Urth - Earth links

Lee Berman · 14 Oct 2011, 12:51 · from 2011-October.txt.gz

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From: severiansola at hotmail.com (Lee Berman)
Date: Fri, 14 Oct 2011 08:51:15 -0400
Subject: (urth) Urth - Earth links
Message-ID: <SNT123-W6049834D83B32D22E0D88FCFE10 at phx.gbl>

>Sergei Soloviev: If you got interested in the links between Urth and our world - please,
>answer this: how the Chrasmological writings were composed?
>Yes, we know "within the book" that Typhon/Pas ordered some scholars to 
>do it.  But I mean other question - what message wants GW to pass to us,
>regarding their content?

I think this piggybacks to themes addressed with larry miller in the "Faterh Inire" thread.

Wolfe has said he wrote BotNS with the idea of a series of universes created by a sequence 
of Big Bang/Grand Gnabs (sadly, the recent Nobel prize in Physics went to guys who disproved
this model).

My own mental model of this string of universes is in an ascending spiral (thus the Hiero's
preference for that shape). Thus it takes a long "time" to travel linearly from one universe
to the next. But there exists the possibility of short cuts between a universe and the ones
just above or below on the spiral.  Father Inire, Jonas and Dr. Talos and others have access
to one of these short cuts and thus access to Earth legends and the means to bring them to
Urth.

I think Wolfe's purpose to this literary device is to offer an explanation for the origin of
our own myths. Presumably Wolfe believes we live in a Judeo-Christian universe, created and
eternally governed by that God. So how could He have created such competitors and monsters such 
as Dionysus and Typhon and vampires etc.

If our myths and legends can leak into Severian's universe then perhaps the gods and horrors of
a gnostic universe can leak into ours. It is one way to justify Wolfe's stated belief that pagan
gods are real.

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