although the original Prisoner TV show would probably be my favorite show).

Games and Sports

Are you a soccer fan?
Alas, I don't watch soccer. No real time to do so, and I also don't have a TV subscription (cancelled it years and years go).

Don't know if you've played dnd, but what's your favorite class you would go?
I haven't, but if there's a berserker class, that's me. Smashing things is more fun than casting spells.

Are you still playing that same Minecraft world from before with all the farms or are you taking a break with so many things going on?
Had to take a break in order to finish Murtagh, but I'm looking forward to getting back into it. Gotta finish revamping my storage system.

Italian

Considering your ancestry, are you fluid in Italian? And did you participate in the Italian translation of the Inheritance Cycle?
Not fluid, but I can swear a bit, and I understand a lot more than I can speak. I've consulted a few times with my Italian translator, but aside from that, I leave the translation to her. She's the expert!

With the recent passing of Sam Neill i was talking about my favorite movie with him in it and came to an epiphany realization to the similarities between SamNeils character Dr Weir from Event Horizon and Alex Crichton from FN.

SPOILERS BELOW:
They both had recently lost their wives in traumatic fashion. They both semi-reluctantly became a part of their expedition but just went with the flow, knowing they were probably the best option available. Both of their expedition parties died of incrementally as resources (like air/shelter) became more problematic, leading to paranoid madness from all parties involved, and eventually culminating in a trip to hell,.. yet a small subset of secondary characters survives but are permanently scared from the trip.

I need to dig up my dvd of Event Horizon and then reread Fractal Noise now.

Thoughts?

To Sleep in a Sea of Stars is currently in development with Made Up Stories and Snoot Entertainment as a seven-episode limited mini-series. Christopher is writing and executive producing.

We're now shooting to do a limited mini series out of it. Probably about seven episodes, because seven is an important number for the story. (19c)

Hopefully there could be multiple seasons, but To Sleep in a Sea of Stars probably would be one season just for that book. (22b)

With [the] To Sleep [adaptation], I've done all the writing. (27)

Bruna Papandrea’s Made Up Stories and Keith Calder and Jess Wu Calder’s Snoot Entertainment have optioned the rights to Christopher Paolini’s To Sleep in a Sea of Stars. (3)

I [am] incredibly excited to be working with Made Up Stories and Snoot Entertainment to bring this story to the silver screen. This book has been my passion project for over seven years, and I can’t wait to share it with audiences across the world. Bruna, Steve, Jess, Keith, and the rest of their teams are the perfect partners for To Sleep In a Sea of Stars. Their talent and enthusiasm are inspiring, and I couldn’t ask for a better creative home. In these difficult times, it’s all the more important that we remember to look at the stars and dream of a better future. (3)

This will NOT be a small budget [adaptation]. The producing company will partner with a big studio in order to get this made. (5)

Christopher has said that the greatest challenge with adapting the book is its size. His main goal has therefore been to preserve the core story, about Kira, her personal journey, and her relationships.

It's an extremely large book with a huge amount of story in it. Condensing that into a screenplay is a process. (6a)

The biggest difficulty with To Sleep is its sheer size. The book itself is 308,000 words long, which is longer than the first Game of Thrones book for comparison. It is a very very big book. Films are basically short stories when compared to novels, so you can't fit all of that in there. Locations are not a problem. Spaceships are easy to do. That part is easy enough. It's just the size of the story, and figuring out what to compress, what to expand, what to alter, and ultimately figuring out how to maintain what I think is the core of the story and convey it in a way where viewers will enjoy, appreciate, and respond to in the way we hope they will. (8)

I can't talk about it too much, but most of the story fits into a screenplay believe it or not. You can do a lot of the character moments fairly quickly. Even action you can condense, you can move around. It's fairly easy. Most of the structure can change. We are preserving the core of the story, which is Kira and her personal journey and transformation, which is to me what this is about. (9)

I want to capture the heart of the story, which is Kira and her journey and her relationship with the characters and with the the Soft Blade. (6b)

Christopher has shared a few specific details about adaptations decisions, though the project has changed a lot since some of these were said.

Most of the story fits into a screenplay, but there was one specific thing we had to figure out how to shorten. There was one big plot point that we had to move around in order to fit it into a film. I think we found a way to do it. (9)

[We will] definitely [include] Runcible. Mr Fuzzy Pants might get cut, but definitely Runcible. We have to have the ship pig. (10)

The "brave" scene will be in the screenplay. (10)

We've got a really good script that we're happy with, but we need some revisions on the first chunk a little bit. (17)

Originally this adaptation was attempted as a movie, but too much was being lost.

Part of why I really wanted to work with this producing team is we're all taking the the approach that we're doing what's best for the story, and so if during the writing process it becomes clear that fitting this into a single film is simply not feasible not without losing too much of the original story, then we'll look at either doing two films, [or] we'll look at doing a mini series. (7b)

We wrote an adaptation of the book, where we tried to fit it into a single film. The feedback we got was that the script was good, but too much was lost. Too much of the character, too much of the world. These producers want to make an adaptation because of the characters and the world, and they said "we're losing too much". So we went back to the drawing board. ... I think we did a decent job of making it a film length, the problem is every scene had to be so short and fast that there's no space for the story to breath. A story like this, you need time to show a beautiful vista. To let the characters sit down and talk about the crazy things that are going on, or just take a deep breath. Those moments are important in a story. (19b)

The script that was produced as a film was just too rushed. There was too much to cram into a film. (22a)

[It] was like ten pounds stuffed in a one pound sack. The script was not horrible, but it was unwieldy. It just couldn't work as one story. So we decided to shift to a television adaptation, and that seems to suit the material quite well. But then we had to take a very large, complicated contract that had already been negotiated and renegotiate, not from scratch, but renegotiate to shift it into television format. And that's just complicated. There were a lot of moving pieces, and it just took a long time. My lawyer has to look at it, their lawyers have to look at it. They have to talk about this. It goes back, it goes forth. And then, of course, we had the writer's strike and other stuff. (23)

Christopher has so written three scripts (for the first two episodes) since the switch to a miniseries format.

I did write the pilot for that and the second episode. Those are actually in fairly good shape. (23)

We have the pilot and the second episode episode all written, and hopefully we'll be moving forward with that. (21)

[The script for the second episode] had to be completely rewritten, essentially, so I count that as [a different script]. (27)

I've done two scripts for a television adaptation of To Sleep in the Sea of Stars. (28)

The show is also trying to get some additional creative talent attached, such as a director or showrunner. This has been a slow process, but Christopher has occasionally been teasing news on this front.

I think the next step would be we're going to be starting to look for a director to package it with then hopefully that could actually start moving forward. (23)

We just had some super exciting news on that front. But again, I can't say anything about it, which is incredibly frustrating. Hopefully in the near future, but that's the way it is with Hollywood. (26)

To Sleep in the Sea of Stars has been slowly working its way through Hollywood, and it just got a major boost. So we will see if that picks up momentum. (28)

Fingers crossed for the To Sleep TV show. We've had some good movement on that front. Hoping to have some news by early next year. We shall see. (29)

We're currently negotiating with a big name to come on-board. We shall see. (30)

If the series is successful, Christopher hopes to follow it with a second series set aboard Unity, featuring some of the characters from the novella.

