{ "export": { "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/1078", "note": "Exported from an unofficial mirror of a public mailing list. Copyright in each message remains with the person who wrote it. Email addresses are obscured as `user at host`, the form the original archive published. This file was rebuilt from parsed fields rather than retained headers, so it is faithful in content but not byte-exact.", "addresses": "obscured as 'user at host'" }, "archive": "urth", "thread": { "id": 1078, "subject": "Time & Hierodules", "messages": 2, "voices": 2, "first": "1998-09-02T16:41:00+00:00", "last": "1998-09-03T17:14:54+00:00" }, "messages": [ { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "m.driussi", "address": "m.driussi at genie.com" }, "date": "1998-09-02T16:41:00+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Time & Hierodules", "in_reply_to": null, "reply_link": null, "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "John Gersten,\n\nSince I believe it likely that time in Yesod travels in the\n\"opposite\" direction of time in Briah (which is the only way I can\nfit things so that ships can sail back and forth in time rather than\njust eat up compressed time in one direction) I haven't been seduced\nby the notion that OB&F are living in reverse time. Or maybe I'm\njust immune! (Sure, I enjoy the occasional reverse time\nstory--Ballard did a nice one, where they dig up the grave, take the\ncorpse out, lay him on a bed and wait for the birth rattle to shake\nsome life into it; then follow him through life toward the end where\nhe will be reabsorbed by the Great Mother. Just like that 70s comedy\nsketch by Father Guido Sarducci. And wasn't there an episode of the\nanimated Star Trek series along those lines?)\n\nI understand that Merlin is said to be living backwards in time. And\nthis device has since been used by writers. So I don't know . . . it\nis certainly possible, but I think it usually manifests in certain\nquirky elements--people knowing their future/past but not the\npast/future which shaped them (I'm thinking maybe of THE ARROW OF\nTIME here, which I only read of in reviews, but the hero has these\nmysterious scars and as he gets younger he ends up in a concentration\ncamp where the scars are inflicted/removed), etc.\n\nThen again, it might also explain the quirky \"childish\" memory-less\nbehavior of B&F, too.\n\nMeanwhile, I guess I've just broken through into (i.e., rediscovered)\nanother model of the Briah/Yesod arrangement. Multiverse management.\n\nEverybody open up your copy of THE SCIENCE IN SCIENCE FICTION to the\nchapter on \"Entropy and the end of the universe.\" See the diagram.\n(Crudely represented here in only one dimension.)\n\nA====>B<====C====>D\n\nFocus on the middle diagram (or the above charicature), based upon\n\n\"Paul Davies' theory that time reverses with each `cosmic bounce'; as\nit runs backwards it rejuvenates the universe back to the monobloc we\ncame from, between B and C, so that AB and CD are identical `ageing\ncycles\" (p. 87).\n\nThis then is the Non-Multiverse Model. Yesod is not some tachyonic\nhyperspace of ftl physics, it is the next incarnation of the universe\nwhere time runs backwards; Abadon is not some flatland subspace, it\nis the previous incarnation of the universe where time runs\nbackwards. When the Ship sails to the \"ends of the Universe,\" it is\nliterally the Death of the Universe rather than some Boundary of the\nUniverse.\n\nNice in some ways, ugly in others.\n\nThe hyperspace model allows the comfortingly easy analogy of a three\nstory house fitted with conveyor belts: in Yesod, the upstairs, the\nbelt goes this way; in Briah, the second floor, the belt goes the\nopposite way; and who knows what happens in Abaddon, the ground\nfloor.\n\n=mantis=" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Derek Bell", "address": "dbell at maths.tcd.ie" }, "date": "1998-09-03T17:14:54+00:00", "subject": "Re: (urth) Time & Hierodules", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "In message <199809021728.KAA20095 at lists1.best.com>, m.driussi at genie.com writes:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "(Sure, I enjoy the occasional reverse time story--Ballard did a nice\none, where they dig up the grave, take the corpse out, lay him on a\nbed and wait for the birth rattle to shake some life into it; then\nfollow him through life toward the end where he will be reabsorbed by\nthe Great Mother. Just like that 70s comedy sketch by Father Guido\nSarducci.And wasn't there an episode of the animated Star Trek \nseries along those lines?)" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "\tI think Philip K. Dick wrote a novel based on that idea; I\nthink it was called _Counter-clockwise world_. Unfortunately, I\nhaven't read it, so I can't comment on it, which is unfortunate as\nDick's output varied greatly in quality.\n\n\tDerek" } ] } ] }