UotNS and how it screws with your head

Cliff Judge · 13 Jul 2010, 20:19 · from 2010-July.txt.gz

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From: transentient at gmail.com (Cliff Judge)
Date: Tue, 13 Jul 2010 16:19:00 -0400
Subject: (urth) UotNS and how it screws with your head
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On Tue, Jul 13, 2010 at 1:38 PM, David Stockhoff <dstockhoff at verizon.net>wrote:

> So you're thinking power could be drained from past Sun to future Sun?
> That's interesting---not what I thought at all. Sensible though.
>
> I assume that all universes coexist, and they are layered like a wedding
> cake, or like Able's world. Love flows from the top. Rotating spigots moved
> by elves and fairies control the flow. Devils punch holes in the frosting.
> What goes down does not come up, because the love is indeed inexhaustible.
>
> Typhon preceded the Autarchs. Thus, he preceded FI, who began the program
> of rehabilitation. But it's hard to see what Typhon did that could be so
> horribly wrong, beyond indulging in his own creation (i.e., the Whorl).
>
> If a Conciliator bridges gulfs and closes gaps, could he also add 1+ (-1)
> and get 0?
>
>
Remember that in BotNS it is spelled out that the cosmology involves an
expansion / big crunch concept of the universe - I apologize for being bad
with quotes on this list but when Famulimus is explaining the sucession of
races that led to the creation of the Hierodules he states that the universe
expands, then collapses in on itself and expands again. In UotNS Severian
refers to each such cycle as a....manuvantara? An obviously Hindu word that
I looked up and refers to one instance of creation by a Manu, which is in
turn created by Brahma.

(I understand that the cosmological models most popular with physicists
these days involve a constant expansion until entopy has reached max, but on
the other hand, some recent papers have thrown credibility towards the
concept that black holes in our universe connect to white holes in other
universes, so Wolfe seems to be 1 for 1 here).

The voyage from Briah to Yesod in UotnS seems to take place in "real" time,
as it would in a more simply-troped science fiction world, where there may
be FTL travel through hyperspace, different than time travel, different than
travel to "other dimensions" or "alternate realities." In other words, a
gateway to another universe was opened at 1200 hours in our universe and the
ship was through it by 1205 hours. But while adventuring on the ship,
Severian had two occasions to find himself floating in space perilously
close to being lost in the void. The first time he looks forward and sees
the end of the universe, aft and sees the beginning. The second time, he
sees Briah compress into a ring which the ship passes through to wind up in
Yesod.

So it may be that Yesod is simply a future cycle of our universe...not a
sidestep or trapdoor in spacetime but an advanced step in a series or
sequence. Indeed, Apheta states that we of Briah can have a world like Yesod
if we choose it.

In this way, perhaps the Increate exists at the end of time, the ultimate
cycle. Energy to fuel the suns flows backward through time from Him.

Or maybe not? The talk of "higher" and "lower" universes reminds me of
something I noticed during the re-read of BotNS, which I mentioned here a
couple weeks ago...there is something Wolfe emplys a couple of times where
Severian confuses down with up. When the undine saves him from the neuphars
as an apprentice....I believe he described it as being pushed up, then
pulled down, then waking up on the stone stairs. (The undine pulled him down
and out from underneath the nenuphars, then pushed him up in reality.) When
he goes into the drink in the Garden of Sleep, a hand reaches up from the
bottom and grasps his, and pulls him DOWN - then the next thing we know,
Dorcas has pulled him UP to the surface. Perhaps the most telling event was
his ride in the grav-led with Typhon, up to the gallery in the head. He
feels a terrifying plummet, and then comes out and asks Typhon "how can we
have come up to such a height, when it felt as though we had fallen so far?"

What this might do to a theory of higher and lower universes, such as we
have in Wizard Knight, is place the Increate at the top - but you get to the
top by going DOWN. In this way, the energy that flows out of the suns and
into "lower universes" - the collected energy of ages of human existence,
life, work, joy, perhaps - flows TO the Increate.
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