do the Hierogrammates care about the megatherians?

Gerry Quinn · 22 May 2011, 14:24 · from 2011-May.txt.gz

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From: gerryq at indigo.ie (Gerry Quinn)
Date: Sun, 22 May 2011 15:24:43 +0100
Subject: (urth) do the Hierogrammates *care* about the megatherians?
References: <SNT123-W41EFC6ADDAE1EAB0420149CF8C0 at phx.gbl>	<4DD33432.7020009 at io.com>	<4DD3B104.4020305 at verizon.net>	<4DD44CED.80108 at io.com><4DD456E9.8060907 at verizon.net>	<4DD5D3EA.5080805 at io.com><B0CDD563D31940DDBE0DB12F80374256@jill>	<4DD700AE.5070300 at io.com><1F698569E5404ADCA4F6D5CB26C2C47B@jill>
	<4DD7B022.6050909 at io.com>
Message-ID: <FD52565B8E7B4CBF9BF671E169FE0DC6@jill>


From: "Jeff Wilson" <jwilson at io.com>
> On 5/20/2011 8:46 PM, Gerry Quinn wrote:
>> I'm not sure there's much to read into this though. At the end of the
>> day Wolfe wanted a dramatic and catastrophic effect. Current physics
>> does not really justify it - for me the best solution is some unknown
>> technology related to the transport of the White Fountain, which results
>> in the emission of strong gravitational waves as it deccelerates near
>> the end of its journey. But even these have problems because of poor
>> coupling - by which I mean that the frequency that rings bells is too
>> high to be easily absorbed by oceans.
> 
> I am working from what seems to be the scenario best supported by the 
> textev and criticism that says the general scheme of the BOTNS is a 
> combination of older SF tropes "updated" by the physics and popular 
> science of the late 1970s then tarted up in fantastic drag. That being, 
> one or more black holes in the sun, siphoning off matter and energy 
> through Einstein-Rosen bridge wormholes to Abaddon, while the White 
> Fountain is similarly a white hole delivering matter and energy siphoned 
> from Yesod via an artificial (as all massive objects in Yesod are) black 
> hole.
> This comes in at an angle that shakes up Urth and creates a Flood 
> because it inherits that from _WHEN WORLDS COLLIDE_ and "Born of the 
> Sun" and other world-shaking astro-apocalyptic SF, as well as fulfilling 
> the the mythic deluge parallels, and it advances the agenda of the 
> Yesodis, who would not bother with such an undertaking simply to prolong 
> the state of affairs on Urth, but instead required a new start for human 
> civilization in order to have an additional chance of re-evolving the 
> vanished Hieros that begat them.

Yes, I agree.  Fiction first, science second.

> And it turns out that the bells are jingling because they are sewn to a 
> curtain that is being disturbed by Severian and the assassin; they are 
> being rung by the White Fountain, but by the figurative instrument of 
> its personification rather than its gravity ripples.

Ah, I see.

- Gerry Quinn

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