Fish and Caves

James Wynn · 22 Dec 2010, 16:55 · from 2010-December.txt.gz

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From: crushtv at gmail.com (James Wynn)
Date: Wed, 22 Dec 2010 10:55:31 -0600
Subject: (urth) Fish and Caves
In-Reply-To: <4D12280E.8000902 at gmail.com>
References: <303847.43646.qm at web58204.mail.re3.yahoo.com>	<4D121BBA.30608 at gmail.com>	<4D1222CB.5080800 at gmail.com>
	<4D12280E.8000902 at gmail.com>
Message-ID: <4D122D83.2090309 at gmail.com>

>>> Ant?nio Pedro Marques-
>>> I just don't see any compelling evidence that dream travel is across
>>> time. If it were, shouldn't the trip with Rigoglio be to the time he
>>> left Urth?
>>
>> James Wynn-
>> Really? So Silk seeing an astral flying Oreb in his room while the
>> current Oreb is lame downstairs doesn't give you pause?
>
>
> Ant?nio Pedro Marques-
> It would if it were established that Silk saw an astral flying Oreb in 
> his room.

Okay. What could possibly establish that for you? Oreb adamantly affirms 
that it wasn't him. His twin? His father?

>
>> James Wynn-
>> Incanto and Oreb
>> in the grandmother's tale from her youth on the Whorl doesn't seem
>> suspicious?
>
> Ant?nio Pedro Marques-
> Suspicious but not definitive.

How about an alternate theory?

>
>> The screwy timeline in the Book of the Short Sun (Sinews
>> kids age not really matching, the times since Horn, Hoof, and Hide not
>> matching), that doesn't make you think astral travel is temporal?
>
> Ant?nio Pedro Marques-
> Not really. It's not like the incoherences in the narrative are 
> limited to the timeline.
> All those can be evidence, but they're not compelling evidence. There 
> may be better evidence that I've missed.

So, you're answer is "We can't explain everything in the books, so the 
obvious problems with time-line are not really indicative of temporal 
disjuncture." Once again. I don't know what sort of confirmation would 
put you over the edge.

>> James Wynn-
>> Mucor takes hours to reach the Whorl by
>> astral travel. Travel with the Rajan is instanteous. I suspect is Wolfe
>> recognizes an ability for Time travel in order to accomplish this.
>
> So it would take ages for them to reach Urth, but the time is cut 
> short by time-travel, of which they are unaware, and yet they end up 
> on Urth at what is generally considered the present time? Time travel 
> that exactly compensates such a great offset, only to deposit them at 
> the present time, instead of at a point that would make more sense for 
> Rigoglio? (NB this applies whether one thinks the time they land on is 
> the present time or something else, as long as it's not close to the 
> time of Rigoglio's lifetime there.)

I'm not sure what you are getting at. It seems you are defining how 
things would work if /you/ wrote the books. Wormhole travel is typically 
defined as simultaneous temporal and space travel (I only recently heard 
a physicist explain it) --thus the traveler arrives instantaneously at 
his new location as though he walked through a door without violating 
Relativity.

The point is that the Rajan's travels to Green and to the Whorl are 
unhinged from the Time-line and consequently Rigoglio's travels to Urth 
should be assumed to be as well.

We have two examples of Time-travel by the Rajan and Oreb. We have a 
book with a serious time-line issue. There is no evidence to the 
contrary that the Rajan doesn't Time-travel. In a book with lots of 
mysteries, it's nice to have one mystery that is so resolvable.

u+16b9

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