Seawrack and the Mother

David Stockhoff · 23 Sep 2012, 22:18 · from 2012-September.txt.gz

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From: dstockhoff at verizon.net (David Stockhoff)
Date: Sun, 23 Sep 2012 18:18:54 -0400
Subject: (urth) Seawrack and the Mother
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On 9/23/2012 10:50 AM, Marc Aramini wrote:
>
>
> --- On *Sun, 9/23/12, David Stockhoff /<dstockhoff at verizon.net>/* wrote:
>
>
>
>     Yes, I had meant to include a passing comment on that as well. If
>     the universe is double-sexed (dioecious?) like us, it must be
>     either hermaphroditic or dyadic. Either way it must mate with
>     itself to produce or create or even to become itself.
>
>     If it is single-sexed (monoecious), then I guess we're just
>     supposed to forget about the missing sex. (In the same way, we're
>     not supposed to notice that Eve's offspring either mated with
>     others or mated with one another.) Which does seem like a step
>     toward acknowledging that the universe is not like us at all, not
>     at all.
>
>     And I think one of the motives of SF is to deal with this dual
>     reality: first that we congenitally, helplessly want the world to
>     shape itself to us, and second that it never will, and in fact
>     (thanks in part to science) seems if anything increasingly
>     uncaring. (For instance, the earth will not forgive us for global
>     warming, nor is it likely to save us from it.)
>     _______________________________________________
>
> I do think the manner of reproduction of life in Wolfe is 
> intrinsically important, from Sev and Apheta's fecund white fountain 
> coupling to the mating rituals of the inhuma, and that asexual means 
> of transferring the self obsess both the cannibalistic analept of the 
> Alzabo and other faucets of both new and short sun, but I do want to 
> make one counterpoint to your final paragraph.
> Wolfe, the spiritual engineer, is certainly not intrinsically opposed 
> to science, but is rather critical in a psuedo-didactic 
> way, critical of the final goals and motivations of man.  the little 
> parable of a man who complained all his life that Pas had messed up 
> the whorl - at the culmination, he faces Pas, and Pas asks, "so you 
> could have made the Whorl better?"  "Yes, I reckon I could."  "That's 
> what I wanted you to do, make it a better place." screams that humans 
> and their desires and wants shape the world ... with nobility of 
> purpose, the world actually becomes a better place.  To ascribe a cold 
> callous naturalistic reading to Wolfe in the sun sequence has always 
> seemed slightly skewed to me, and is my problem with the majority of 
> Wright's criticism.
> Wolfe is not a naturalist; if anything he's an eclectic 
> symbolist/spiritualist who embraces paradoxes.  Much more 
> ideologically akin to a Hawthorne than a realist like Howe.  Thus, the 
> world spiritually shapes itself to us each and every day.
>
>

Thanks Marc. I like that counterpart very much.

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