Hierogrammates, Briah and Yesod

Jerry Friedman · 10 Aug 2010, 19:28 · from 2010-August.txt.gz

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From: jerry_friedman at yahoo.com (Jerry Friedman)
Date: Tue, 10 Aug 2010 12:28:45 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: (urth) Hierogrammates, Briah and Yesod
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From: Lane Haygood <lhaygood at gmail.com>

> Is the linearity of time a reputable concept that might conceivably be
> shared by Severian and Apheta?

It's reputable among physicists and most other people.  That doesn't mean 
Severian and Apheta, or Wolfe, have to believe it.

> After all, some Hiero*s travel
> backward in time relative to Severian.  Is BFO's past Severian's
> future?  Certainly the narrative of Severian would place it so.

I'm not arguing, but it's hard to see how they could converse with him and 
Baldanders.  Maybe they live forwards during interactions with people and 
backwards most of the time.

> Then again, what little I know of physics seems rather consistent with
> Apheta's statement.

"Time runs backward when the ship sails swiftly"?  According to present-day 
special relativity, if some observers could see something going faster than 
light from A to B, other observers would see it going faster than light from B 
to A.  That makes the direction of time on the "something" problematic, as well 
as bringing up the possibility of a more complicated trip where you end where 
you started but earlier in time.  Most scientists see this as one good reason to 
believe that nothing can go faster than light.  Science fiction, of course, is 
different.  Though few sf writers have appreciated, as Wolfe explicitly does, 
that FTL and time travel imply each other.

Jerry Friedman

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