Subject: (urth) book of the new sun questions

From: Bruce Hayles <brucehayles at gmail.com>
Date: Tue, 03 Apr 2007 13:11:29 +0000

Urth will only receive a new sun if its epitome is found worthy. Is it
necessary that the epitome of Urth is always an autarch (and a
thousand man in a single body), or could Typhon (if he was willing)
act as an epitome? Was the autarchy created by hierodules to produce a
line of autarchs to be tried in Yesod, and also hold the Commonwealth
stagnant while they were produced? (The last autarch has the
conviction that humanity will return the stars as a divinity or not at
all)

The coming of the New Sun results in the destruction of most of the
Urth, but brings new resources and the New Sun, and a fresh start for
humanity. Is the idea behind this that the epitome (if judged worthy)
is proof that human kind can produce something worthwhile, and so
should get a chance at reconstruction? Why will Urth, now with its new
sun, progress any differently than it did with the  old sun? Is it any
more likely that humanity will go to the stars as a divinity now, as
opposed to going to the stars and conquering worlds (like it did
before)? Since all culture and technology was lost, and humanity is
starting over again, I do not see how it is any more likely. Is it
just another roll of the die then?

If the hierodules are behind the autarchy, why do they still do things
like support Baldanders expressly so he can grow fat with knowledge
and die, dispersing his knowledge to others? How could Baldanders
death possibly affect the line of autarchs? Additionally, since the
last autarch's conviction is that the Commonwealth stagnant while the
line of autarch's march on and face trial at Yesod, why would any
effort be wasted on spreading knowledge? The idea behind the
hierodules sharing knowledge is that it somehow improves those they
share it with, or others indirectly. Ultimately, the hope is to
produce from humanity something close to divinity. If the hierodules
are still working for that with the old sun, what does that mean?

---

From: Dan'l Danehy-Oakes <danldo at gmail.com>
Date: Tue, 03 Apr 2007 20:35:30 +0000

Bruce,

I think the first thing to consider is that the Hierodules may have
more than one reason for interacting with humans. Bringing the
New Sun is their goal; but who says that it's their *only* goal?

On 4/3/07, Bruce Hayles <brucehayles at gmail.com> wrote:
> _______________________________________________
> Urth Mailing List
> To post, write urth at urth.net
> Subscription/information: http://www.urth.net
>

-- 
Dan'l Danehy-Oakes, writer, trainer, bon vivant
-----
http://www.livejournal.com/users/sturgeonslawyer
http://www.danehyoakes.com
Soon, where Toon Town once stood will be a string of gas stations,
inexpensive motels, restaurants that serve rapidly prepared food. Tire
salons, automobile dealerships and wonderful, wonderful billboards
reaching as far as the eye can see. My God, it'll be beautiful.

---

From: Bruce Hayles <brucehayles at gmail.com>
Date: Wed, 04 Apr 2007 00:02:52 +0000

I thought that the overarching goal was to create better intelligences
(though what is better is not clear to me). Severian is asked if he
ever thought there was something more than good and evil, and Apheta
talks about a war against entropy. The way I view this is, they will
bring a sun to race if they believe that the potential of the race to
become something better (a divinity, whatever) justifies the cost of
creating a new sun and taking it there. They also work across time to
make a race worthy of a new sun; it seems that even though they are
judging whether or not a race is worth a new sun, that at the same
time they are always trying to make the race worthy of it, for
example, by helping Baldanders with the hope that he will die and his
knowledge will spread, or by their interactions with Severian.

About entropy: the thing I think they are getting at is creation of
intelligence on a local scale (for example, by evolution), creates a
great deal of information and uses little energy. By making greater
intelligences, they are fighting a war against entropy by creating the
potential for more information on a local scale. It isn't as simple as
"greater intelligences" though, because Baldanders is certainly more
intelligent than Severian but is inhuman, and his path is cast as not
desirable. It seems that there is a criteria beyond intelligence,
also, because the quest for power and conquering stars is cast as
undesirable as well. The path that Typhon would follow is not
desirable. The only thing I can conclude from this is that the real
goal is some sort of balance between chaos and order. The total
control that a tyrant like Typhon brings to many worlds by conquering
them limits information content by resulting in homogeneity. Pure
intelligence that seeks only to extend its own life (Baldanders) can
be viewed as limited at least in the sense that if there was a world
full of people like Baldanders, perhaps the stories that they generate
by existing would be less interesting than the stories of normal
humans. Similarly, a world full of animals might be seen (the
zoanthrops or something) as undesirable because the social
organization of animals is limited, and so the stories we can tell
about them without anthropomorphizing are limited. What this view says
for humanity's ascension to divinity, I am not sure. I would guess
that humanity has the potential to be something like hierodules, going
across time and trying to create the potential for better stories.

---

From: Bob Miller <bob_bageera at hotmail.com>
Date: Wed, 04 Apr 2007 10:56:46 +0000

Bruce,

Well said.  As anyone who has worked in a bureaucracy knows, the goal, the 
purpose and the function may all be at odds with each other.  Granting the 
hierodules better coordination than some bureaucracies, it leaves us with 
the orientation that some things are not and will not be known.  And I find 
Wolfe's advance to that part of the compass marked "unknown", as well as his 
elegant prose and evident compassion, to be a major reason to keep returning 
to his work.

 > are still working for that with the old sun, what does that mean?

Hmmm.  Farmers will "rotate" crops planting great fields whose purpose is 
not to be harvested but to stay in place and prepare the soil for the next 
harvest.   May we reason by analogy from here as well?  I wonder.

_________________________________________________________________
Can’t afford to quit your job? ? Earn your AS, BS, or MS degree online in 1 
year. 
http://www.classesusa.com/clickcount.cfm?id=866145&goto=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.classesusa.com%2Ffeaturedschools%2Fonlinedegreesmp%2Fform-dyn1.html%3Fsplovr%3D866143

---

From: Stuart Hamm <hammstu at sbcglobal.net>
Date: Fri, 06 Apr 2007 13:27:10 +0000

What about Borski's theory that the "New Sun" is a trick to get the people of Urth to believe in this Myth and willingly give themselves and their planet up not for their own good, but for that  of the aliens?

Bruce Hayles <brucehayles at gmail.com> wrote:  I thought that the overarching goal was to create better intelligences

On 4/3/07, Dan'l Danehy-Oakes wrote:
> On 4/3/07, Bruce Hayles 

Stuart Hamm 
1235B 7th Ave 
San Francisco, CA 94122 
415 786 3624
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.urth.net/pipermail/urth-urth.net/attachments/20070406/21e2ecf8/attachment.htm