{ "export": { "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/3627", "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": 3627, "subject": "Free Live Free round table part 3", "messages": 4, "voices": 4, "first": "2002-12-01T00:30:28+00:00", "last": "2002-12-16T14:55:31+00:00" }, "messages": [ { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Michael Andre-Driussi", "address": "mantis at siriusfiction.com" }, "date": "2002-12-01T00:30:28+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Free Live Free round table part 3", "in_reply_to": null, "reply_link": null, "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Rostrum wrote:\nThe Four Thrones of Narnia, occupied\nby two Sons of Adam and two Daughters of Eve who walk through a magical\ndoor which does something weird to time and changes them from children to\nadults and back again." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "That is an interesting parallel, and I'll leave it to our Oz experts to say\nhow Narnia might be a British \"Oz.\" For the couples I was mentioning\nbefore, well, the Narnia four are all siblings, iirc, and that would be\nincest." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Adam Stephanides wrote:\nI always took it for granted that the four would become the quadrumvirate of\nthe prediction who, having improved themselves by merging with their past\nselves, would take power and overthrow the forces of Big Government who had\ndestroyed Free's house, killed Free and set out to crush the dreams of the\nfour. As you say, it can hardly be a coincidence that Madame Serpentina uses\nthe same word both times; and the book as a whole seems to lead up to this\nconclusion." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Well . . . maybe. This \"Libertarian\" reading holds up well until it\nbecomes clear that Free is killed by his own daughter (the \"anti-Electra,\"\nI guess); and that the \"big rich powerful conspiracy group\" is not Big\nGovernment at all, but Whitten and his merry band, who are mostly acting in\nthe dark trying to find their own Whitten. One begins to suspect that\nWhitten/Free may have been acitvely responsible for getting the wrecking\nball to come in the first place, as opposed to just passively allowing the\ntaxes to go unpaid or whatever while he was jaunting about through time.\n\nIt also seems to me that if \"frontier living\" were the answer, the four\nwould simply escape into the past and happily live out their natural lives\nin the 19th century. But if this were the case, then Candy would be\nwearing a calico dress or something like that in the epilogue.\n\nOn to the tricky business of having three Whittens in 1983:\n\nMy question centers around the Whitten they talk to in High Country. At\nfirst I thought that his presence would cause the second disappearance of\n\"the man in the duffle coat\" (whose first disappearance when Free appeared\ncaused the time-patrol crisis), but Whitten says that isn't so, that\nduffle-coat deserted. (But in the timeline Wolfe wrote, duffle-coat\ndisappears a second time about the time that the four interview Whitten at\nHigh Country; duffle-coat doesn't desert until two days later.) I've said\nthat there are, say, seven years of subjective time between duffle-coat\nWhitten and High Country interview Whitten. So, following the logic,\nduffle-coat Whitten spent seven years optimizing the scenario and ended up\nby arriving at High Country to do the interview.\n\nBut then High Country interview (HCI) Whitten says that he hopes that when\nduffle-coat Whitten deserted (wouldn't that be \"will desert\"?) he went to\n\"a better time.\"\n\nSo who is HCI Whitten? Is he a bubble-persona who is about to be loped off\nin a time-loop implosion? Or is he Free, fresh from the frontier for this\none job in 1983, then back to the 19th century frontier until he leaves it\nfor good in 1819? But if he is fresh from the frontier, then why the\nambiguity over where duffle-coat went/will go? (I start to wonder if HCI\nWhitten is the Whitten who followed orders the orginial orders and stayed\nat High Country as long as possible.)\n\nI'm trying to track the gizmos. When Whitten & co. came to 1982 from 1942,\nthey bought the Magic Carpet and kept their portable gizmo there. When\nduffle-coat deserts, he takes the portable from Magic Carpet and walks\nthrough the gizmo at Free's house (according to the Wolfe timeline) . . .\nwhich would do what for him, exactly? Send him back to Summer 1983? So\nwhat. He is trying to get to 1803, as far as I can tell.\n\nOnce he gets to 1803, then it is easy enough to see how he can go back and\nforth from frontier to house, since the portable gizmo is in the 1800s and\nthe house gizmo is in the 1900s.\n\nIt gets a little tricky when the timeline says in 1819 Free leaves the\nfrontier and conceals the portable gizmo in the wall of the house. What is\nthe timeframe of the house where the gizmo goes into the wall? If it is\n1819, then that makes sense, in that the portable gizmo and the house gizmo\nare the same gizmo at different stages: but they are linked, so it is 1819\nin the kitchen and 1983 on the back porch..