The argument for Intractability

Dave Tallman · 22 Dec 2008, 18:43 · from 2008-December.txt.gz

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From: davetallman at msn.com (Dave Tallman)
Date: Mon, 22 Dec 2008 11:43:43 -0700
Subject: (urth) The argument for Intractability
Message-ID: <1bf4dd40812221043q34a5e87bk826153576b234c07 at mail.gmail.com>

I don't believe Wolfe does intractable time loops, whether in "Free Live
Free" or in "The Book of the New Sun." (I don't think "Pirate Freedom" is
intractable either, though I haven't worked that one out as well).

Intractable time loops imply no free will -- everything happens as it does
because that's the way it has always happened. Chains of events that are
built up from multiple iterations, carrying back knowledge from future to
past, can be done with free will intact. In "The Book of the New Sun" we
have an agency that can keep things on track -- the Hierogrammates and
Hierodules are time-traveling through history and fixing things. They can
create place-holders like a Conciliator-like religion, the autarchy, and the
Guild, if they deem them necessary as preconditions for the emergence of the
New Sun. Once a good candidate appears, they can fix up his life as much as
desired and splice him back into history to replace their earlier
bootstraps.

The trickiest thing is his birth. Even if the Hierodules ensured the meeting
of Ouen and Catherine under similar conditions, the odds are millions to one
that the exact genetic combination will be re-created. Thus it seems likely
that Catherine was sent back in time already pregnant with a cloned embryo
of Sev1. (I believe Catherine is the woman we see under guard in UotNS on
the day of the deluge).
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