Urth Net
Posthistory league-high cliff notes
↰ answers Gage Kerrigan
· by quotation
20 quoted lines
G Willickers wrote:
I was not concerned as much with continued
pollution greater than human carelessness and lack of
concern, more with what happened, or what went wrong.
We have witnesses the 'downfall' of our own space
program for the sole reason that it's not necessary,
and there haven't been any significant developements.
I do not partake to this view, but, obviously, some
do.
Considering this, my inquiry perhaps should have
been the following: "what would possibly motivate us
to take the initiative towards leaving Earth". I think
that the fact that humanity has attained interstellar
technologies, and that Earth is for all purposes
medieval, suggests that is has been abbandoned for
some reason or another, and I ruled out mass attack or
invasion (from extraterrestrials, perhaps) because the
snippits of history presented in New Sun focus rather
on history that's ancient to us, and does not mention
outside-in contact.
As a matter of fact Typhon represents an alien invader, and it seems probable that he brought the exultants along with him. From how far afield they came (perhaps as nearby as Skuld or Verthandi; beyond this, the stars) remains unknown.
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Air pollution could certainly be a factor, and
would not only contribute to the general disdain for
living on Earth, but might make the sun appear darker
and possibly cooler...(Hey!) Is there any evidence of
Apocolyptic ice caps? Could they have even reformed
(after o-zone repairs itself) and left the geography
similar to what it is today, but have driven many
coastside dwellers into space?
Yes, the icecaps seem to be bigger, but this is presumably due to the decreased energy from the Old Sun. Also why the tropical forests are dying, and why ahem, stars can be seen in the daytime.
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And still, the other question... what caused the
decline of society from interstellar to, well, you
know. I doubt that a black hole which has done little
in a long time could cause a mass techno-exodus, or
that they couldn't handle some new goliaths in the sea
(esp. if they started out like Baldanders). I think
that there is a strong binding between ecosystem and
society in BotNS, and a strong case (strong in the
sense that it hasn't been disproven) since they are
two of the more important aspects when studying a
culture.
But the "illness" is beyond the (relatively petty) planet eco-systems, it is the sun itself.
I wrote an essay, "Posthistory: 101," published in "Extrapolation" (Summer
1996). To give a sketch of the big picture:
1) The Age of Myth
2) The Age of the Monarch
The First Empire of 1000 Stars
The Long Decay
The Fall of the Empire
Typhon's failed attempt at Second Empire
3) The Age of the Autarch (about 1000 years)
Ymar the Almost Just
Severian the Great
4) The Age of Ushas
I guessed the Age of Myth to be 97,500 years before Severian's time, but it could be as much as 1 million years.
The big techno-exodus in recent times was triggered by Typhon's failure, which was also tied in with the big rebellion of some of his children against him. But even this was pale compared to the fall from the First Empire, which seems to have been triggered by the "wild side" working its way on a society founded upon Order alone.
=mantis=
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