do the Hierogrammates care about the megatherians?

Lee Berman · 19 May 2011, 20:34 · from 2011-May.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: severiansola at hotmail.com (Lee Berman)
Date: Thu, 19 May 2011 16:34:08 -0400
Subject: (urth) do the Hierogrammates *care* about the megatherians?
Message-ID: <SNT123-w518FBCEADCE8F106693561CF8E0 at phx.gbl>

>Dan'l: Actually, I believe this prayer is Trinitarian -- noting that there
>are three parts to it.

I kinda like this idea.

>James: I think it is More likely that Abaia:-- Sees the Hierogrammates as competing powers

I tend to agree; as fallen angels might contend with angels and God.

>-- Uses the threat of the New Sun as a way to gain and control human 
>agents rather than that he is worried about the flood he will bring.

I can't see this. The promise of the New Sun is not portrayed as a threat to humans. It is portrayed as
a golden bounty, providing hope for a brighter day, greener plants, higher crop yields etc. Also
a means of ridding the Urth of alien powers which are highly despised. The Flood/genocide aspect of 
the New Sun is very highly disguised in the original 4-book text and is only clearly revealed in the 
finale of the fifth book.

>-- Wants to gain the Conciliator/New Sun as a follower

I can only agree with this if Abaia thinks that the New Sun will actually, secretly benefit Abaia,
et al. Surely even Abaia wouldn't think he can convince the New Sun to shrug his shoulders and
say, "aw, Abaia is my friend, I guess I won't bring a New Sun to destroy him". Bringing the New Sun is 
the essence of the Conciliator/New Sun.  Abaia might know the New Sun =genocidal Flood. But nobody else 
on Urth seems to (except Dr. Talos).

>I posit that the megatherians are "powers" on Urth, just as Typhon was, but no more than that.

I agree. But  with the meaning that the angels ultimately gain the upper hand over fallen angels. I must 
wonder about the persistence of Juturna though.

My idea is that perhaps Wolfe recognizes the Bible (and other ancient texts) describes celestial, 
supernatural events from a human-centric point of view. But that, if we were wise and perceptive 
enough, we could recognize that humans on Urth and Earth are pawns and that the game is really being
played by higher powers for higher stakes than the puny things we think are important- our lives and our 
souls.

Nobody likes to feel like a pawn. Perhaps, for Wolfe, human religions, including the New Sun cult, exist 
to allow humans to feel better about themselves; hiding our pawn status and deceiving us into thinking 
we are at the center of all God's plans so we don't feel so bad when we die en masse in floods and earthquakes 
and other cataclysmic events which reflect the competition between higher beings.

I find it difficult to follow Jeff's ideas. I wonder, which came first to Wolfe's mind when writing this story,
the ocean bound monstrosities or the idea of a Flood? Either way, conceiving Megatherians and a Flood to 
destroy them just doesn't make sense to me. The Flood is a highly disguised, central theme of the story (as
I think Short Sun reinforces). How could such a central, important theme rely on such a wimpy premise as, 
"well, maybe there were nutient current changes"? 

If the whole story was meant to be naturalistic and without religious underpinnings, I think Wolfe would have
made the Megatherians as fire creatures, not water.  Mother Pyrexia's and Salamanders. THEN the revelation
that the New Sun brings a flood would be a poignant revelation worthy of a 5 book denouement. With water 
creatures revealed to being bested by a flood of water, I can't help but think there is a mighty deception going 
on here.

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