Subject: (urth) Time & Hierodules

From: m.driussi <m.driussi at genie.com>
Date: Wed, 02 Sep 1998 16:41:00 +0000

John Gersten,

Since I believe it likely that time in Yesod travels in the
"opposite" direction of time in Briah (which is the only way I can
fit things so that ships can sail back and forth in time rather than
just eat up compressed time in one direction) I haven't been seduced
by the notion that OB&F are living in reverse time.  Or maybe I'm
just immune!  (Sure, I enjoy the occasional reverse time
story--Ballard did a nice one, where they dig up the grave, take the
corpse out, lay him on a bed and wait for the birth rattle to shake
some life into it; then follow him through life toward the end where
he will be reabsorbed by the Great Mother.  Just like that 70s comedy
sketch by Father Guido Sarducci. And wasn't there an episode of the
animated Star Trek <tm> series along those lines?)

I understand that Merlin is said to be living backwards in time.  And
this device has since been used by writers. So I don't know . . . it
is certainly possible, but I think it usually manifests in certain
quirky elements--people knowing their future/past but not the
past/future which shaped them (I'm thinking maybe of THE ARROW OF
TIME here, which I only read of in reviews, but the hero has these
mysterious scars and as he gets younger he ends up in a concentration
camp where the scars are inflicted/removed), etc.

Then again, it might also explain the quirky "childish" memory-less
behavior of B&F, too.

Meanwhile, I guess I've just broken through into (i.e., rediscovered)
another model of the Briah/Yesod arrangement.  Multiverse management.

Everybody open up your copy of THE SCIENCE IN SCIENCE FICTION to the
chapter on "Entropy and the end of the universe."  See the diagram.
(Crudely represented here in only one dimension.)

A====>B<====C====>D

Focus on the middle diagram (or the above charicature), based upon

"Paul Davies' theory that time reverses with each `cosmic bounce'; as
it runs backwards it rejuvenates the universe back to the monobloc we
came from, between B and C, so that AB and CD are identical `ageing
cycles" (p. 87).

This then is the Non-Multiverse Model.  Yesod is not some tachyonic
hyperspace of ftl physics, it is the next incarnation of the universe
where time runs backwards; Abadon is not some flatland subspace, it
is the previous incarnation of the universe where time runs
backwards.  When the Ship sails to the "ends of the Universe," it is
literally the Death of the Universe rather than some Boundary of the
Universe.

Nice in some ways, ugly in others.

The hyperspace model allows the comfortingly easy analogy of a three
story house fitted with conveyor belts: in Yesod, the upstairs, the
belt goes this way; in Briah, the second floor, the belt goes the
opposite way; and who knows what happens in Abaddon, the ground
floor.

=mantis=

*More Wolfe info & archive of this list at http://www.urth.net/urth/

---

From: Derek Bell <dbell at maths.tcd.ie>
Date: Thu, 03 Sep 1998 17:14:54 +0000

In message <199809021728.KAA20095 at lists1.best.com>, m.driussi at genie.com writes:
>(Sure, I enjoy the occasional reverse time story--Ballard did a nice
>one, where they dig up the grave, take the corpse out, lay him on a
>bed and wait for the birth rattle to shake some life into it; then
>follow him through life toward the end where he will be reabsorbed by
>the Great Mother.  Just like that 70s comedy sketch by Father Guido
>Sarducci.And wasn't there an episode of the animated Star Trek <tm>
>series along those lines?)

	I think Philip K. Dick wrote a novel based on that idea; I
think it was called _Counter-clockwise world_. Unfortunately, I
haven't read it, so I can't comment on it, which is unfortunate as
Dick's output varied greatly in quality.

	Derek