Travelling North aka miscellaneous thoughts on Wolfe

Tim O'Donnell · 04 Jun 2010, 08:32 · from 2010-June.txt.gz

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From: timodonn at gmail.com (Tim O'Donnell)
Date: Fri, 4 Jun 2010 09:32:07 +0100
Subject: (urth) Travelling North aka miscellaneous thoughts on Wolfe
Message-ID: <AANLkTimGGu1pevxAL2SRefluavilHvVimOjeFGwCkK6Y at mail.gmail.com>

>From: Jerry Friedman <jerry_friedman at yahoo.com>
>But I see two possibilities in addition to Mr. Wolfe's starting with the
idea that Urth was in our future and retconning it into a past universe.
One is the >apparently Brunian possibility that different universes and
iterations will have overwhelming similarities for reasons we don't
understand (unless Josh does).  >In that case many or all of the universes
have the names "Robert" and "Marie" at some point ("Marie" coming from
"Miriam" even though there was no Mary >Mother of Jesus).  Even the saints'
names could be names of exemplary people who were equivalent to the saints
of our world.

I always thought Wolfe answered questions about the nature of Christ in
Severian's universe obliquely but definitively in BOTNS.  Time is not linear
and future events influence past events.  The legend of Baldanders and his
doctor ripple through time to inspire our own Dr Frankenstein.  A stone
dropped in a pond sends ripples in all directions and I believe the analogy
holds here; time is not linear and immutable but elastic and intertwined.
As things such as Christianity exist in our universe and have such a
strong influence they can (and in my opinion do) send ripples of influence
to Severian - wherever he is placed.
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