Sev's common lineage (another Catherine candidate)

Dave Tallman · 04 Jul 2008, 06:46 · from 2008-July.txt.gz

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From: davetallman at msn.com (Dave Tallman)
Date: Fri, 04 Jul 2008 00:46:19 -0600
Subject: (urth) Sev's common lineage (another Catherine candidate)
In-Reply-To: <000a01c8dd4d$48271400$fbcc4a0c at rclackey.stic.net>
References: <000a01c8dd4d$48271400$fbcc4a0c at rclackey.stic.net>
Message-ID: <486DC73B.2020604 at gmail.com>

Roy C. Lackey wrote:
> Btw, if the woman Sev saw in the loggia on the last day of Urth had anything
> to do with his birth, and if the last day of Urth never happened because
> there was no New Sun, then she would never have been taken back in time that
> day, whether to give birth to him or simply to go nuts in a cell or to
> provide a convenient corpse in the necropolis. In other words, if Silk's
> visit stopped the coming of the New Sun, I don't think Sev would even have
> existed for Silk to meet, particularly if Catherine was born in his future.
>   
I didn't claim the changes Silk made were drastic enough to prevent Sev 
from being the one to bring the New Sun. That could still happen in this 
timeline. What could happen is that Sev would eventually write a 
slightly different BotNS from the one we have, in which he mentioned the 
resemblance of Tigridia to the maid. Or he could lie by omission as he 
often does and write exactly the book we have.

If the changes were sufficient to throw off Sev's destiny, the 
experience of Master Ash suggests that the Tigridia of this timeline 
would fade out to non-existence. (It would be interesting if that's how 
the fight ended -- Juganu would no longer have a reason to stay). But 
she was real enough earlier to have borne Sev, so Sev himself will not 
vanish in this iteration, at least. Silk and crew could have all the 
adventures they wrote about, even if they wiped out the New Sun future. 
(This is assuming that Typhon created the Whorl and sent it off before 
he met the Conciliator, so there are no side-effects on their own history).

We know in Wolfe's time theory that loops which eliminate their own 
causes don't retroactively wrap around and undo themselves. For example, 
once Sev has seen a complete Talos play with the last-day scenes, and 
gone back as the Conciliator to tell about it, he no longer needs to 
make any more trips to that time. The play will be completed using 
information that came from itself. General Whitten's eliminated trip to 
get information about the bomb in "Free Live Free" is another example.

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