Science catches up to the New Sun

David Stockhoff · 15 Dec 2008, 00:07 · from 2008-December.txt.gz

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From: dstockhoff at verizon.net (David Stockhoff)
Date: Sun, 14 Dec 2008 19:07:36 -0500
Subject: (urth) Science catches up to the New Sun
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James---

I see what you mean by the guitar strings analogy now. Yes, perhaps the implications of the gods' failures need not be absolute, nor strictly limited to the universe where they happen. Yesod's actual workings remain unknown. 

Of course the text doesn't supply any clues to a guitar-string model, and I'm inclined to think that Wolfe intends every "echo" in TBotNS to have a very precise and particular mechanism. For example, the Conciliator is known in the past because he went there and Conciliated. The whole novel is constructed of such mechanisms, plotwise, and it required a lot of work.

Even though I can accept the idea of temporal resonance in general and its usefulness in Wolfean cosmologies in particular, Wolfe plots this story specifically to avoid any such concept, I think. 

So many other writers will simply appeal to that vague concept, and indeed have done so---even Frank Herbert, for example, engages in a certain amount of hand-waving about prophecies. Wolfe may rely on cross-universe resonance for TAD and TWK (trickle-down Platonism?), but I don't see it here. 

---------------------------------------------------------------------

Adjacent dimensions are like adjacent parallel guitar strings that are tuned 
to the same note. When you play one, the other vibrates. Consequently 
adjacent dimensions seem to be similar. In "There Are Doors", men in the 
other dimension wear black at their weddings because men will die shortly 
after sex. But in our dimension, we do it because THEY do it. Well, what 
would have happened if a manvantara next to the Hieros's did not have the 
Hieros escape? What if they were never created? It could be a problem. What 
if another race of beings escaped to Yesod and began tinkering with other 
manvantara as the Hieros did?

It could be seen as a matter of existential importance for the Hieros to 
continue the process for every nearby manvantara and then for ever 
manvantara near those.

J.

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