"been teaching literature for over 35 years"

David Stockhoff · 08 Sep 2013, 12:41 · from 2013-September.txt.gz

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From: dstockhoff at verizon.net (David Stockhoff)
Date: Sun, 08 Sep 2013 08:41:41 -0400
Subject: (urth) "been teaching literature for over 35 years"
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On 9/8/2013 12:25 AM, Jerry Friedman wrote:
> Well, he might justifiably ask, if Wolfe intended plate tectonics to exist on Urth, how it makes the book better for Severian to tell us that it stopped.  To improve the dying-earth atmosphere?

I'm intrigued by Jeff's idea:

The slowing of geology processes and the refrigeration of the earth in
somewhat of a historical time scale was once the current scientific
thought in the 19th century (Bellamy mentions it in LOOKING BACKWARD), so
the idea has a reason to be present and for the estimated time necessary
to be reckoned past, however mistakenly by the characters.

We've seen plenty of evidence that Wolfe gleaned gems from the 
historical trash heap of incorrect comprehensions of the physical 
universe in writing BNS. In fact, one could take it a step further and 
say that his universe is entirely created from such pulpy cliches---

by which I mean to make a direct literary connection, because the pulp 
SF Wolfe admires, from Cthulhu to, I don't know, maybe Flash Gordon and 
beyond, consists almost entirely of disproven scientific assumptions. 
Look at how the surface environment of Venus has been (mis)conceived 
throughout the history of SF.

---knowing full well that they do not fit well together. Two other 
well-known cases of this are Severian's comments about geological strata 
and the various genetic theories of 5HC, which Lee has identified as 
BNS's thematic precursor. Would this not, in Wolfe's thinking, parallel 
all the valid but imperfect understandings of the *nonphysical 
*universe? It's all the same, on other words---the science we believe 
today will be the superstition of tomorrow.

So yes, it makes the book better.

Also, "death" is perhaps a relative term on a geologic time scale. In 
our time, small volcanic islands are created before our eyes. In 
Severian's, this may no longer occur, but the plates could experience 
settling for quite some time after the primary tectonic activity has 
either ceased or simply decreased enough that most people assume Urth is 
dead, because all the volcanoes are. Thus the earthquakes in Typhon's time.

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