Subject: (urth) arcologies like mountains

From: Michael Andre-Driussi <mantis at siriusfiction.com>
Date: Tue, 16 Jul 2002 23:44:27 +0000

Blattid wrote:
>The 97 Kyear figure is _very_ debateable, and I for one hold it to be
>completely implausible ... we're talking a sufficient amount of time
>so that the ruins of ancient human civilizations have been uplifted in
>the bodies of new mountains (which, of course, are then carved into the
>figures of Urth's vain rulers). That doesn't happen in less than multiple
>millions of years.

Oh dear, back to this chestnut.

Yes, the 97 Kyear figure is _very_ debateable.  (For all sorts of reasons.
Let a thousand timelines bloom!)

But, as far as I am concerned, so is the notion that the "mountains" are
natural (especially the single cliff that is being referred to here,
however obliquely).  I'm sure anyone who has read Olaf Stapledon can
instantly recall the supercities like continental coral reefs that sprout
up in superscience civilizations -- indeed, they are rather puny compared
with Asimov's "full metal planet" of Trantor.  The concept is rather a
staple of sf, and iirc, the brown book says that non-humans built vast
cities like "banks of cloud" (note scale) and like "skeletons of dragons"
(note fossil imagery) on Urth after the zenith of the Empire.

As for "multiple millions," Wolfe has written, more than once, iirc, that
it is "perhaps" one million years distant (which I have always taken as an
outer limit rather than an inner limit, because of the qualifier).  FWIW.

=mantis=

SIRIUS FICTION
booklets on Gene Wolfe, John Crowley
Lexicon Urthus out of print!
http://www.siriusfiction.com/

--

---

From: matthew.malthouse <matthew.malthouse at guardian.co.uk>
Date: Wed, 17 Jul 2002 09:45:51 +0000

>outer limit rather than an inner limit, because of the qualifier).  FWIW.

The single cliff I might have swallowed.  But there is more than that.

As Severian travels north he comes to new mountains, sharp, uncarved
(which also touches upon the time between Typhon and tBotNS). The raising
of new mountain ranges by conscious intervention rather than eon-long
techtonic activity would have been an event of staggeraing magnitude to
rival the coming of the New Sun itself.  The lack of mention of such an
event could be allowed but set against it is the long continuity (of
decline, to be sure) implied in the whole atmosphere of the Commonwealth.

Yeuch, I just don't believe it.

Matthew

--

---

From: Michael Andre-Driussi <mantis at siriusfiction.com>
Date: Wed, 17 Jul 2002 13:50:15 +0000

Matthew wrote:
>(which also touches upon the time between Typhon and tBotNS).

Nope, not in the text I read.  If you can find it again, please tell.
(Perhaps you are mistakenly thinking of URTH and the era of Apu Punchau.)

> The raising

You don't have to believe it.  There are plenty of readers who believe, for
example, that the Old Sun is dying of natural causes; or that Lune's orbit
is a natural function of time rather than engineering; or that all those
weird animals evolved on Urth (implying evolutionary time scales); etc.
(Everyone has their own mix and match.)

It seems to me that there are many such cases of misdirection in the text
where things once seem very big and then shrink down.

For the rest: As a matter of fact, I have considered in the past how
artificial continent raising might be a requirement, if only to allow a
certain continent to sink under the waves during a global deluge and not
come up again when the high waters retreat.

But what I was talking about in this case was not whole continents, but
rather mountain ranges.  Of supercities.  Decayed into gigantic tells.

As for the mine at Saltus: well, urk -- do you believe that excavations of
Roman cities prove that they were in place a million years ago?  Probably
not.

=mantis=

--

---

From: matthew.malthouse <matthew.malthouse at guardian.co.uk>
Date: Wed, 17 Jul 2002 14:24:11 +0000

>(Perhaps you are mistakenly thinking of URTH and the era of Apu Punchau.)

Perhaps... vide below.

>(Everyone has their own mix and match.)

The problem is that everyone likes to be "right". The chances of being so
are diminished if one cannot persuade the consensus to ones point of view.
 ;-)

>come up again when the high waters retreat.

You're alluding to the coming of the New Sun?  There's a point there;
either it's too much or not enough.

>rather mountain ranges.  Of supercities.  Decayed into gigantic tells.

One might also consider the usual belief that the Commonwealth is in South
America - and the chnages required to make that fit the geography Severian
travels.

>Roman cities prove that they were in place a million years ago?  Probably

You're right.  I don't.   ;-)

But the point I think was made about the mines is that they are not mining
the crust for raw materials (ores) as we would understand it but mining
the detrius of the past - that's unlikely to be less than many many times
what we'd find today in the whole archological deposit between the Iron
Age and now.

