Standard Wolfean Riddle

James Wynn · 13 Aug 2010, 20:08 · from 2010-August.txt.gz

This is the message as the crawl holds it, before anything here touched it. What the conversation shows has been through ingest: transfer encodings decoded, attachments dropped, quote markers repaired, and the archiver’s ? resolved into quotation marks and dashes. Those repairs are judgements and some of them are wrong, which is what this page is for. Email addresses are obscured here as they are everywhere else on the site, so it is before our repairs rather than byte for byte.

From: crushtv at gmail.com (James Wynn)
Date: Fri, 13 Aug 2010 15:08:34 -0500
Subject: (urth) Standard Wolfean Riddle
In-Reply-To: <4C658AD6.5020902 at verizon.net>
References: <SNT123-W6197C26BEFD9A437D4C725CF980 at phx.gbl>	<4C65544B.7080301 at gmail.com>	<0542F1EE-1D99-4671-9E9E-B80B19CF8C11 at liftingfaces.com>
	<4C658AD6.5020902 at verizon.net>
Message-ID: <4C65A642.4090900 at gmail.com>

  On 8/13/2010 1:11 PM, David Stockhoff wrote:
>>
>>>> YYYYYYYYeeeeeeeessssssssoooooooodddddddd
>>>>      ...Briah(n-1) Briah(n) Briah(n+1) ....
>>>> AAAAbbbbbbbbaaaaddddddddoooonnnn
>>>
>>> So then, supposedly OUR universe is some Briah (n+)? Do I have this right
>>
>>
>> Well, if we take Wolfe at his word when he says that Urth is a
>> previous version of Earth, then, yes, that follows -- in particular
>> ours is the one into which the Increate is actually born as the Theanthropos
>
> I hope I can be forgiven for this heretical question...but if the
> Increate is born as the Theantropos in Briah (n+19), what is the
> situation with the Christ figure of Briah (n+20)? Is he better than
> Jesus? Or is Jesus perfect so all Briahs above (n+19) have the same
> Christ-figure? Or perhaps the perfection of Jesus requires that we are in the universe Briah (n+infinity)?
>
> I find these questions difficult. 	
>

As I have said before, I think it is a mistake to analyze these stories 
to see how their settings (as opposed to their themes) conform to 
systematic theology. However, I'll play along.

I presume that Severian is the Christ of Briah (n). There was no Jesus 
of Nazareth. If one asks, well how could there be all these 
parallels...some having to do with the RCC...if there was no Jesus? 
Wolfe addressed that question in There Are Doors.

In that novel, the parallel worlds*** remain sync with each other by 
virtue of being in approximation to each other.

(***The parallel worlds, from Green's perspective, might be inscrutable 
from a cycle of expanding and collapsing universe iterations since such 
iterations are not divided by Time--because Time also collapses along 
with each universe iteration)

The parallel worlds are like strings on a guitar that are strung to the 
same note...strike one and those next to it vibrate along with it. 
Therefore in Lara's world, grooms wear black at their weddings because 
men die after having sex. In Green's world (ours), grooms wear black 
too. It's just a formality for us, but we actually do it here only 
because they do it there. The parallel worlds have the same languages 
and very similar customs differing only in minor and peculiar ways (such 
as no ice trays in Lara's world).

Presumably, the Briahs (n -/+) remain in sync because they are compelled 
to by their approximation to each other. So there will be similarities 
between Briah (n -/+) that make no internal sense. There might well have 
been a Catholic Church with nearly the same rituals (and an American 
moon landing as well) even though there was no Jesus to influence the 
next 2000 years of history.

u+16b9

An unofficial mirror of a public mailing list · about & removal requests · download the archive · before the list · original archive at urth.net