To Adam: Christ in Eden

Adam Stephanides · 11 Apr 2001, 12:34 · from whorl-v0012.mbox · original

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From: Adam Stephanides <adamsteph at earthlink.net>
Subject: Re: (whorl) To Adam: Christ in Eden
Date: Wed, 11 Apr 2001 12:34:14
Message-ID: <whorl-v0012-0579 at digest.urth.net>
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on 4/9/01 3:25 AM, Nicholas Gevers at vermoulian at yahoo.com wrote:

> Adam, thanks for putting the other side=E2=80=99s views so
> plainly and firmly.

To be even more plain and firm, I don't see any evidence that Wolfe was
thinking about utopias at all when he wrote TBOTSS.  None of the communities
Silkhorn encounters is remotely utopian (I don't see any warrant for
considering Sinew's village a utopia, and two people living in the
wilderness don't count).  Silkhorn's statesmanship as Rajan of Gaon is
thoroughly pragmatic, as far as we know, with nothing utopian about it.  The
revolution he leads in Dorp presumably replaces a bad regime with a better
one, but it doesn't create a utopia.  Nor is the moral advice he ladles out
utopian in any sense (saying "be nicer to poor people" doesn't qualify one
as a radical reformer, let alone a utopian).  And I don't see a shred of
evidence that Silkhorn has "nudged" Blue in the direction of utopia.  If
Wolfe was indeed responding to Robinson's Mars trilogy (which I haven't
read), it's more likely that his point was simply "if humans set out to
colonize another planet, this mess is what would _really_ happen."  (I'm
also surprised at your implication that Blue at the time of Silkhorn's
return is an Eden.)

Nor, for that matter, does Silkhorn's behavior on Blue strike me as being
particularly Christ-like, despite Hoof's description of him as frighteningly
good.  (The more I think about this description, the more it seems to me
like cheating by Wolfe: an attempt to evoke by fiat a reaction that his
portrayal of Silkhorn hasn't made us feel.)

--Adam

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