However memory does play tricks.  I was going to finish the current light
reading (Tad William's Memory, Sorrw, Thorn), enjoy my new new one
(Ricardo Pinto's sequel to The Chosen) and then re-read tBotNS - which is
over due.  When I get home I might reconsider those priorities and get
back to you on this in a few weeks time.

Matthew

--

---

From: James Wynn <crushtv at hotpop.com>
Date: Wed, 17 Jul 2002 15:52:21 +0000

I'm inclined toward short-timeline theories myself - simply because I don't
think beyond a maximum of a million years in the future, the characters
could credibly be considered human. Although a review of the archives
reveals a wealth of debate on this subject, I wasn't on the list then. ;-)
So I'll offer my pennies:
Mantis wrote:
As for the mine at Saltus: well, urk -- do you believe that excavations of
Roman cities prove that they were in place a million years ago?  Probably
not.
Matthew Malthouse wrote:
But the point I think was made about the mines is that they are not mining
the crust for raw materials (ores) as we would understand it but mining
the detrius of the past - that's unlikely to be less than many many times
what we'd find today in the whole archological deposit between the Iron
Age and now.
>From the beginning of the Bronze Age til now - 5000 years --- the currently
available technologically-advanced archeological artifacts available for us
to "mine", is still impressive.
Imagine that extended to 100,000 years - mostly encompassing the output of
artifacts since the first industrial revolution a mere 250 years ago ---
well, one could probably mine for generations in the New Jersey garbage
dumps even if we shut them down today.

-- Crush

--

---

From: Dan'l Danehy-Oakes <ddanehy at siebel.com>
Date: Wed, 17 Jul 2002 16:17:12 +0000

> Oh dear, back to this chestnut.

More of a walnut, I think. A hard nut to crack.

> Let a thousand timelines bloom!)

Bravo!

> But, as far as I am concerned, so is the notion that the 
> "mountains" are natural (especially the single cliff that
> is being referred to here, however obliquely).  

I was not referring to the single cliff; others have mentioned
the mines of Saltus, (which are pretty darn deep down), the
newer mountains ... 

... and perhaps the most important piece of evidence, which 
I didn't cite because I'm not prepared to go and reread the 
whole darn thing right now looking for one sentence: but ... 
somewhere in there it's mentioned that Urth's core has cooled
solid. And that is not going to happen in the next 97K years,
or the next million.

> I'm sure anyone who has read Olaf Stapledon can instantly recall
> the supercities like continental coral reefs that sprout up in
> superscience civilizations -- indeed, they are rather puny compared
> with Asimov's "full metal planet" of Trantor. The concept is rather
> a staple of sf, 

Well, yeah (though it's not a full metal planet; it's a planet
with a full metal jacket ... later, after some of the metal has
been stripmined, people can farm on Trantor). And my own favorite
examples of this, the plastic-coated planet of Bunch's "Moderan"
and the continental cities of Wingrove's "Chung Kuo." Posdef a
known and negotiable trope of the stfnal ecology: I grant that
readily. (Indeed, the Autarch's palace may be an example.)

Still: while I have no textual proof of this, in my first reading
of tSotL, and since, I didn't read the cliff that way at all --
a standard SF trope _did_ enter my mind, but the emblematic
example of the trope was the "apartment mine" in the original
film of PLANET OF THE APES. (Where, granted, it is unlikely that
"millions" of years have passed...)

> and iirc, the brown book says that non-humans built vast cities
> like "banks of cloud" (note scale) and like "skeletons  of
> dragons" (note fossil imagery) on Urth after the zenith of the Empire.

...and? I don't imagine you'll disagree if I say that the stories in 
"Wonders" are _not_, in general, to be taken as historically factual
(in the universe of the discourse). Aside from the blatantly poetic
language, I also expect these descriptions to be, well, exaggerated.

> outer limit rather than an inner limit, because of the qualifier).  FWIW.

And I have always taken it as typical Lupine vupinity ... "perhaps one 
million years" doesn't actually commit Wolfe to anything.

--Dan'l

Bluebird, what do you see? 

--

---

From: Dan'l Danehy-Oakes <ddanehy at siebel.com>
Date: Wed, 17 Jul 2002 16:20:38 +0000

Mantis quoted Matthew...

> (Perhaps you are mistakenly thinking of URTH and the era of 

Well, that's certainly what I was thinking of; and in context, I'm 
pretty darn sure that those are the same mountains that Typhon and
company later carve into their effigies.

