{ "export": { "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/328", "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": 328, "subject": "Old now is Urth, and none may count her days", "messages": 4, "voices": 3, "first": "1998-01-31T13:14:48+00:00", "last": "1998-02-01T11:06:49+00:00" }, "messages": [ { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Charles Dye", "address": "raster at highfiber.com" }, "date": "1998-01-31T13:14:48+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Old now is Urth, and none may count her days", "in_reply_to": null, "reply_link": null, "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Even Jove nods.\n\nUnless someone (Dr. Talos? mantis?) is faking the geological and\narcheological evidence, there's a _lot_ more time than that.\n\nThe only out I see for the geology is that during the era of starflight\n(as described in the \"Pandora's Box\" story -- remarkably like Cordwainer\nSmith's future, by the way), there was enough power and energy to\nresculpt the entire face of Urth, and someone did." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "And the geological changes are trivial compared with the selenographical!\nThe terraforming of Lune appears to be complete even in Typhon's reign." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "The only out I see for the archeology is that a Trantor-like world-city\ngrew and then died before someone started twiddling the geography.\n\nBut I still don't see this happening in two chiliads." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Severian drops numerous hints of an ancient Urth. Unfortunately, most are\nin throwaway lines that are easy to miss, easy to forget, and difficult\nto locate again when you want 'em. (Now where's that reference to\n\"polychrome sand\" again?)\n\nFor instance, at the end of chapter 13 of \"Sword\" Severian mentions the\ncessation of plate tectonics. The physician in chapter 36 of \"Urth\"\nseems to support this: earthquakes are much less frequent in Typhon's\nday than they had been previously, infrequent enough for the commoners\nto have largely forgotten them.\n\nIs two millenia long enough for the oceans to cover beaches with\npowdered cokebottles? Maybe, but I don't see it. Could human beings\ndegenerate to phosphorescent cave-apes in two thousand years? (Jonas\nand Severian agree that they have not been tampered with.) Worse,\nJonas suggests that the man-apes predate Typhon. Stephen Jay Gould,\nwatch out! Our equilibrium is about to be punctuated!\n\nWildest suggestion of antiquity: Severian's careless hint in chapter 1\nthat the universe no longer expands. File this one in the tens-of-\ngigayears-to-never range.\n\nraster at highfiber.com" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "CRCulver", "address": "crculver at aol.com" }, "date": "1998-01-31T21:22:33+00:00", "subject": "Re: (urth) Old now is Urth, and none may count her days", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Someone, I think Dave, said:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "there was enough power and energy to\nresculpt the entire face of Urth, and someone did." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": " I don't think the face of the Earth was entirely rescupted. We have\nlittle evidence in the form of graphical topography to substantiate this\nclaim. We know that Korea is underwater, and Urth has seven continents, both\ndue to Jonas' comments in _Claw_.\n The first few messages in the Urth Archive discuss a map. If someone\nwould be as kind as to send that to me, or give me an URL for it, I would be\ngrateful.\n\nCharles Dye said:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Severian's careless hint in chapter 1 that the universe no longer expands." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": " File this one in the tens-of-gigayears-to-never range.<\n\n That's news to me. Would you mind typing that sentence or paragraph in?\n\n\nChristopher R. Culver \nhttp://members.aol.com/crculver/index.html\n------------------------------------------------\n\"Ignorance, that light of fools steers a wayward path\"\n-Brendan Perry" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Jim Jordan", "address": "jbjordan at gnt.net" }, "date": "1998-01-31T22:18:40+00:00", "subject": "Re: (urth) Old now is Urth, and none may count her days", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "\tSurely it is rather obvious that Wolfe's reference to 1 or 2 thousand\nyears is not from \"our\" time to Severians, but from Typhon's.\n\tNow, how old is it? Mantis says not as old as often thought, because of\nthe black hole in the sun. I've asked him for evidence that this black hole\nwas artifically introduced.\n\tIn Dr. Talos's play, Gabriel tells Nod that he has arrived 50 million\nyears too late. So, when did human beings appear on earth/urth? You get\nhuman culture not much farther back than 6000 BC, being generous. I think\nthe idea that human beings lived before then -- humans as we know them --\nis pretty fantastic. People are builders, and also create generations. But,\nlet's nod to ideas that Wolfe himself probably does not believe, and say\nthat \"Adam and Eve and Nod and Cain\" lived a million years ago! We still\nhave 49 million years to go to get to the time of Severian -- no matter how\nthe black hole got into the sun. (Assuming Talos is correct, of course.)\n\tNope. Until convinced otherwise, I'm assuming a Vancean \"Dying Earth\" in\nboth scenario AND chronology.\n\nContentiously, nay, outright viciously,\n\nNutria" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Charles Dye", "address": "raster at highfiber.com" }, "date": "1998-02-01T11:06:49+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Old now is Urth, and none may count her days", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "CRCulver at aol.com asks:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "Charles Dye said:\nSeverian's careless hint in chapter 1 that the universe no longer expands.\nFile this one in the tens-of-gigayears-to-never range." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "That's news to me. Would you mind typing that sentence or paragraph in?" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "A more useful reference wouldn't hurt either, huh? That's chapter 1 of\n\"Urth.\" Severian, recalling his determination to launch his manuscript\nentirely out of his universe, ponders:\n\n ... And I marveled to recall that all this had seemed too small for\n my ambition, and wondered whether it had grown (thought the mystes\n declare it no longer grows) or I had.\n\nAt first I figured that this is what comes of receiving your \"scientific\"\neducation from leeches. But Severian credits \"the mystes\" for this tidbit,\nnot Mal & Pal. He's either picked this up from a book, or during his years\nat the House Absolute. (Still can't be right, though. Can it?)\n\nraster at highfiber.com" } ] } ] }