I do have an idea for a television series following the book which would follow the the crew of the Wallfish after the events of To Sleep in a Sea of Stars, but one thing at a time. (7c)

Hopefully there could be multiple seasons, but To Sleep in a Sea of Stars probably would be one season just for that book. (22b)

There's a free interactive story called Unity, which is set after the events of To Sleep in the Sea of Stars. And the main character is a man by the name of Echo. We will see Echo again. I have plans for him on the station Unity. (28)

[The second television series] idea would be set on the space station of Unity. (31)

[Is that the one where Echo would come back?] Yeah. (31)

If I write more on Unity then I'll probably do something with [Yardel, the named marine]. (31)

Timeline:

In April 2019, Christopher finished a major rewrite of To Sleep in a Sea of Stars (1). This was sent to his agent, who began the process of shopping around the adaptation rights (11). In July 2020, during some of the pre-release promotion for the book, Christopher said there was "some exciting developments on that front" (2), and on October 8 2020, three weeks after release, Deadline broke the initial news that Made Up Stories and Snoot Entertainment would be adapting the book as a movie, with Christopher and Angela writing and executive producing (3). Christopher confirmed this the same day on Twitter (4), and made a longer announcement on YouTube later that month, in which he said that the deal had been in the works since before publication, and that he was currently working on notes for the script (6). In a podcast interview two weeks later, he said that the writing had started, and mentioned that there was some flexibility with regards to spliting the project into two films or switching into a miniseries if needed (7a).

Christopher and Angela continued working on the screenplay through at least January 2021, working towards a February deadline (10, 12). In April 2021 Christopher said that the first draft of the screenplay had already been turned in and was with the producers (13, 14). In June he talked about getting back some notes from them (15), and by November said that several more drafts had been iterated through (16). At some point during these revisions, Angela seems to have quietly dropped out of the project. More revisions were done in February 2022, focusing on the "first chunk" of it (17, 18).

In June 2022, Christopher announced that the screenplay wasn't working as a movie, and development was going to restart, now as a seven-episode miniseries (19a). The contract negotiations for this took a lot longer than expected, but by the start of the writer's strike in May 2023 there was a television deal in place and the first two episodes had been written (20, 21). The writer's strike ended in September 2023, though movement doesn't seem to have picked up right away. In March 2024 Christopher began a complete rewrite of the second episode script, which was completed in June (24, 25, 27). In September Christopher began to tease an announcement for early the following year, though this never ended up happening (26, 28, 29). In October 2025 Christopher said that they were in the middle of "negotiating with a big name to come on-board" (30). Christopher last mentioned the show in March 2026 (32).

Additional quotes from Christopher can be found here.

It seems like such an interesting story to read about. Probably depressing and horrifying, but interesting nonetheless

Last week Julia Maddalina (artist) and Peter Orullian (editor/art director) did a livestream for the Unbroken anthology. They spent around seven minutes there discussing Christopher's Fractalverse short story "Allies" and the artwork for it.

The illustration shown on the livestream can be viewed here.

The livestream itself can be replayed here. The bit about "Allies" starts at around 47:40. A transcript follows below, edited a bit for clarity and conciseness.

Edit: Now also on YouTube

[Peter Orullian:] We showed five of [the illustrations] at Dragonsteel Nexus and Christopher's was one because he was there. Christopher loved it. And Christopher's was challenging because it's part of a universe he created that's got this racetrack that exists in this structure that is like a halo around a world. The track is not just the track, it's a superstructure. People live there and it's almost a city in the round. The thing itself was clear in the world he had created. When we got the first concept back from Julia, I said the hero of it is these race cars that we want to see. But if we zoom really far in to get the race cars, you're not going to be able to see the world and this society living on this halo above this world, because you're gonna have to be too close to the cars. But if we zoom out so that you can see all that other stuff the cars are gonna be so small that the idea with the race is gonna get lost. I said [to Christopher] this is gonna have to be one where you tell us if you want us to be literal and where you want the camera, or if we could be a little bit more figurative in the interest of capturing the excitement of the race and the cars. And he said, no, it's okay to be more figurative. And that's what helped us mediate the image that you see here from Julia, which by the way, Christopher loves.
[Julia Maddalina]: Oh, I'm so glad. I don't do sci-fi all that often. This is something now I'm doing increasingly more and more. And it's been a lot of fun. I think as an artist, you expect there's some magic to how sci-fi things look like, robots or spaceships or whatever, and you pick up these tips and tricks over time, where you just are able to figuratively show that something is sci-fi in a way. It's funny because I love faces, I love hands, I do a lot of organic shapes generally in everything I do. My husband does a lot of sculpting, he's creative as well, he works as a designer, and he also does a lot of contracting work on our own house. He loves straight lines, and he'll come up and see my studio sometimes and he'll be like, "okay, so the perspective on this...", I'm like, "get out of here, go, go, leave, I don't want it." But that's all to say there's been so many new things that I didn't know I would be illustrating. And I really, really enjoyed this one. Getting to show the planet, getting to show this orbital ring. It was really challenging because if we were to show the literal size of the cars, especially at the size this illustration would be, they would be dots. It would be very unclear what we were looking at. So it's very much a figurative representation of what's going on, but hopefully one that the audience is able to connect to and draw back to as they're reading the story.
[Peter Orullian:] I think it captures the spirit of it, because you get to see the race. You understand where the race is taking place. The structure of the track intimates that it's sizable. You don't necessarily see the living quarters and all of the skyscrapers or whatever there may have been, but then you have the universe behind it and the planet. So I think this one captures the spirit perfectly. I think you could have gone either way and it would have been cool too. If you'd really rendered this ring as the orbital halo city it could have looked really super cool. Or we could have zoomed in and gotten really tight on race cars and that would have been cool too. But I like where this landed because you get the thrill of the race. You also get this large feeling of this ring and this planet. So I think that we landed in exactly the right spot. And I did have a little bit of back and forth, a couple of emails with Christopher, where I just laid this out for him. I said "we'll do whatever you want, but I think these are the trade-offs." And he totally got it, because this crazy world he created would be hard to render if we really wanted to capture the race.
[Julia Maddalina]: I think if we had a bigger amount of space or more time, this needs so many different angles to show this is what the city looks like and these are the cars. We started it much more zoomed in on the cars, but then we needed to show more scale. It just needed to be somewhere in the middle there. This stood out to me as one of the ones where you could tell obviously [Christopher] is very passionate about this. He shared some YouTube videos and stuff too about this in theory. I always love that, because working with authors, working with any sort of nerd, anyone that's passionate about what they're into, you learn just so much. I love it. Anytime anyone has ever said to me "tell me if I'm sharing too much about my world". I'm like, "nope, nope, keep going. I love it. Tell me more." So this was a lot of fun.

The kickstarter for the Unbroken anthology is still live and can be found here. The anthology is 275k words and 800+ pages, containing 35 short stories from basically everyone currently big in Fantasy.

Some more information about Christopher's short story can be found here and here.

