>Look, the Second Law of Thermodynamics is the real world's nightmare
>curse. It guarantees that any improvement in anything is a
>temporary illusion, life is fleeting and a constant struggle while it
>lasts, and ultimately everything around you - especially your own body
>and mind - will, not may, will let you down. Faced with that
>ultimately brutal cosmic truth, why even bother with no-exit angst in
>fiction? It's a pale imitation at best. Actually, at Boskone last year, I found myself listening to a Russian fan named Leonid Korgowski who expounded at some length about a "4th Law of Thermodynamics", as derived by Ilya Prigogine.
The language is pretty abstruse, but the upshot of it is while entropy may be increasing, there's also a definite trend toward more complex systems.
He goes on about it in some detail in his blog, here:
http://www.pinknoise.net/2012/03/23/optimism-and-darkness-in-science-fiction/