Severian and the corridor of time

Lee Berman · 04 Aug 2010, 15:03 · from 2010-August.txt.gz

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From: severiansola at hotmail.com (Lee Berman)
Date: Wed, 4 Aug 2010 11:03:36 -0400
Subject: (urth) Severian and the corridor of time
Message-ID: <SNT123-W493DF35343C4B5E1D77E5BCFAF0 at phx.gbl>

>David Stockhoff- Maybe he skidded past the exact point where the light reaches Urth, 
>because he was going so fast.

Yeah, that is my impression of what happened also. A bit of temporal inertia.

I guess Jason Walker is wondering why he had to stop at that point in history on Urth. 
If he was outside space and time, why would access to an electromagnetic energy source
have any impact? I suppose we must guess that access to that power source is somehow 
tied to the timeframe and physical presence on Urth. There may be no way to plausibly
explain it with our knowledge of science.

However, I think the best answer might be auctorial rather than scientific. If Severian was
able to travel in unlimited fashion in time, he'd come out on a molten blob of planetary rock 
and be burnt up or destroyed in the Big Bang or something. That would be a crappy end to the 
story and we can't have that. Best to make his time travel ability restricted only to 
places and times where human beings can and do exist.

Makes me wonder about how long Severian was dead and buried in the stone temple before he
resucitated and spoke to B, F and O. I think Apu Punchau was still a body, not a mummy or
skeleton so I guess it couldn't have been very long. But if Apu Punchau was dead long enough
to be reduced to dust would Severian still be resurrected when the New Sun winked into 
existence and was close enough? I guess so...but again, Severian seeing  a pile of dust 
wouldn't have made as good a story, I think.

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