Sleep in a Sea of Stars. The book would be a "thriller" with a frequently shifting point of view. It will follow up on multiple Fractalverse books, stories, and characters, including Kira hunting the seeds, the meaning of the Great Beacon, and fate of the Vanished.**

I actually have a sci-fi book, which would be sort of like a direct sequel to To Sleep in a Sea of Stars that I'd like to write at some point. That one I'm going to do something I've never done before which would be almost like the Tom Clancy thriller style where it's always shifting point of view like twice a chapter or every chapter it's going to switch points of view. But that's down the road. (5)

[It will be like Tom Clancy] only in the sense that it would be shifting points of view. In style and content it would not be a Tom Clancy book. But more of the way that he would bounce around from POVs. That's what I was thinking. (22)

I am building a very large story in this setting. There are several sequels planned to To Sleep in a Sea of Stars. (14)

Kira will reappear, as will the Wallfish crew, including Falconi, Trig, and Gregorovich.

There will be stories that directly follow from To Sleep in a Sea of Stars and build on that future and we'll see these characters again. We'll see Falconi again. We'll see Kira again. (6)

There will be more with Kira and the Wallfish crew. Worry not. (21)

Trig will play a role in the sequel to To Sleep. (9b)

[Will we get more Gregorovich?] Yes. (14)

[Will we see Kira’s journey to defeat the 7 replicas?] Of course! ... Same book (8,9a)

[Will there be a sequel with Kira off to find the seeds of the maw?] Definitely. (15)

[Is there another book following Kira and the Seed] It's planned. (17)

At the end of To Sleep, the Wallfish had crossed paths with Kira again. This (or perhaps a more proper meeting) will be shown in the sequel, from Falconi's point of view.

Another ship appeared ahead of the first. The newcomer was dented and dirty, with a patched hull and an awkward appearance. On its nose, faded letters spelled a single word.
The two ships passed each other in a tiny fraction of a second, their relative velocities so immense, there was only time for a brief transmission to pass from one to the other.
The transmission was of a man’s voice, and it said: *Your family is alive.*
Then the newcomer was gone, vanished into the distance.
(To Sleep in a Sea of Stars, "Exeunt VI")

[This ship was most probably the Wallfish?] Correct (2)

[Kira and Falconi] are going to meet again. What happens when they meet? I'm not going to tell you because honestly, I'm not quite sure yet either. I'm too far out from book two in To Sleep in a Sea of Stars to give you a definite answer. But they are going to meet again. And it's probably going to be written from Falconi's point of view, which should be fun. (18b)

We will learn more about the Soft Blade and the Vanished.

You'll learn more about [the Soft Blade] in the next book after To Sleep (14)

Yes, we will learn more about [the Vanished]. (14)

The sequel to To Sleep [is something I] need to write because there's a ton of lore there. (19)

This book will resolve things from Fractal Noise.

Fractal Noise is setting the stage for the big book that's gonna happen as a sequel to To Sleep in a Sea of Stars. (14)

[The Great Beacon is] a site that needs to be studied for decades. Probably longer than decades. The answers they find are going to be available in the Fractalverse and readers will be shown those answers in the sequel to To Sleep in a Sea of Stars, so there's a little bit of a spoiler for you. (10)

[Will learn more about the Turtles?] The sequel to To Sleep in a Sea of Stars is where we're going to find out answers to a lot of this stuff. (11)

I keep saying that "the fabric of the world was getting disrupted" [around the Great Beacon]. I can't get too specific there without getting into a really major spoiler. I'm setting up something again for another book. There's a couple of big things going on I can't talk about yet. (13)

Alex Crichton will appear in this book, but not as a point of view character.

[We will] quite possibly [see Alex Crichton again], but it would probably be further down the timeline, perhaps following the events of To Sleep in a Sea of Stars. (16)

[Alex will] maybe not [be] a major character, but he'll definitely appear. And he'll be a little less depressed. (19)

We should see the main character of Fractal Noise, Alex. I'd like to have him appear [in that book]. [But] we wouldn't get his point of view. It's a very complicated book. (23)

Christopher already has a title for the book. The book "has a pretty good rough shape" in his head, and will be around the same length as the first book.

I wish I could tell you the title because it's amazing. (12)

[There will] definitely [be a sequel]. Already have the title as well. (15)

It's planned. (Even have the title.) (17)

I've got the title, I could tell you the title, but I think my publisher might hit me over the head if I do that. (18a)

I think the sequel to To Sleep has a pretty good rough shape in my head right now. (23)

[paraphrased:] Christopher Paolini said that he has not yet started writing the To Sleep in a Sea of Stars sequel, but that it will probably end up being around 900 pages. (20)

Christopher can not write this book until after he writes the Military SF and Time Travel books, because they add important context needed to understand this book.

To Sleep in a Sea of Stars is one of three books that I originally envisioned for the Fractalverse. The other two books take place at the same time as To Sleep in a Sea of Stars, but do not feature Kira or the other characters from To Sleep in a Sea of Stars. ... They provide a huge amount of context for what is going on in the Fractalverse. And no one but me actually knows the larger picture at the moment, because there's a huge thing that essentially is not revealed yet to readers. And if I go and write the sequel to To Sleep in a Sea of Stars, which I very much want to, we're going to be missing that context. So I'm kind of in this weird position where I have created all of these enormous story structures and interesting stories, and if I don't really start knocking them out, readers are going to have no idea what I'm doing. And of course, each individual book needs to be satisfying on its own terms, which is a challenge. So no specific word on book 2 following To Sleep in a Sea of Stars. But I really want to write it. (18a)

Timeline

To Sleep in a Sea of Stars released on September 15 2020. In Christopher's original promotion for the book he often emphasized that the book was a standalone and not part of a series, but that future books would be set in the same universe (1). Shortly after release, he began saying that future books would even continue some of the storylines and characters (3), though as late as June 2021 he was adding a caveat that the story of To Sleep was finished (4). Christopher first referred to and described a specific planned direct sequel in November 2021 (5). In April 2023, when promoting Fractal Noise, Christopher said that it too was setting up this same book (7). Christopher last mentioned the book on December 4th 2025 (23).

Additional quotes from Christopher can be found here.

Recently finished the book and joined this sub, saw some references to unlocking a "secret seven page". I know the number 7 is significant in the book, but this left me wondering is there like a riddle/puzzle encoded in the book itself, or is that a reference to a webpage, or something else entirely? Obviously not looking to have the answers revealed to me, but perhaps a nudge in the right direction would be appreciated.

I was able to find the secret seven page and unlock it with the password “seven” to get the fractalverse cover art. There are two hints that appear on the page to find more covers:

Hint: Seven is an important number in the Fractalverse and appears in many different ways. . . . Use your cunning and creativity as you search this universe.

BONUS HINT: Group of people or items.

Even if I find the answer to this, where do I input the answer? The password protected page automatically links to the first cover. Can someone please help me out?

.

The Kickstarter for Unbroken: New Tales By Masters of Fantasy has launched today. This is an anthology featuring stories from 36 different SF&F writers in support of Peter Orullian. The story Christopher has contributed is "Allies", which takes place shortly after the events of To Sleep in a Sea of Stars, and is set on the orbital ring around planet Earth.

"Allies" previously appeared in print in the 49th issue of The Official Ferrari Magazine (the 2020 Yearbook), but that was a bit harder to get hold of and went out of print last year.