\n\nOTOH, if Free put it into the house as he was =leaving= the frontier, then\nhow was there a gizmo in place for him to jump to the house from the\nfrontier . . . oh, wait, because he was =going= to put it in the wall when\nhe left the frontier . . . so that it had a presence in 1980s even though\nhe had not actually done the deed until 1819 . . .\n\nOkay, so the house is a time station with endpoints 1819 and 1983? Well\nhow can that be, since Free seems to exit it at 1982 if not also some times\nbefore then. So the doorways, though linked, march forward through time\ntogether (always maintaining a fixed separation of maybe 150 years: thus\n19th century house 1819-1833 and 20th century house 1969-1983)? Otherwise\nevery time Free goes through he would rewrite himself the last time he went\nthrough. And, very importantly, the system breaks down if the house is\ndemolished! If the traveler walks his way forward by going from 1983 to\n1833 and then re-enters 1834 to go to 1984, he will become stranded in 1984\nif there is no house there.\n\nHmmm.\n\n\n=mantis=" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Michael Straight", "address": "straight at email.unc.edu" }, "date": "2002-12-02T22:01:05+00:00", "subject": "Re: (urth) Free Live Free round table part 3", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "On Sat, 30 Nov 2002, Michael Andre-Driussi wrote:\nThat is an interesting parallel, and I'll leave it to our Oz experts to say\nhow Narnia might be a British \"Oz.\" For the couples I was mentioning\nbefore, well, the Narnia four are all siblings, iirc, and that would be\nincest." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Yeah, but you don't really want me to start comparing Free Live Free with\nHeinlein's _Number of the Beast_, do you?\n\n-Rostrum" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Dan'l Danehy-Oakes", "address": "ddanehy at siebel.com" }, "date": "2002-12-02T22:05:21+00:00", "subject": "RE: (urth) Free Live Free round table part 3", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "... the Narnia four are all siblings, \niirc, and that would be incest." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Yeah, but you don't really want me to start comparing Free \nLive Free with Heinlein's _Number of the Beast_, do you?" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Hardly a fair comparison. The two couples in \"The Number of the\nBeast--\" are all the same Person.\n\n(That's not a slam; that is what RAH _intended_ ... if in \ndoubt, go reread the passage where they \"invent\" pantheistic\nmultiple-person solipsism.)" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Adam Stephanides", "address": "adamsteph at earthlink.net" }, "date": "2002-12-16T14:55:31+00:00", "subject": "Re: (urth) Free Live Free round table part 3", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "This response is way late, but..." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "on 11/30/02 6:30 PM, Michael Andre-Driussi at mantis at siriusfiction.com\nwrote:\nAdam Stephanides wrote:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "I always took it for granted that the four would become the quadrumvirate of\nthe prediction who, having improved themselves by merging with their past\nselves, would take power and overthrow the forces of Big Government who had\ndestroyed Free's house, killed Free and set out to crush the dreams of the\nfour. As you say, it can hardly be a coincidence that Madame Serpentina uses\nthe same word both times; and the book as a whole seems to lead up to this\nconclusion." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Well . . . maybe. This \"Libertarian\" reading holds up well until it\nbecomes clear that Free is killed by his own daughter (the \"anti-Electra,\"\nI guess); and that the \"big rich powerful conspiracy group\" is not Big\nGovernment at all, but Whitten and his merry band, who are mostly acting in\nthe dark trying to find their own Whitten." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Having reread the end of FLF (from the man in the duffel coat's speech), I\nsee that I'd gotten the circumstances of Free's death wrong, and that the\nU.S. government is no longer being run from the High Country. But\nnevertheless I think my reading still holds up. When the man in the duffel\ncoat arranges to have the four's dreams crushed, he is acting (he thinks) as\nan agent of Big Government; granted, it's the Big Government of 1942, but I\nvery much doubt that Wolfe thinks the federal government has improved since\nthen. And the man in the duffel coat's speech, it seems to me, establishes\nBig Government as the book's philosophical antagonist, whether or not he\nbelieves it himself at this point.\n\nI see the revelation that Whitten who will become Free is on the High\nCountry, and that he has been \"conspiring\" to help the four (unknown to his\npast self as well as to his subordinates), not as undermining the anti-Big\nGovernment position, but as Wolfe's way of giving the story a fairy-tale\nhappy ending -- like Dorothy learning that she can still get home even\nthough the balloon is gone, if you will.\n\nAnd if the four will not become the quadrumvirate of Madame Serpentina's\nprediction, what was the point of including the prediction at all?\n\n--Adam" } ] } ] }