{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/542",
    "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": 542,
    "subject": "PEACE/NYRSF, Sev7",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "1998-05-02T15:45:00+00:00",
    "last": "1998-05-02T15:45:00+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0010-0061@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "m.driussi",
        "address": "m.driussi at genie.geis.com"
      },
      "date": "1998-05-02T15:45:00+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) PEACE/NYRSF, Sev7",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "William Ansley,\n\n\"The New York Review of Science Fiction\" ran a detailed timeline\n(by William Schuyler, Jr.) along with Damien Broderick's PEACE piece\na while back (IIRC).  Check their backlist for this and other PEACE\narticles (I think one or two issues before the timeline one they ran\nan article by Schuyler).\n\nvizcacha,\n\nMore responses for you: right, the Urth timeline situation is less\nlike Laumer's WORLDS OF THE IMPERIUM (where every parallel universe\nhas equal validity/reality) or Moorcock's multiverse (ditto) than\nit is like Zelazny's Amber set-up: Amber is the real reality, Courts\nof Chaos is its antithesis, and all the realities between these two\npoles are just shadows.\n\nWhile the Urth situation is more like Amber, it isn't a tight fit.\nYet we do have glimpses of \"shadow\" timelines: the adventures of Sev1\nwho did the quest without any special help or hinderence exists as a\nshadow timeline riding in the future (oh, maybe ten years?) from the\nsubjective lifetime experienced by Sev2 in TBOTNS (again, maybe this\ndefines the Real Present?); the reigns of Vodalus and Baldanders on\nthe Phoenix Throne (note that just as O, B, and F are backtracking\nSev1's rise to the throne through time, helping here and there, they\nare doing exactly the same with Baldanders; i.e., Baldanders and\nSeverian are two horses in the same race, and O, B, and F are betting\nupon the winner that results in the win that they like best); the\nshadow realities of Ushas and Ragnarok.\n\nThis \"effect of the future upon the present,\" while a paradoxical\nmirroring of the effect of the past upon the present, is a point that\nWolfe brings up about the Urth Cycle in the text itself as well as in\nmany interviews and articles.  Time and again he says that Earth may\nhave received wonders from Urth; not in the sense that Urth is located\nin our past, thus restoring the \"natural\" cause/effect sense of \"the\npast shaping the present,\" but in this paradoxical sense of seemingly\ngoing against the timeflow.  (The shadow of Baldanders has caused Mary\nShelley to write FRANKENSTEIN rather than Shelley's FRANKENSTEIN\ninspiring/causing Baldanders to recreate himself as a giant monster;\netc.)\n\nHere, to put it in another way, prosaic and mundane: let's say that\nwhat Wolfe is talking about, the future altering the present, is\nreally just this--people get the future they have in mind, the goal\nthey are working toward.  Just to crank this idea up and give enough\ncontrast to make it clear, I'll cast it into a starkly religious mode\nthat Wolfe never uses: If people have God in hearts and mind,\nthen they are heading towards the future of rebirth by the timeline\nwarping behavior they exhibit; If people do not have God in hearts\nand mind, then they are heading towards the future of final death via\nthe timeline shifting behavior they exhibit (killing Dodos, raping\nthe Earth, etc.).\n\nOkay, enough of that.\n\nNow then, what are the qualities that makes Sev1 the keyman for the\ndoomsday device?  Thinking in mundane skiffy stuff, here, like THE\nANDROMEDA STRAIN.  The guy with the key for the End of the World has\nto be: unmarried, no children, firm in resolve to push the button if\nhe receives the order.  No spouse, no kids--that's so that keyman\ndoesn't get all weepy and hesitant at the end.  \"Firm in resolve\" so\nthat keyman doesn't suddenly find a distracting religion or\nphilosophy on the way to the keyhole.\n\nRight.  So here we have Sev1, a slightly special torturer.  Okay, so\nhe has no spouse, no kids, no family of elders; he is firm in resolve\nand is indifferent to suffering, death, torture.\n\nSev2 is tested.  He is given a wife with a father-in-law and a son.\nHe allows the woman and man to be killed.  He grows fond of the son;\nthe son is killed.  He is offered the Urth; he refuses.  His firmness\nof resolve softens to the point that he breaks with the guild.\n\nSeems to me that the point is: there is precious little difference\nbetween Sev1 (that is to say, an untested-by-trial Sev2) and\nBaldanders for the role of keyman, except for the fact that\nBaldanders wouldn't do it at all (wouldn't leave the throne, get on\nthe ship, go to Yesod, take the test, etc.).  If that is the only\ndifference, then the one who will go (Sev1) must then be optimized in\nhis own past.\n\n=mantis="
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}