Future Echoes: Hut in the Jungle +

Son of Witz · 20 Mar 2009, 17:04 · from 2009-March.txt.gz

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From: sonofwitz at butcherbaker.org (Son of Witz)
Date: Fri, 20 Mar 2009 17:04:15 +0000
Subject: (urth) Future Echoes: Hut in the Jungle +
Message-ID: <W68177305235641237568655@webmail27>

Oh, good stuff Watkins.
when you mention time reversing when exceeding the speed of light, that resonates with some of the other meat of this opening passage, the idea of the light being God's shadow.
you're sort of sketching in hard sf terms. When I read the passage I was thinking, Wow, this is sort of a hard SF idea, AND a completely theological idea, And completely poetically surreal, and excellently paradoxical.

shadow chap 24
"The Increate maintains all things in order surely; and the theologicans say light is his shadow. Must it not be then that in darkness order grows ever less, flowers leaping from nothingness into a girl's fingers just as by light in spring they leap from mere filthiness into the air? Perhaps when night closes our eyes there is less order than we believe. Perhaps, indeed, it is this lack of order we perceive as darkness, a randomization of the waves of energy (like a sea), the fields of energy (like a farm) that appear to our deluded eyes---set by light in an order of which they themselves are incapable---to be the real world."

~witz


>-----Original Message-----
>From: John Watkins [mailto:john.watkins04 at gmail.com]
>Sent: Friday, March 20, 2009 09:54 AM
>To: 'The Urth Mailing List'
>Subject: Re: (urth) Future Echoes: Hut in the Jungle +
>
>Dorcas thinks that the Claw works by reversing time.  I've always thought
>that that was wrong-headed--that it just works because it's divine
>power--magic.
>
>Now that I read this passage, however, I'm starting to come around to
>Dorcas's view.  My knowledge of physics is pretty minimal, but I have this
>vague idea that time slows down as one speeds up and would actually go
>backwards if one could exceed the speed of light, which of course is
>impossible.  But if it *weren't *impossible, it would still be *impractical
>*because of the tremendous amount of energy it would take...unless one had
>the ability to channel some kind of divine energy, flowing from a higher
>plane of existence, much like Severian does.  Maybe that's *exactly *how the
>Claw works, and this thing about the flower leaping into being is a hint of
>that.
>
>On Fri, Mar 20, 2009 at 12:48 PM, Son of Witz <sonofwitz at butcherbaker.org>wrote:
>
>>
>> >-----Original Message-----
>> >From: Adam Thornton [mailto:adam at io.com]
>> >Sent: Friday, March 20, 2009 09:44 AM
>> >To: 'The Urth Mailing List'
>>  >Subject: Re: (urth) Future Echoes:  Hut in the Jungle +
>> >
>> >
>> >On Mar 20, 2009, at 11:38 AM, Son of Witz wrote:
>> >
>> >> "Beside me, Dorcas plucked a water hyacinth and put it in her hair.
>> >> Except for the vague spot of white on the bank some distance ahead,
>> >> it was the first flower I had seen in the Garden of Endless Sleep; I
>> >> looked for others, but saw none. Is it possible the flower came into
>> >> being only because Dorcas reached for it? In daylight moments, I
>> >> know as well as the next that such things are impossible;"
>> >
>> >So, it's not hyacinths.
>> >
>> >Oh.  Hyacinth.
>> >
>> >Um.  Anyway, so, it's not hyacinths, but as long as we're doing
>> >temporally-reversed scenes, how about when the monster drowns the
>> >little girl who's tossing the flower petals into the pool in the
>> >Karloff _Frankenstein_?  Here we have the time reversal where Dorcas
>> >is produced from the pool, and then the flower petals.
>> >
>> >I'm probably just seeing spectres.
>> >
>> >Adam
>>
>>
>> I seem to see the wispy edges of a ghost there...
>>
>> ~witz
>>
>>
>>
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>

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