{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/1676",
    "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": 1676,
    "subject": "Wolfe and Teilhard de Chardin",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "1999-06-09T19:11:30+00:00",
    "last": "1999-06-09T19:11:30+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0027-0077@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Nigel Price",
        "address": "nigelprice1 at compuserve.com"
      },
      "date": "1999-06-09T19:11:30+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) Wolfe and Teilhard de Chardin",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Following the recent discussion on the this list, I decided that it really\nwas time I got round to reading the copy of James Blish's \"A Case of\nConscience\" that has been sitting on my shelf for the last 25 years or so. \nI'm about two-thirds of the way through so far, and enjoying it very much,\nalthough I can't see much obvious thematic or stylistic connection with\nWolfe at this stage.  \n\nSeeking a little background information on Blish and ACoC, I consulted the\nGrolier SF CD-ROM encyclopedia, where I found the following passage in the\nessay on \"Religion\":\n\n        The 1950s also saw a remarkable proliferation of images \n        obviously allied to religious notions but shorn of their \n        association with actual religious doctrine. Arthur C. Clarke \n        has said that any religious symbolism or imagery in \n        CHILDHOOD'S END (1950; exp 1953) is \"entirely accidental\", \n        although the text itself refers to the climax as an \"apotheosis\" \n        and the events described there are strikingly -- but \n        coincidentally -- similar to Teilhard de Chardin's notion of the \n        coming-together of displaced planetary \"noospheres\" at an \n        apocalyptic \"Omega Point\". Clifford D. Simak's Time and Again \n        (1951; vt First He Died) is similarly free of formal doctrine, \n        although the alien symbionts which infest all living things are \n        obviously analogous to souls (> ESCHATOLOGY). In later \n        works by Simak -- particularly A Choice of Gods (1972) and \n        Project Pope (1981)-religious ideas do become explicit, and \n        here again there are strong echoes of a Teilhardian schema. \n        Sf works explicitly based on Teilhard's ideas are \n        George ZEBROWSKI's The Omega Point Trilogy \n        (2 parts published 1972, 1977; omni, including 3rd part, 1983) \n        and Gene WOLFE's The Book of the New Sun (1980-83) and \n        The Urth of the New Sun (1987 UK). The syncretic approach \n        of these stories, which blends the religious and scientific \n        imaginations, contrasts with uncompromising stories using \n        TIME TRAVEL and other facilitating devices directly to confront \n        the central symbol of the Christian faith: the crucifixion. \n\n\nI've never read any Teilhard de Chardin, so I can't really comment.  \n(Though I borrowed one of his books from a friend this evening, and even\nmanaged to find out what a \"noosphere\" was.  As far as I can understand, it\nis that aspect of the human mind, considered from a developmental point of\nview, which is devoted to the comprehension of abstract concepts.  So\nthere!)\n\nHas his possible influence on Wolfe ever been discussed on the Urth list? \nIf so, what conclusions were reached?  If not, is anyone sufficiently well\nread in this area to comment?\n\n\"A Case of Coscience\" is an interesting, but strange book.  As others have\nintimated on this list, Father Ramon's logic is more than a little odd when\nit comes to assessing the Lithians.  It's partly that the book, though set\nlong post-Vatican 2, was, of course, written very much before Vatican 2, so\nBlish's model of Catholicism, whilst it is intended to be futuristic,\nnevertheless comes over as somewhat dated and anachronistic.  Other than\nthat, I can't make up my mind whether it's a peculiar twist in Blish's own\nthinking, or the effect of the novel's technique, which is to set the main\ncharacters against each other in a sort of chiaroscuro dialectic,\nreminiscent in both its brilliance and its staginess of George Bernard Shaw\nat his most argumentative.  (There are parts of the first book of ACoC\nwhich are actually set out as dramatic dialogue, as if written for a play.)\n I like it, but it is odd.  An elegant book, but maybe ever so slightly\ntwisted.\n\nOr is that just me?\n\nNigel Price\nMinety, Wiltshire, England\nhttp://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/nigelprice1/"
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}