What's So Great About Ushas?

thalassocrat at nym.hush.com · 08 Jun 2008, 10:24 · from 2008-June.txt.gz

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From: thalassocrat at nym.hush.com (thalassocrat at nym.hush.com)
Date: Sun, 08 Jun 2008 20:24:32 +1000
Subject: (urth) What's So Great About Ushas?
Message-ID: <20080608102433.6898911803C at mailserver5.hushmail.com>

On Sun, 08 Jun 2008 17:23:53 +1000 "Roy C. Lackey" 
<rclackey at stic.net> wrote:
>
>The question then becomes: *Why* did the Hierogrammates condemn 
>Urth's
>peoples during Typhon's era?

My reading: because it would lead in the future to the conclusion 
actually reached at the end of UOTNS. 

That is: Sev + a small band of Urth humans (but not too small: I 
suppose the mind-wiped sailors are there to make the gene pool 
viable while at the same time small enough for Sev's genes to 
quickly percolate through the whole race) + a viable planet.

For this, they need an Urth humanity too weak to avoid genocide; 
and the mythos of the New Sun to produce a Sev willing to 
participate in the genocide; whatever line of descent in the 
interim required to produce a Sev with Sev's genes/powers/whatever; 
and a revitalised sun. They use admirable economy of action in 
achieving all of these rnd-points.

[Digression: I still think that the wounding of the sun might in 
fact have happened back in Apu Panchu's day. It takes millions of 
years for photons to travel form the core of the sun to the 
surface. Wound the core, and perhaps the effects will only be 
apparent on the timescales required for this. For the story, I 
think this would be pretty neat thematically: eg the 
Hierogrammate's plans unfolding over practically *all* of human 
history. But anyway ...]

Why did the Hierogrammates want this conclusion? As b_sharp says, 
the whole story about co-evolution is kind of squidgy. Why do the 
Hierogrammates care about recreating the Hieros? They don't need 
them to recreate the Hierogrammates, obviously! Do they just want 
to inflict the pain of some kind of forced evolution? Why would 
they do that? I can believe in the desire for revenge-at-a-remove, 
a little, but why with the goal of creating a superior race? 

(Given that the Hiero-dudes lie, of course I discount anything they 
have to say about this, if it violates basic plausibility.)

Finding a better answer is obviously a matter for speulation. So, I 
speculate ...

In UOTNS XIX Apheta gives us a few crumbs of information about the 
Hieros and their relationship to the Hierogrammates. 

"You say they [the Hieros] desired companions. How could they shape 
companions for themselves, who were themselves ever reaching higher 
and higher? ..... [We have] the appearance of your own race, the 
race that our parents, the Hierogrammates, first set forth to 
follow."

There is no evident reason why she should be lying in this 
instance, so I accept it (provisionally!). 

Evidently, the Hierogrammates followed after the Hieros in the 
latters' quest "higher and higher". I think this brought them to 
Yesod, only to find the Hieros had already departed for some higher 
sphere. Now they want to recreate a race of Hieros, but this time 
under their control. When the new Hieros find the way beyond Yesod, 
the Hierogrammates will be riding with them.

>From this, I think further speculation follows quite easily, about 
why Sev, the progenitor of the new line of Hieros, should 
recapitulate  events from the life of Jesus.

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