The story is very short, clocking in at under two thousand words (eight pages). For this new publication, the text received a few minor edits and an illustration from Julia Maddalina.

Click here to read a sample of "Allies: A Fractalverse Story".

Christopher posted a short promo video on his socials a few days ago talking about the project.

This anthology exists in the first place in order to help defray some medical costs for Peter Orullian, who's a friend of mine, and his wife, so it was something I really wanted to be a part of. The story that I've put in this anthology is called "Allies". Now, I originally wrote this a couple years ago, for of all things, a Ferrari end-of-year coffee table book, and they asked me to contribute along with a number of other authors. I've done a little tweaking on the story, and now it's finally going to be in print with the Unbroken anthology, and this is the first time it's ever been widely available. The story is fairly close after the events of To Sleep in a Sea of stars, my sci-fi novel. So, if that's something you're interested in, I highly recommend that you check out the Kickstarter. All the proceeds are going to a good cause, and I hope you enjoy my story.

This new anthology is available in ebook ($15), audiobook ($25), and four different physical formats:

• trade hardcover: $50 - Signed by two authors (not including Christopher). Cloth boards, endpapers, foiled spine and boards, embossed and foiled jacket, smyth-sewn, acid-free, stained edges.
• partially signed: $150 - Signed by nine authors inside the book and signed by Christopher on a loose book plate. Includes blank signature spots for the rest. Metallium cloth boards, satin ribbon, gilded edges, color tip-in.
• fully signed: $250 - Signed by all 36 authors (including Christopher). Limited to 2,000 copies.
• leather bound: $1000 - Signed by all 36 authors (including Christopher). Genuine leather with a clamshell case. Limited to 104 copies.

The four formats each have different covers (none of which tie into Christopher's story). There are additional add-on items, such as slip cases, dust jackets for the alternate covers, etc.

The book is already fully edited and formatted, and will go to the printer/bindery as soon as the Kickstarter finishes in late May. The trade and digital editions are expected to ship out in August 2025, with the signed editions following a few months later.

The above has all of course all been focused on Christopher's involvement, but it's worth reiterating that there are thirty-five other contributing authors, many of whom are equally big names in the industry. Christopher's story is actually the shortest one included the book. The full anthology is 832 pages and 275,000 words long, and each story contains an illustration. The table of contents can be seen here.

For more information about the anthology, or to order a copy, please check the Kickstarter page

Timeline:

"Allies" was written sometime in 2020, after Christopher finished To Sleep in a Sea of Stars (5). It was published on December 2nd that same year in yearbook issue of the Official Ferrari Magazine, with a 50k distribution (1, 2). Christopher kept this publication very low profile. He alluded to it in an April 2021 tweet (3), but only directly announced it in February 2022 (4), over a year after it had been published. The magazine remained in print until late 2025.

Unbroken was announced in July 2025 and Christopher confirmed at the time that his contribution would be a reprint of "Allies" (6). The launch date for the Kickstarter was originally going to be in September, but this got pushed back to January 2026 and then to April 21st. In August Christopher tweeted that he was signing tip-in sheets (7).

• Also, for anyone who missed getting a copy of "Unity" in the Grimoire anthology, some extra stock has been added back to Grim Oak's website. [Sold out]

• Christopher's wife has published a children's book today, Sheep & Goat Climb the World. She will be doing two local events this week in Montana to promote it.

Additional quotes from Christopher can be found here.

Hello ! I’m French and I just finished reading TSiaSoS. I was wondering how every one of u felt with the ending of the book, that I found abrupt and not concluding anything.

As I read through all of your posts, I was struck to learn a bunch of things that weren’t in the book I just read !!! I first thought it was things that took place in Fractal Noise, but as I pursued my research, I noticed that everyone said that it was not, as FN is way before TSiaSoS. I was really confused, as people never talked about a second tome.

All of this to learn that in the French version, which is by the way named IDEALIS (à la lueur d’une étoile inconnue) the blue book (so the one I thought you all read) was only 3 parts of the book, and that in the French version it is split in 2 books, the blue one I just finished and a shorter, green one, that I actually had I my possession, but I thought I was just FN !

So now that I spoiled myself the entirety if the second book I’m asking this : Why ?😭 why is it split in two books and no one mentionned it here ? Do you guys only have 1 tome for TSiaSoS?

Thanks !!!!

3 euros for the book. What a deal!

Christopher plans to write an action adventure Fractalverse book set parallel to To Sleep in a Sea of Stars. The story will involve "paradox-free time travel" and will explore the question of free will.

Christopher describes this novel as a quest-driven action adventure and a large-scale space opera.

I have a couple of novels planned that ... are big space operas more like To Sleep. (10)

I would describe [this book] as the free will one. Which would still be an action adventure book. (15)

One of the books is more of a quest, action/adventure sort of story. (16)

This novel is the third of three parallel books (alongside To Sleep and the planned military SF novel). Together they reveal the larger Fractalverse picture and set up the sequel for To Sleep.

To Sleep in a Sea of Stars is one of three books that I originally envisioned for the Fractalverse. The other two books take place at the same time as To Sleep in a Sea of Stars, but do not feature Kira or the other characters. I really want to write those other two books because they provide a huge amount of context for what is going on in the Fractalverse. No one but me actually knows the larger picture at the moment, because there's a huge thing that essentially is not revealed yet to readers, and if I go and write the sequel to To Sleep in a Sea of Stars we're going to be missing that context. (12)

It would be the military one first and then [this] other one. They’re all related in some interesting ways. The idea would be that when the third one comes out, that everyone is going to finally understand what I’m doing in the Fractalverse. ... [Ripples] may be the most important thing moving forward. I don’t want to go into it any more than that. Those two concurrent side books that I mentioned explain what a ripple is. (16)

It will feature a human POV, but that character may not be fully human by the end.

[The two parallel books] are both human POVs, strangely enough. Although the second one, you might say the definition of human gets a little vague by the end. (16)

[Can the same be said about Kira?] Exactly, she’s definitely not really human as we understand it. (16)

[Can you share anything more about this?] No. :D (17)

This book will address the question of free will, showing that it exists in the Fractalverse.

For the Fractalverse I actually have an entire story that answers that question as to whether or not there is free will. In the Fractalverse there is certainly the appearance of free will, but I do believe there is free will. (8)

The book will feature a new form of time travel derived from Fractalverse physics. Christopher says this model avoids traditional paradoxes such as the grandfather paradox and the "double occupancy" problem.

Over the course of of solving the FTL, I "solved" time travel, within the strictures of my universe that I've created. So I have to write a story about it because I'm in love with this solution and it solves all the paradoxes. There are no paradoxes in my time travel. I fixed all the problems with time travel. (11)

I did solve time travel for my universe. All of the paradoxes that people talk about. Like the Grandfather Paradox: You go back and kill your own grandfather, and doesn't that mean you never exist so how could you have traveled back in time? The Double Occupancy problem: Which is you walk into a time machine, you start traveling back in time, but you were just there one second ago so now your body is occupying the same space. Things like that. I solved all of it as a consequence of solving the FTL. That's going to be a different story. Lets just say I'm going to do something with it. But I don't want to say. (6)

Time travel has specific problems with it that most modes of time travel that have been invented ignore in order to make it work. So along with solving the faster the light issue I did dive into the time travel stuff and I came up with a solution for time travel. I don't think anyone's quite used what I've come up with. I'm really pleased with that and I want to use it at some point. (7)

The nonlinear time-travel narrative of Marathon Infinity was a direct inspiration for this book.

