The Fall, take two

Roy C. Lackey · 17 May 2001, 01:36 · from urth-v0030.mbox · original

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From: "Roy C. Lackey" <rclackey at stic.net>
Subject: (urth) The Fall, take two
Date: Thu, 17 May 2001 01:36:11
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mantis wrote:

>>As for equivalence of the action: well, the NP is trying to restore the
previous condition, trying to send her back or at least away; she is
trying to avoid that, and is willing to further the interdimentional
contamination/chaos by sending the NP away. So if she did anything
beyond that, it was pushing the wrong button! (Well, she had maybe a
fifty-percent chance <<g>)
So the short answer: she could have co-operated ("submitted" sounds so
heavy-handed) and allowed herself to be beamed back to her homeland.
Instead she opted to sow more confusion but it backfired a bit. <<

    But the NP, like Adam, and you, and me-- all who have had their Rubicons
and Waterloos--never, at least in the real world, get a second chance.
What's done is done and you don't get "overs". Even in the first part of
your "ancient/magical versus modern/realistic" causality mode there is an
insuperable theological difficulty: what happens when two characters from
the Eden story are introduced into a world where The Fall has *already*
happened--which it has, as least from a biblical point of view, because the
world the story takes place in is obviously *this* world?

[snip]
>>So I'm not sure about the continuity from one form to another. The
godlike man is not the NP, since the NP is in the Eden place; the
godlike man probably doesn't have any of the backstory (that is, I
don't think that the godlike man knows everything that the NP knows).<<
[snip]

    Even if he doesn't, unless the NP stopped on the way to take a bath in
the Lethe *and* the Jordan, *he* certainly knows the backstory, is a Sinner,
certain (from a theological viewpoint all men are literally born sinners) to
corrupt that other Eden, to be the snake in the grass, so to speak, just
waiting for some foolish woman to come along so he can . . . but, hey,
haven't I heard this story before?

    Or is that Wolfe's point? Do we get a replay of the Eden story, the same
way we got a Second Flood in the Urth Cycle? Does that make sense, from a
Christian point of view?

-Roy




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