Time must have a stop
The Urth list — 3 messages, 3 voices, 16 Dec 2002
https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/3677

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Jerry Friedman — 16 Dec 2002, 21:14

--- Don Doggett <harlekin at earthlink.net> wrote:
[snip]

> Silk's enlightenment and the stoppage of all action on
> the
> ball court are completely separate events.  So again I ask, why did time
> stop on the Whorl?

Because the Outsider wanted it to.

Since I don't have the text here, I'll accept for the sake of
argument your claims that time stopped rather than something else
happening and this is separate from Silk's enlightenment.  Your
contention is that this happened because of some action of the
_Whorl's_ space drive, maybe coming out of FTL (I don't quite
remember what you wrote), and the Outsider miraculously exempted
Silk from this stoppage.  Right?

I would assume--but correct me if I'm wrong--that the Outsider's
choosing this moment wasn't a coincidence.  For some reason the
stoppage of time was a favorable circumstance for his enlightenment
of Silk.  Do I have that right?

But if stopping time was favorable for enlightenment, than the
Outsider (who is omnipotent) could have stopped time on his own. 
And would have--why not?  So we're choosing between the Outsider's
taking advantage of an event in the _Whorl's_ trip to work a miracle,
or the Outsider's working one miracle to create the right set-up for
another.

If we had some independent evidence that the _Whorl_ did have FTL,
and (better) that Wolfe's imagined FTL involved time stopping at some
point, then your suggestion would tempt me.  But as it is, the
possibility that the Outsider is directly responsible for everything
Silk experiences seems much easier to believe.

  --
  Jerry Friedman

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Chris — 16 Dec 2002, 22:00
  follows, by subject match Jerry Friedman

> But as it is, the
> possibility that the Outsider is directly responsible for everything
> Silk experiences seems much easier to believe.

Thanks Jerry, this is, essentially, not far from what I proposed in my post 
as a reasonable alternate explanation, and which Don didn't address in his 
reply. Basically, the Outsider is directly responsible, possibly by means of 
Silk having an embolism. The embolism is much easier to believe than the FTL 
explanation, if we're looking only for the most believable/possible answer.

I am not a crusader against the Blushas theory, though I do not believe it. 
I just think there are more fertile grounds to pursue the question than this 
particular line. In the absolute best case, if one proves beyond reasonable 
doubt that FTL did occur, one merely proves that the Blushas theory is *not 
impossible* - it does nothing to establish its truth. And there are much 
easier ways to show that Blushas is not impossible, without resorting to 
FTL. You could say that the ship went in a circle, or it might never have 
even left the solar system in the first place. There are arguments against 
both of these, too, I grant, but they both require less justification.

Chris

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Don Doggett — 17 Dec 2002, 03:44
  follows, by subject match Chris

> Jerry Friedman wrote:
> If we had some independent evidence that the _Whorl_ did have FTL,
> and (better) that Wolfe's imagined FTL involved time stopping at some
> point, then your suggestion would tempt me.  But as it is, the
> possibility that the Outsider is directly responsible for everything
> Silk experiences seems much easier to believe.

Fair enough.  The thing I think that keeps me drawn to my theory is the fact
that Marble's internal clock is off by three thousand years (well 2,700)
soon after Silk's enlightenment. I know that's circumstantial evidence and
everything is breaking on the Whorl, but it seems compelling to me.

Don

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