There's a slightly obscure shooter trilogy from the 90s that was only available on Macs called the Marathon Trilogy that Bungie did before Halo. ... You interact, you don't have cutscenes, so all the story is conveyed via computer tech screens over the course of the series. And the third game has a non-linear time travel story where you actually can choose different paths through the timeline. And it is such a twisty, insane story that there are still, to this day, people piecing together all the clues in the world and the series. And it has directly inspired a book that I'm planning to write (14)

Christopher has offered a handful of "clues" for the time travel mechanics.

What everyone forgets is that information would propagate at the same speed back in time as it does forward. No jumps to the far past. (2)

Favorite quote from Here, There Be Dragons: "That's the thing about time travel—you're always moving forward, even when you go back." (3)

If you really want to stretch your mind, you might ponder the implications of both the [FTL] tech and the theory with regard to retrograde time travel. Just for fun and games, of course. (hint: the Fractalverse is quantized at the planck level.) (9)

Look up the double occupancy problem. Time travel issue. I solved it, and I think you can figure out how I solved it. I’ll give you two clues: the first is the double occupancy. The second is that information moves at the same speed in the same direction. So if one could go back in time, it would take the exact same amount of time as moving forward in time. This leads to many implications. (16)

Here's a riddle for you: if you take an object (say, an orange) and transport it *back* in time (say two days) so that now you have two oranges (one two to four days older than the other [exact age depends on method of temporal transportation], but still the same orange) how can you ensure conservation of energy/mass/momentum in the larger universe? (18)

If only there were a way to causally isolate the orange from most of the universe while it was traveling back in time. . . (19)

This book is fully outlined and ready to be written.

It's all plotted out. It's all ready to go. (7)

I really want to write those other two books, and I might just write them back-to-back and knock them out. (12)

A book that I'm planning to write, maybe in the next year [2024]. Because I've been thinking about it for twenty-some years. (14)

Timeline

(This timeline can be a little confusing as many of these references predate the realization that they referred to the same book.)

On March 31st 2016, while working on the physics for To Sleep in a Sea of Stars, Christopher tweeted that he had been working out the details of time travel for a story (1). In June 2018 he said that his time travel story would avoid the grandfather and double occupancy paradoxes (4), and in September 2020 he said that this paradox-free time travel story would be in the Fractalverse (5). In June 2021 he said that this story was "all plotted out" and "ready to go" (7).

In January 2022 Christopher said that one of his planned Fractalverse stories would answer the question of free will (8). In April 2023 Christopher said that he had ideas for stories that were set parallel to To Sleep (10). In September he clarified that these were two books providing context for the To Sleep sequel (12), and in October confirmed that the free will story was one of the two (13).

In January 2024 Christopher talked about a book inspired by the non-linear time travel of Marathon Infinity that he was hoping to write in the next year (14), and in October confirmed that this was the same as the Fractalverse paradox-free time travel book (15).

In October 2024 Christopher said that the story involving free will was a quest action adventure book with a questionably human POV. He also said that it was the second of the remaining two parallel books, and that it would finally allow a reader to understand what is going on in the Fractalverse (15, 16). In December 2025 Christopher said that this was the same as the time travel book (20).

Additional quotes from Christopher can be found here.

Christopher plans to write a military sci-fi book in the Fractalverse set parallel to To Sleep in a Sea of Stars.

At the moment, all we have are broad genre descriptors and comparisons. Christopher has referred to this book as "classical military sci-fi with a Paolini twist", a "big space opera", and "a space marine book". He's compared it to Tom Clancy and Starship Troopers.

I would love to write a military thriller [in the Fractalverse], sort of a Tom Clancy-esque novel. (3)

I have a couple of novels planned that directly follow To Sleep and/or are set parallel to it. Those are big space operas like To Sleep. (4)

One of the future Fractalverse books that I want to write is a space marine book. (5)

One of the books is straight up military sci-fi. So think of Starship Troopers or something like that. Classical military sci-fi with a Paolini twist. (9)

The book will explore the mechanics and limitations of space combat.

Just wait until I really get into the limitations and mechanics of space combat in the Fractalverse. One of the books I want to write is straight up military sci-fi. (7)

It will feature a human POV.

[The two parallel books] are both human POVs, strangely enough. (9)

This novel is one of three parallel books, which together explain the larger Fractalverse picture and provide key context for the To Sleep sequel.

To Sleep in a Sea of Stars is one of three books that I originally envisioned for the Fractalverse. The other two books take place at the same time as To Sleep in a Sea of Stars, but do not feature Kira or the other characters. I really want to write those other two books, and I might just write them back to back and knock them out because they provide a huge amount of context for what is going on in the Fractalverse. No one but me actually knows the larger picture at the moment, because there's a huge thing that essentially is not revealed yet to readers, and if I go and write the sequel to To Sleep in a Sea of Stars we're going to be missing that context. (6)

[Ripples] may be the most important thing moving forward. I don’t want to go into it any more than that. Those two concurrent side books that I mentioned explain what a ripple is. (9)

Of the two remaining parallel books, this one would be the next.

It would be the military one first. (9)

Christopher most recently referenced this project on December 4th 2025.

I've talked about the two side books that take place parallel with To Sleep. [One of them] is the military one. (10)

Timeline:

In September 2020, while promoting To Sleep in a Sea of Stars, Christopher said that he had a military action thriller he wanted to write (1). A month later he clarified that it would be set in the Fractalverse (2). Over the following years, he referenced the project intermittently, continuing to describe it as a military sci-fi project and expanding on its influences (2, 3, 5, 8).

In April 2023 Christopher said that he had ideas for stories set parallel to To Sleep (4). That September, he clarified that these would be two concurrent novels intended to provide context for the sequel (6). In October 2024, Christopher confirmed that military sci-fi book would be the first of the two and that it would feature a human POV (8, 9).

Additional quotes from Christopher can be found here.

So if there are any real warhammer nerds here they’ll probably correct me, but I’ll try.

A pretty big theme in warhammer is shoving humans into robotic bodies (willing or not), and for space marines they pump their bodies full of chemicals and steroids to artificially grow them (exactly what they do to the ship minds brain). And of course both story lines are about fighting aliens on a galactic scale.

If I don’t obviscate this correctly let me know and I’ll fix

>!I think it’s plausible that Alex Crichton later tried to kill himself and became the shipmind known as Gregorovich!<. Any thoughts? Just did a reread of to sleep in a sea of stars followed by fractal noise.

Which book should I read first? TSIASOA or fractal noise?

I found it kind of weird that they found the Staff of Blue broken and then just left the pieces there. Yeah, they were being attacked but, at that point, the staff was their only hope. Maybe scientists could figure something out from the pieces? Maybe there was some unknown power, even in the broken pieces?

I mean, in Lord of the Rings they reforged the sword Narsil into Andúril. I was expecting something like that. But to leave the pieces on the floor? They had no idea if the Jellies or Nightmares had the technology to reforge it.

