Standard Wolfean riddle

DAVID STOCKHOFF · 12 Aug 2010, 19:28 · from 2010-August.txt.gz

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From: dstockhoff at verizon.net (DAVID STOCKHOFF)
Date: Thu, 12 Aug 2010 12:28:58 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: (urth) Standard Wolfean  riddle
In-Reply-To: <4C643782.4040902 at gmail.com>
Message-ID: <818884.65328.qm at web84108.mail.mud.yahoo.com>

Possibly. Or, depending on exactly how the universes relate, maybe the Conciliator is in one possible future, along with Master Ash and so on with other sub-possibilities, and the Hieromakers are in another. Both futures happened somewhere, and one future transcended Briah entirely. Their creatures bring Severian to Yesod, where the lack of time as we know it allows them to meet. 

Again, I am not sure the explanation of universes as "blooming" (or any other metaphor that has been used) requires that we ignore the fact that all possible futures exist until they are no longer possible. And they are all Briah.

Jeff mentioned (IIRC) that for narrative reasons Yesod's being before Severian was born in Briah doesn't mean that Yesod is before Briah. That's obviously true but it's not mechanically helpful in terms of how the multiverses are constructed.

Yesod may be before Briah only in the sense that it is in some way outside time and therefore is the way it was at its birth. All the Briahs have fallen to time and are therefore always after Yesod.

Alternatively, it is simply on a plane where time is negligible, and the Ship's travels back and forth easily pass any Yesodi time point.

These seem the same, but in one, all the Briahs are more or less the same (blooms), and in the other, Severian's Briah runs alongside Yesod, which makes no sense to me. I prefer the first, which fits the description of Yesod as "higher."

Aphet's remark, therefore, may not have required her to check the universal clock, or take up the study of Severian's life, or run a time conversion to know. She knew Severian was unborn in Briah no matter how far or fast the Ship moved, because she's in Paradise and he's from Out There.

--- On Thu, 8/12/10, Ant?nio Pedro Marques <entonio at gmail.com> wrote:

From: Ant?nio Pedro Marques <entonio at gmail.com>
Subject: Re: (urth) Standard Wolfean  riddle
To: "The Urth Mailing List" <urth at lists.urth.net>
Date: Thursday, August 12, 2010, 2:03 PM

DAVID STOCKHOFF wrote (12-08-2010 18:41):

> (...) one can conclude that the race who made the Hieros were human
> beings like ourselves with our physiology and history---but whether they
> are in "our" future is unknowable. Whether they were in our iteration or
> a 99.9999999% identical one, past or future, is unknowable.

I think it's only that:
- Urth is similar but not quite like Earth:
? + the name
? + the apparent history
? + the geography
? (some of those may be explained by being far in the future, but to me it rings more of a parallel though very similar universe)
- Wolfe presents Urth as a possible, bleak future for Earth. I don't want Earth's future to be Urth; I think the presentation is a warning - see what may happen - and that warning is given in the form of what happened to some who started off pretty much like us.

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