Spiritual and Ecological Sucession

Gerry Quinn · 12 Jan 2011, 00:16 · from 2011-January.txt.gz

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From: gerryq at indigo.ie (Gerry Quinn)
Date: Wed, 12 Jan 2011 00:16:52 -0000
Subject: (urth) Spiritual and Ecological Sucession
References: <SNT123-W532DC54F49A24E39D58A34CF0F0 at phx.gbl>
Message-ID: <1D515E1F315C494695779419A9BA08DD@jill>

From: "Lee Berman" <severiansola at hotmail.com>
>
>>Jordon Flato: So if Green is Urth, to me this sets up a clear metaphor 
>>that Green is a
>>symbol of what Urth would have become without a flood.  A world ruled by
>>monsters, taken over by survival of the fittest, and left to rot and decay
>>in it's own filth.  Sure it's lush, but it's a lushness of hell.  So, yes,
>>clearing the sewers is a highly resonant act to Severian bringing the 
>>flood.
>>And Blue has a number of thematic resonances with Ushas.  So Wolfe has set
>>up a great system for us where he can play with the symbolic consequences 
>>of
>>a Urth without Flood (Green) and an Urth with flood (Blue).
>
> Yes, this is certainly along the lines of my own thoughts on the matter. 
> But, I still get
> a sense that this is more than just a symbolic, thematic similarity. There 
> are ruins on
> Green. There are ruins beneath the waves of Blue (and Ushas). We have the 
> portents of a
> Flood in Dr. Talos' play but I think we also have some historical allusion 
> to a "Deluge" in
> the history of Urth.  We have forests on Lune but no apparent civilization 
> remaining.

We don't know much about civilisation elsewhere on Urth - the only 
description of Ascian society is from the story of a captured soldier from 
there.   If the Commonwealth is South America, it seems possible that 
civilations we know nothing of persist in Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia 
etc.  And perhaps on Lune.

There are ruins everywhere.

> I am seeing evidence of a planetary cycle. I consider also the evidence of 
> Fomalhaut. This is
> a yellow star in our earthly time, just like Sol. Yet in BotNS both are 
> unnaturally red long
> before their time to go red giant.

Fomalhaut will go red giant long before the Sun, as it is heavier - perhaps 
in less than a billion years.  However, the Sun is not a red giant in 
Severians time.  A red giant has a cooler sdurface than a star like the Sun, 
but radiates more heat duew to its larger surface area.  That said, 
Fomalhaut seems to have gone red before its time for some reason in BotNS 
(though we don;t really know how long the events in BotNS are from now (or 
equivalent in Urth's cycle), but there don't seem any obvious conclusions to 
draw from this.

> Even if we ignore the connection of "Fishes Mouth" to all
> the fishy and cavey stuff on Urth, the redness of Fomalhaut by itself (and 
> the implied
> destruction of planets there) suggests a cosmic cycle we only get to see 
> small portions of in
> the Sun Series books.

On the other hand, the unnamed star around which Blue and Green orbit seems 
to be doing fine.  I don't see where a 'cosmic cycle' fits in with regard to 
the aging of contemporaneous stars.

- Gerry Quinn

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