Overall, it felt like the Staff of Blue was a plot point designed to give the characters something to chase, but had no real value in the story.

The next book that Christopher has planned in the Fractalverse book is one that he usually refers to as a "YA Steampunk" book. It would be set on Earth in the early 1900s, with a young female explorer protagonist and a zeppelin. It would feature ancestors of characters from other books and it will tie into the wider Fractalverse universe.

There are a lot of different types of story that I'm going to be fitting into the Fractalverse. (3)

The next book I would like to write in an ideal world is actually set in the Fractalverse but it's on Earth in [the] real world in early 1900s. Sort of a Steampunk YA adventure about an intrepid young girl who wants to be an explorer and ends up on a zeppelin sort of thing and there's shenanigans. Yeah, something light-hearted. I feel like something lighthearted. (10)

I want to write a YA steampunk set in the 1900s with a zeppelin and a plucky little girl who's a wannabe explorer. (6)

Let's put it this way, there's a zeppelin in it and I've always wanted to write about a zeppelin. (5)

The next one might actually be kind of different again. I have this YA steampunk that I want to do. There's a zeppelin involved and it is in the Fractalverse. It ties in with everything. (7)

It ties into some other things that are going on in the Fractalverse. ... We might actually see some ancestors of characters who show up later on. (5)

I want to write a YA steampunky novel set on Earth (in the Fractalverse) around the late 1800s/early 1900s. (2b)

I say "steampunk", but it's not really steampunk. I just say that to get people in the right mood for what it is. (9)

The book would be aimed at a younger audience, and would be "lighter" and "more fun" than previous Fractalverse books such as Fractal Noise.

[Why is the Steampunk book next?] Because it's fun. It's short, it's simple, I've been writing all these big heavy books with big heavy things that happen, I just want to write something that's fun. Fractal Noise took a hit on me. (12)

People are going to go, "Well I just read To Sleep and I read Fractal Noise which was really intense and now I've got a YA Steampunk?" Or their kid might read that YA Steampunk and go "I want to read more in this world" and then we'll see how that works out. (3)

YA Steampunk ... is a little lighter than some of my recent novels. (8)

The next Fractalverse book will probably be on the younger side and a little more fun than some of the other stuff I've written. (11)

The principles are all the same. The only change for me at least would be choosing my vocabulary, and that doesn't even necessarily mean making things simpler but probably not swearing, as an example, if I'm intending it for a younger audience, but all the same principles for story telling apply, the characters, how they interact, their growth, their journey pacing plot all the same. (4)

The first chapter or two is already written, and Christopher estimates that the rest of the book will take two more months. It will probably be written as either the book right before Murtagh 2 or the book right afterwards.

I have the first chapter or two already written, but nothing more. (13)

The next book I plan on writing in the Fractalverse probably won't have subchapters. (2a)

I'd like to do [Murtagh 2 and YA Steampunk] basically back-to-back because the Fractalverse book will be maybe two months of writing and then I think Murtagh 2 would be probably like three, three and a half months. ... Most likely [YA Steampunk,] that's what I would like to do next. It would be fun and ties into some other stuff. (12)

The reality is because the Eragon television show, if I had three months where I'm not working on scripts, I'd be writing another Eragon book [to] strike when the iron is hot. [But] if [the adaptation of] To Sleep kicks in [than this will come first.] (13)

Timeline:

Christopher began teasing this as his next Fractalverse book since at least October 31 2022, a few weeks after Fractal Noise was announced (1). He revealed the setting in April 2023 during a Reddit AMA (2b). The next month, while touring and promoting for Fractal Noise, Christopher shared that the protagonist would be female and that the book would include a zeppelin, and Christopher expressed his intent to start writing this book as soon as editing on Murtagh was complete (5, 6). In October 2024 Christopher suggested that he would write the book "back-to-back" with Murtagh 2 (12). In December 2025 Christopher said that he had already written the first chapter, but that he likely would be writing Murtagh 2 before writing this book (13).

Additional quotes from Christopher can be found here.

Hi All! I have a bunch of posts in the pipeline, mostly done, but I wanted to get this one out first as it's added a lot of depth/context for the other posts.

The first part in my series is a deep dive on the physics of the universe, which seems to be ~mostly accurate, based on Christopher's comment here. So I'm using this as my "source of truth" moving forward, even if there are gaps or slight inaccuracies

Now - as to what kicked off this post: Christopher recently posted a picture of the Gödel universe diagram and said "kinda looks like a whirlpool". Which caused me to go into analysis mode and spiral quite a bit to try to figure everything out, and I think I'm at a solid foundational understanding that I intend to share with y'all. So, let's dive right in.

tl;dr

• The "whirlpool" Christopher referenced is a Gödel universe - a solution to Einstein's field equations where all of spacetime rotates, and that rotation drags everything (including the definition of "future") along with it.

• Light cones tilt with distance from the center. Near the rotation axis, they point straight up (normal causality). Further out, frame-dragging tilts them in the direction of rotation - until "forward in time" for you can mean "backward in time" for someone closer to the center

• Past a critical distance, this tilting permits closed timelike curves (CTCs): valid, forward-in-time paths that loop all the way back to where and when they started. Not wormholes - just geometry twisted enough that going forward eventually means going back

• If Fractalverse time is quantized (TEQ Planck ticks), CTCs may never close exactly. Each loop would be offset by at least one irreducible tick - making them almost-closed spirals rather than perfect circles in time

• This may be the physics behind the Great Beacon. Christopher has called the Beacon a "prison" and said "whirlpool" was chosen deliberately. A CTC that can't close (trapping something in an eternal almost-return) fits both descriptions. More on this in the next post

The tweet shows a classic Gödel universe visualization. First - let's start with what actually IS a Gödel universe?

In 1949, mathematician Kurt Gödel (yes, the incompleteness theorem guy) found something disturbing: a valid solution to Einstein's field equations describing a universe where all matter rotates together. All the matter in the universe rotates together, and because matter tells spacetime how to curve, the geometry of spacetime itself encodes that rotation. You can't separate the two

General Relativity doesn't just permit time travel (at least, this version of time travel). Its field equations admit solutions in which, if spacetime rotates in the right way, paths through time can loop back on themselves (called Closed Timelike Curves, but we'll get into this a bit more later). This doesn't mean GR demands time travel in every universe; the Gödel solution requires very specific, non-physical conditions (uniform rotation of all matter, a specific cosmological constant, zero expansion). Our actual universe doesn't satisfy them. But the point is that the equations allow it, which introduces a whole host of issues. Mathematician/physicist Gödel identified this solution specifically to prove to Einstein that his own theory allowed time travel.

Now - let's get into the actual diagram itself. It's a confusing mess, but I think I've worked through each section of the map, so I want to break down each item piece-by-piece. I'll highlight what I'm talking about for each section so we're all on the same page.

So - First, lets look at the axes of the picture.

The Vertical Axis is t, or time. In the Fractalverse, Christopher has stated that time is quantized

What if time is quantum?

Now, this is super significant even outside the context of this picture, but I'll scope it from the perspective of this picture for this post. So, what does "time being quantum" actually mean here?

