The Morality of the Hierogrammates

Paul B · 23 Jul 2007, 22:06 · from 2007-July.txt.gz

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From: pb.stuff at gmail.com (Paul B)
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2007 18:06:31 -0400
Subject: (urth) The Morality of the Hierogrammates
Message-ID: <3e1fa2e90707231506l1e4945c2o5108359a199d8987 at mail.gmail.com>

I recently read the archive discussion about the theodicean aspect of BotNS,
and the morality and necessity of the flood that accompanies the new sun.
One thing struck me, and if it's old hat, then I've not been thorough enough
in reading the archives.  That thing is the precipitous pace of the flood,
which apparently takes Urth in a matter of days and surprises those at the
House Absolute by the time that Severian shows up.  A flood of Biblical
proportions, if you will.

Now, one thing that has been jokingly asked of that one, can be seriously
asked of this: where does the water come from?  Though Wolfe seems to be
fond of supernatural means having scientific explanations, this one is
puzzling if one only ties it to the new sun.

Firstly, if there is enough water to begin with in the form of ice, how does
it melt so quickly?  A warmer sun would seemingly also have to cook
everything alive on the surface to provide enough energy to melt an amount
of ice greater than Earth's in a matter of days.
Secondly, assuming Urth has a similar amount of water, solid and liquid, as
Earth does, it doesn't seem even possible that there's enough to flood the
land to the extent Severian describes.

While saying "the powerful aliens did it" can be seen as something of a
cop-out for explaining Urth's mysteries, in this case I can't come up with
an endogenous, natural, explanation.
Thus, my hypothesis is that the flood accompanying the new sun wasn't necessary
as an attribute of the sun's renewal, at least not on that epic a scale.
However, it may have been necessary for the social engineering the
Hierogrammates were attempting, the reboot humanity out of its torpor.

That sort of global upheaval is best presented with another, the coming of
the new sun, and this may in fact be why they repeatedly inform Severian
that there will be a flood, just so he doesn't get surprised and start
thinking later.  (This would also answer why they'd choose to save the
billions of Ragnarok Urth, but not the billions of flooded Urth - things are
going as planned on Ushas)

This isn't to say the aliens are malicious, I've read plenty of hypotheses
that give reasons why they'd want a flood, possibly for humanity's long-term
benefit as well as their own, that I agree with enough to not even repeat.
The thing that might be potentially new in what I'm saying is they set up
the flood as a totally separate matter from the new sun, but just passed the
two off as being codependent.

If this isn't new, let me know if it's covered somewhere so as to save
bother.  My search didn't turn it up, at any rate.

Paul
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