--

---

From: David A Baird <david.baird at skynet.be>
Date: Wed, 17 Jul 2002 16:44:53 +0000

OK, I also remember reading the bit about the Urth's core cooling. Also, the
Hieros/Hierogrammates/Hierodules are creations from Urths past and now they
want the new sun so that Urth can regain it's glory and then in turn
recreate them again. 100K years seems too few for such a cycle.

--

---

From: Andy Robertson <andywrobertson at clara.co.uk>
Date: Wed, 17 Jul 2002 14:12:32 +0000

----- Original Message -----
From: "Dan'l Danehy-Oakes" <ddanehy at siebel.com>

> > Let a thousand timelines bloom!)

Bravo indeed.

I think we simply have to face the fact that the poetic elements of the
"Dying Earth" which Wolfe put in can not be rigorously justified in SF
terms.

The book is really about an Earth which is so old the Sun is dying.  (Anyone
else here think one root is the dying universe of Charn in the Narnia
stories?)

All the stuff about a black hole causing it has been shoehorned in
afterwards, and the "poetic" elements do not really make scientific sense.
Deal with it.

    hartshorn

--

---

From: Crush <crushtv at hotpop.com>
Date: Wed, 17 Jul 2002 18:41:07 +0000

David A Baird said:

... the Hieros/Hierogrammates/Hierodules are creations from Urths past and
now they
want the new sun so that Urth can regain it's glory and then in turn
recreate them again. 100K years seems too few for such a cycle.

Wait a minute. I don't think I'm understanding this point. What possible
limitations of time could the Hieros offer? They go backwards in Time, go
outside of Time, drop in on Time. I presumed that Hieros were created in a
future far beyond the Age of the BothNS.

--

---

From: Dan'l Danehy-Oakes <ddanehy at siebel.com>
Date: Wed, 17 Jul 2002 18:53:17 +0000

Crush quoted David and said...

> > ... the Hieros/Hierogrammates/Hierodules are creations from 
> > Urths past and now they want the new sun so that Urth can
> > regain it's glory and then in turn recreate them again. 100K
> > years seems too few for such a cycle.

> Wait a minute. I don't think I'm understanding this point. 
> What possible limitations of time could the Hieros offer?
> They go backwards in Time, go outside of Time, drop in on
> Time. I presumed that Hieros were created in a future far
> beyond the Age of the BothNS.

Well, while you're right that the Hieros don't help us set up 
any kind of time limits, it's a _little_ more complicated than
that -- it's established in UotNS that the Hieros are from an
"earlier" cycle of the universe. If there is any meaningful
time-relationship at all (and I question this, since "time"
is only a meaningful measurement within a given spacetime),
it's to be measured in Sagans of years.

I would while away the hours smoking all the flowers and shooting up the
rain

--

---

From: David A Baird <david.baird at skynet.be>
Date: Wed, 17 Jul 2002 19:23:12 +0000

If there's no time limitation to the Hieros activity then why do they rely
on Urth regaining it's power?
----- Original Message -----
From: "Crush" <crushtv at hotpop.com>
To: <urth at urth.net>
Sent: Wednesday, July 17, 2002 8:41 PM
Subject: RE: (urth) arcologies like mountains

--

---

From: James Wynn <crushtv at hotpop.com>
Date: Thu, 18 Jul 2002 16:14:26 +0000

David A Baird said:
... the Hieros/Hierogrammates/Hierodules are creations from Urths past and
now they want the new sun so that Urth can regain it's glory and then in
turn recreate them again. 100K years seems too few for such a cycle.

Crush asked:

David responded:
If there's no time limitation to the Hieros activity then why do they rely
on Urth regaining its power?

Now Crush says:
Because...oh wait... now I understand your timeline. You are saying that the
Hieros are created between our time and Severian's and that they are backing
the new Sun in order to have themselves created a second time around? Right?

That's not the way I read tUotNS. My recollection of my reading was that
their ORIGINAL creation had been brought about by beings created by
humankind AFTER the New Sun's advent, AND that those beings would *never* be
created in the Future where the Dying Sun continues to decline.  Dan'l has
offered another fold, saying that the Hieros are created during a previous
universe-cycle - I'll have to re-read the book I guess. But even so, all
this takes place (relatively speaking) AFTER the advent of the New Sun.

Hence, the Hieros are not goosing the Urth toward the New Sun just to
replicate themselves in the future. They are ensuring their own original
creation. And with Dan'l,s twist the possibility arises that THEIR eventual
creation is necessary for humanity's development (and the Hiero's creation,
etc.).

Twisted enough for ya?
--Crush

--