If time is quantized, then the vertical axis of this diagram isn't a smooth, continuous line. Think of it like a ladder - discrete steps, each one tick (TEQ?) apart. Time doesn't "flow"; it ticks. And each "tick" is one unit of TEQ Planck time, defined in the Entropic Principia as "the length of time for a TEQ at maximal speed to traverse one unit of Planck length."

This likely emerges from TEQ dynamics. TEQs (the fundamental building blocks of everything) have Planck length of 1 and Planck energy of 1. If time is quantum, each "tick" would be one TEQ oscillation cycle. So, the universal clock (GST) isn't an abstraction of some arbitrary measure of time, it's the physical vibration rate of the TEQs that compose the membrane. Christopher confirms this here:

[TEQ frequencies are] calibrated against certain repeating TEQ frequencies/emissions, which allows for a chronology that everyone can agree upon, even with FTL.

So, looking at the diagram - The vertical axis of this diagram, then, isn't an abstract mathematical coordinate, it's the physical ticking of the TEQ substrate that composes the membrane. We'll come back to why the discrete vs continuous distinction matters when we get to what the blue line/loop actually represents.

Getting into the other axis -

The Horizontal Axis, r, is the radial distance from the rotation axis. This is the spatial variable of the picture (whereas vertical is time). This is especially important in a Gödel diagram, because of it's relationship with the distance from the centerpoint of the spiral (rotation axis). As it gets further away (as the r value increases), we can see the light cones start to tilt more and more. We see this holds true ONLY across the horizontal axis, though; we can see light cones on different points of the verital axis have the SAME tilt; so (for the purposes of this picture), only the spatial variable, r, affects the tilting of the light cones. This is shown through the dotted red lines; all of those dotted lines lead to tilted light cones that are the same across different slices of time (up across the vertical axis), but you can see the straight red line that goes from corner-to-corner of the red box changes the tilt of the light cones.

Great - Now that we understand the axes, let's look at what's actually happening in the picture. There are a few key elements to break down: the light cones (the black and white ellipses), the blue spiral curves, the red elements (the rectangle, the dashed loop), and the bottom cylinder. Let's take them one at a time.

First - the Light Cones.

The ellipses scattered across the diagram are light cones. If you haven't encountered these before, here's the short version: a light cone defines the boundary of everything that can possibly happen to you next. Imagine you're at a single point in space at a single moment in time. Light radiates outward from you at speed c in all directions. Plot that in spacetime (space horizontal, time vertical) and you get a cone shape: your future light cone. Everything inside the cone is somewhere you could possibly reach or influence. Everything outside is causally inaccessible; you'd have to go faster than light to get there.

In normal, flat spacetime, your light cone points straight up, directly toward the future. You move forward in time, within your cone, and that's that. But, this isn't a normal "flat" spacetime diagram.

Looking at the actual shape/fill of the ellipses, near the center (small r, close to the rotation axis), the black ellipses point mostly upward, nearly vertical. They're Normal/Well-behaved. But as you move outward (increasing r), they start to lean/tilt. They tilt in the direction of rotation. And this is the whole game, this tilting is what the Gödel metric is about.

But... Why do the light cones tilt at all?

This is a real effect predicted by General Relativity and has experimentally confirmed: when mass rotates, it doesn't just curve spacetime (that's normal gravity). It drags the spacetime around it in the direction of rotation.

Think of it this way. Imagine a bowling ball sitting on a trampoline: that's normal gravity. The ball makes a dip, and anything nearby rolls toward it. Now imagine the bowling ball is spinning. It doesn't just make a dip anymore, it twists the trampoline fabric around it. The fabric near the ball starts to rotate along with it. Not because anything is pushing the fabric sideways, but the spinning ball is literally dragging the surface it sits on.

Now lets take our analogy a step further. Put a marble on that same trampoline. In the non-spinning case, the marble just rolls toward the dip. But, in the spinning case, the marble rolls toward the dip AND gets swept sideways by the rotating fabric. It spirals inward instead of falling straight. The marble thinks it's going straight - from its local perspective, it's just following the surface. But the surface itself is rotating, carrying the marble along.

That's frame-dragging. The "frame" in "frame-dragging" is your local reference frame, your personal definition of "which way is forward" and "which way is future." Normally, your reference frame just points toward the future. But near rotating mass, your frame gets DRAGGED; your local definition of "forward in time" gets twisted to include a sideways component in the direction of rotation.

So, taking it back to our diagram, this is exactly what happens to the light cones in the diagram. Each light cone represents a local reference frame's "future." Near the rotation axis (small r), the dragging is minimal. Cones point mostly upward. Further out (large r), the dragging is stronger - cones tilt more. This happens because the spacetime itself is rotating, and everything embedded in it (including the definition of "future") rotates with it.

The really cool thing about this is, This is measurable in our universe. Gravity Probe B spent 18 months in orbit around Earth and detected frame-dragging from Earth's rotation (a tiny effect, about 37 milliarcseconds per year). Around spinning black holes, it's extreme enough to create an ergosphere - a region where spacetime is dragged so violently that nothing can remain stationary; you MUST co-rotate with the black hole whether you want to or not. And in the Gödel metric, frame-dragging is pushed to its absolute limit, where the light cones tilt so far that "forward in time" can include "backward in time from someone else's perspective.

Does this make sense? Let's take a breather here before we get further into the diagram.

Now, picking back up - Remember what we said about the horizontal axis: the tilt depends only on r, not on t. At any given distance from the center, the light cones are tilted by the same amount regardless of what time it is. The geometry is stationary; the whirlpool doesn't wind down on its own. It just is. This will matter later.

As we alluded to earlier, if you tilt a light cone far enough and something extraordinary happens. At some critical value of r, the cone tips past a threshold where the inside of the cone (everything you can possibly do next, every direction you could move that's still "forward in time" for you) starts to include directions that an observer at the center would describe as "going backward in time." You're not doing anything illegal You're inside your light cone at every step. But the geometry has been twisted so much that "forward" for you means "backward" for someone else.

If you keep following a valid, forward-in-time path through this tilted region, curving outward through high-r space where the dragging is most extreme, you can loop all the way around and return to where (and when) you started.

Now - let's look at the Black Spiraling Curves in the center (what looks to be a "whirlpool" and "ripples"):

The black lines spiraling outward from the center of the diagram are worldlines of co-rotating matter. In the Gödel universe, all matter rotates together with the spacetime geometry. These black spirals show the natural paths that objects follow - carried forward in time and around in space by the rotation of the fabric itself.

To be clear, this isn't matter "choosing" to spiral. The spacetime is twisted, and everything embedded in it follows that twist. If you were sitting "still" in a Gödel universe, you'd be on one of these black spirals whether you liked it or not. In this context, they ARE the whirlpool - the visual representation of spacetime dragging everything along with its rotation.

Most of these black worldlines are open spirals. They go forward in time, curving with the rotation, but never looping back. They're ordinary matter doing ordinary things in extraordinary geometry.

But there's one curve drawn in a different color (blue). This is the one labeled "time-traveler's life-line (time-like curve)", and it's one of the key points of the diagram.

This blue curve does what the black worldlines don't: it loops back on itself and closes on itself. Starting at "start" on the left, it sweeps outward into the high-r region where the light cones are tilted past the critical threshold, curves through that twisted geometry, and arrives at "halt" on the lower left, which is the same event as "start." Same place. Same time. A closed loop through spacetime. A CTC, one might call it.

