Merger

Jordon Flato · 28 Jan 2011, 21:21 · from 2011-January.txt.gz

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From: jordonflatourth at gmail.com (Jordon Flato)
Date: Fri, 28 Jan 2011 13:21:03 -0800
Subject: (urth) Merger
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Message-ID: <AANLkTi=2D3U7rVfqStJ8C-UqrhmEnes4itVePNHrD23K at mail.gmail.com>

Gerry, you are of course correct.  And while it doesn't discount my idea, it
makes it semi-irrelevant.  It is a fantastically beautiful knot which
tickles my brain's erogenous zones...

This is in fact one of my favorite aspects of the book, and the one aspect
that, once I had finished Urth of the New Sun, made me completely discount
the idea of their being 'other' Severians (Sev 1 Sev 2, etc.)

For my money, the very existence of Severian is SO precluded on everything
he does after his birth (the conciliator myth, the guild, the this the that
the other etc) that wouldn't have existed had the current iteration not
traveled back into the past and generated his history.


On Fri, Jan 28, 2011 at 1:05 PM, Gerry Quinn <gerryq at indigo.ie> wrote:

>   *From:* Jordon Flato <jordonflatourth at gmail.com>
> Isn't there a difference in what happens to the 'memories' or 'identities'
> in Severian as opposed to everyone else, including the Alzabo?  Sev has the
> power to restore life.  I've always been fairly certain that for Severian,
> the people he brings into himself are more alive, in a real way, than for
> any previous Autarch, or certainly and Vodellarii or ingesters of the
> alembic.  Perhaps this plays a role in why Severian succeeds when Appian
> fails.  Severian doesn't just have the memories of past lives in him, I
> think they are really alive in him in a fundamental way, which is new,
> unique, and unseen in any other instance of ingestion of the Alembic.
>
> Certainly it's different in this regard, but to say this is why Severian
> succeeded while previous Autarch's failed involves a bit of a time-loop
> semi-paradox.  The problem is that Severian's power is also the *result* of
> him succeeding - he has access to the negentropic power of the White
> Fountain and can turn back time to heal the sick, resurrect the dead etc.
>
> Had a previous Autarch succeeded, he also (or instead) would have had those
> powers.
>
> It is a standard problem in the theory of time travel - it tends to create
> events that have no cause, or have more than one cause, or (as in this case)
> are their own cause.  Of course this does not rule out time travel per se,
> it just means (as everyone on this list will be aware anyway) that a world
> in which time travel exists operates differently with regard to causality
> than the standard thermodynamic model of the universe.  Universes with a
> creator, which is certainly the case for all literary universes, and perhaps
> other universes as well, do of course tend to operate in this way.
>
> I'm not arguing that you are incorrect in suggesting that Severian's powers
> play a role in his success - just pointing out that if so they are effect as
> much as cause.
>
> - Gerry Quinn
>
>
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