Subject: (urth) Ex-lurker

From: Roy C. Lackey <rclackey at stic.net>
Date: Tue, 06 Apr 1999 04:02:26 +0000

On 4-5-99 Tony A West wrote:

>>Roy--- I really enjoyed your points.  However, I disagree with you a bit on what you considered to be the most glaringly obvious paradox (or at least it brought up more questions):<<

<snip>

--- this, in my estimation, can be attributed to the fact that the outcome of Sev's trial was yet to be determined... and in response to that we might ask how things like Apu-Punchau, the Claw, and the "legend" of the Conciliator were there (in Sev's past/coming of age) and the white fountain was not.  All of these things could have been locked in place (in the "absolute time" past / Sev's "relative" future) by nothing more than Severian simply getting on Tzadkiel's ship.  Once on, it seems to me that one is then privy to endless possibilities in time.  But the white fountain might, indeed, have been the one thing that was not predetermined...

And what of the "pre-Sev" (absolute time) incidents actually hinge on Severian being the bringer of the white fountain?

Hope this doesn't sound too sophomoric!!!  Been lurking for far too long, pondering the rather esoteric goings-on here.... <<

    Welcome Tony A. West!

    Feel free to disagree; I think it's a requirement for posting here. And
a healthy dose of scleroderma helps. <g>

    BTW, you should turn off the html feature when you post here--plain text
only--to avoid all that html garbage taking up Ranjit's valuable web space.

    As for the logic of what came when; in a circular, time-travel story,
one point on the circumference is about as good as another. If the circle is
broken at any point, the whole thing collapses. I don't have a better answer
than that; I don't know that there is one. If there is one, it may be
related to Wolfe's views on predestination. I don't know whether or not the
views expressed by Silk could be taken as Wolfe's, but on the second page of
chapter V of _Nightside_ he has Silk thinking:

    "...the Outsider had assured him that his regard for him was eternal and
perfect, never to be changed by any act of his, no matter how iniquitous or
how meritorious."

    Now _that_ is predestination, pure and simple. FWIW

Roy

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

---

From: Alex David Groce <adgroce at eos.ncsu.edu>
Date: Tue, 06 Apr 1999 10:34:51 +0000

>     Now _that_ is predestination, pure and simple. FWIW

	Maybe.  But notice the word "eternal"--which would imply the solution
of St. Augustine, that "predestination" means that God's knowledge is outside
time, which is a creation, and therefore perfect foreknowledge doesn't mean
compulsion.  And "regard" is a tricky point too--as far as I'm aware, orthodox
theology of most varieties has God loving everybody always and perfectly--but
people can reject the love.  I would, given Wolfe's Catholicism and general
emphasis on an almost existential freedom, be surprised if he believes in a
Calvinist or similar form of predestination--I'd suspect he falls heavily, even
within the Catholic schools of thought, into the free-will camp.
-- 
"And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free." - John 8:32
--
Alex David Groce (adgroce at eos.ncsu.edu)
Senior (Computer Science/Multidisciplinary Studies in Technology & Fiction)
'98-99 NCSU AITP Student Chapter President
608 Charleston Road, Apt. 1E (919)-233-7366
http://www4.ncsu.edu/~adgroce

---

From: Michael Straight <straight at email.unc.edu>
Date: Tue, 06 Apr 1999 11:13:49 +0000

>     Now _that_ is predestination, pure and simple. FWIW

Predestination?  It sounds to me more like a promise.  The Outsider
doesn't say, "I've seen the future and I know you're not going to do
anything bad enough to make me stop loving you," but "I'll love you no
matter what you do." 

-Rostrum

---

From: Kevin J. Maroney <kmaroney at crossover.com>
Date: Mon, 12 Apr 1999 19:39:29 +0000

At 04:02 AM 4/6/99 -0500, Roy wrote:
>I don't know whether or not the

That's not predestination. That's a statement about the unchanging and
unending love which god has for its creations. The Outsider might not know
what Silk will do--though he probably does, given his role in the
story--but no matter what Silk does, it cannot damage god's love for him.

Wombat, a.k.a. Kevin Maroney kmaroney at crossover.com
Kitchen Staff Supervisor, New York Review of Science Fiction
http://ebbs.english.vt.edu/olp/nyrsf/nyrsf.html