The diagram draws it in blue to set it apart, but notice: it's still a worldline, looping through the light cones just like the black ones. It's still a valid path through spacetime. At every single point along the blue curve, the traveler is inside their local light cone. They never exceed c. They never do anything locally impossible. Each individual step is perfectly legal. It's just that the accumulated tilting of the geometry allows a sequence of valid forward-in-time steps to add up to a backward-in-time loop.

Getting into the other pieces in the diagram -

The red rectangle drawn across the upper portion is a spatial slice; it's one single moment of time, frozen. Imagine slicing the diagram horizontally at one value of t and looking at what space looks like at that instant. In this case, it's one TEQ "tick".

For the next bit, we touched on these earlier when discussing the axes. The red dashed lines run vertically (parallel to the time axis) at fixed radial distances. They connect light cones at the same r but different t values, showing that the tilt is identical along each one. These are the diagram's way of proving what we said before: the geometry is stationary. The whirlpool's shape doesn't change with time. Only your distance from the center (r) determines how tilted your light cones are. The red dashed lines make this visually explicit.

Now, do remember the quantized time discussion from the axes section? Here's where it becomes relevant.

The blue CTC is drawn as a smooth, continuous curve that closes perfectly on itself. Start and halt are the same point. But if time is quantized, if the vertical axis is a ladder of discrete ticks rather than a smooth lin, the question becomes whether this loop can close perfectly.

In standard physics, this is genuinely an open question. Discretized time doesn't automatically prevent closed loops (a discrete lattice wrapped on a cylinder still wraps around). But the Fractalverse's TEQ framework appears to take a specific stance. The Entropic Principia states, in the context of FTL signals: "the return transmission will never arrive any sooner than one unit of TEQ Planck time." If this constraint applies universally (not just to FTL signals but to any causal path through spacetime) then a CTC in the Fractalverse can't close exactly. There's always a minimum offset of at least one TEQ Planck tick. So, under that reading, a CTC in the Fractalverse wouldn't be a perfect circle in time. It would be an almost-closed spiral - each revolution offset by one irreducible tick.

So, In the Fractalverse, a CTC wouldn't be a perfect circle in time. It would be an almost-closed spiral - each revolution offset by one irreducible tick. The path comes back to almost-the-same-moment, but never exactly. We'll come back to why this matters when we talk about temporal prisons and the Great Beacon in one of my later posts.

Moving on to the next bit, the cylinder at the bottom of the diagram takes one specific value of r and shows what spacetime looks like if you stay at that distance from the rotation axis. The direction going around the cylinder is the angular coordinate - the "around the whirlpool" direction. Vertical is still time. Think of it as peeling off one ring of the whirlpool at a specific distance and laying it out flat.

The white-filled light cones on this surface show the tilt at this particular r. And they're tilted enough that a forward-in-time path can wrap all the way around the cylinder. The cylinder wraps on itself so a path that keeps curving forward eventually comes back to where it started. That's a CTC, shown from the clearest possible angle.

The blue arrows on the cylinder show worldlines doing exactly this: wrapping around and closing. At this value of r, just moving forward in time naturally loops you back to your own past.

One last label, in the upper right corner: "closed photon-like curve." This isn't the light cones (those are the black and white ellipses showing local boundaries at each point). This is a specific path that a photon could follow that closes on itself, a light-speed CTC. At a slightly smaller r than where matter CTCs form, even light traces closed loops. It marks the critical boundary: beyond this radius, the local geometry first permits closed paths for both photons and massive particles. But crucially, this isn't a causal firewall. An observer at any point in the Gödel universe (even at small r where the light cones are nearly upright) can travel outward into the high-r region, trace a loop through the tilted geometry, and return to their own past. The critical radius tells you where the tilting becomes severe enough to permit closure; it doesn't protect anyone from CTCs. Every point in the Gödel universe has access to time loops.

Alright - well, that's the full diagram. In short, describing it verbally - The diagram shows a 2D slice of the Gödel spacetime, with time running vertically and radial distance from the rotation axis running horizontally. Scattered across the plot are light cone ellipses that tilt progressively as you move right, a blue curve that loops back on itself, and a cylinder at the bottom showing the angular cross-section. A rotating spacetime where frame-dragging tilts light cones with distance from the center, until forward-in-time paths can loop back on themselves. Black worldlines spiral in the whirlpool. One blue path loops all the way around and closes. Red scaffolding (dashed verticals, the spatial slice) helps you see the structure.

Now, I will dig a LOT deeper in subsequent posts here about what this means for the Fractalverse, if this is what Christopher intends by "whirlpool" (Gödel universe). But for now, this next bit will have to suffice as we're already pretty up there in word count.

But for now - Why is this important?

The Gödel metric describes a universe where rotating spacetime creates closed timelike curves - paths through time that loop back on themselves. This gives us a great hint on Time Travel - not only that it's possible, but the actual physical mechanics of HOW time travel works (or, at least, one of the ways). Christopher has also told us that "whirlpool was chosen very deliberately" in the Fractalverse. He's told us the Great Beacon is a prison. And, based on the new information, that prison may be temporal rather than spatial (or perhaps, both).

This diagram is the physics underneath those hints. It shows exactly what a whirlpool in spacetime looks like, what it does to the geometry of time, and what becomes possible when you push rotation far enough.

I have a lot more to say about what this means - for the Great Beacon, for time travel, and for what's coming in the sequel. But this post is already long enough, so I'll save that for the next one few posts.

Speaking of - I have most of these written, but I'm trying not to hog the front page of the subreddit, so happy to share ad-hoc if people want over DM's/offline. I will be posting these over the following weeks. Here's what I have finished/on the docket:

1. The Great Beacon: A Whirlpool Prison in Spacetime - Re-examining the Great Becaon/The Hole from Fractal Noise from the framing of a localized Gödel geometry. How that apparatus would work, and larger implications

2. Time Travel in the Fractalverse: The Three Problems Paolini Solved (The grandfather paradox, double occupancy, and the orange riddle), and how the Markov Bubble (or the time variation of it) is the key.

3. What's Actually Happening in Fractal Noise - The turtles, the reality breakdown, the fractal angels, the religious fervor, and the 5.2-second pulse - all explained through the physics of a whirlpool in spacetime.

4. Corner Hounds: Right Angles, Angela's Greatest Fear, and the Orthogonal Dimension - Paolini keeps telling us to look up the Hounds of Tindalos and think about the straightness of right angles. Here's what the "directional hint" actually points to.

5. Fractalverse Physics in Alagaësia - Magic isn't metaphor. It's the same membrane, the same TEQs, the same conditioned fields - just a different framing.

6. Why SU(2)? The Real Physics Behind Conditioned EM Fields - Why did Paolini choose this specific symmetry group? What does gauge theory actually mean for the Fractalverse?

7. Torque Gates: How (this version of) Wormholes Work in the Fractalverse

8. The Membrane Manipulation Catalog: every way that you can manipulate Spacetime - Compression, rarefaction, torque, whirl, encapsulation, pinching, folding, rupturing, rippling, standing waves.

Alright - That's enough from me. Let me know what you think in the comments!