Crush on trial

Adam Stephanides · 24 Mar 2005, 14:25 · from 2005-March.txt.gz

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From: adamsteph at earthlink.net (Adam Stephanides)
Date: Thu Mar 24 14:25:00 2005
Subject: (urth) Re:  Crush on trial
In-Reply-To: <001801c52ffc$e3672920$60a3f63f@wynnhouse>
Message-ID: <BE689BDB.4C678%adamsteph at earthlink.net>

on 3/23/05 5:05 PM, James Wynn at thewynns at earthlink.net wrote:

> Tony Ellis wrote:
>> Master Ashe says.
>> "At this time, many of your people are already gone," Master Ashe
>> continued. "Those you call the cagogens have mercifully carried them to
>> fairer worlds. Many more will leave before the final victory of the ice.
>> I am myself, you see, descended from those refugees." TCOTA. Chapter
>> XVII
> 
>> Humanity does not die if Severian fails to bring the New Sun. It is
>> taken to better worlds, where it continues. Severian's murder of
>> millions can't be said to preserve any more unborn
>> generations than Ozymandias' murder of thousands.
> 
> Very good point, excellent reference. I can see how you can read it that way
> if you choose to. However, I understood "many of your people" to be a
> fraction of a small remnant of humanity surviving at the end of Old Sun's
> lifecycle, and I understood "better worlds" to mean "better than Urth is at
> the end of the Old Sun's life cycle."

Even if the Urthians who would be evacuated would be only a fraction of
Urth's population, they'd probably be more numerous than those who survive
the New Sun's coming are; and hence their descendants would be more numerous
than the descendants of Urth's survivors in the timeline Sev picks.

> Green and Blue in "The Short Sun" are
> undoubtedly better than Master Ashe's world

They're better than being drowned, too.

> Severian has seen both outcomes.

Iirc, he hasn't seen the New Sun, just heard about it from the green man.
And when he did so he didn't know that the cost of the New Sun's arrival
would be the death of Urth's current population.

> But Sev CAN objectively analyze both outcomes.

Perhaps he can (though, given his mental condition, his ability to
"objectively analyze" anything seems questionable), but does he? He doesn't
have any inkling of the New Sun's true cost until Tzadkiel tells him at the
trial (p. 153, hardcover edition), and iirc he never undertakes any analysis
before deciding to carry out his "mission." In fact, even after Tzadkiel's
words he apparently still doesn't realize the full cost of the New Sun until
after it arrives: on p. 295, he thinks "When the New Sun arrived, our
Commonwealth would require a ruler who understood what had taken place," not
realizing that after the New Sun arrives there will be no Commonwealth. So
any analysis he had made before the fact would be flawed.

--Adam

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