Urth Net
Holy Moses!
9 quoted lines · 1–2 deep
From: Alice Turner <al at ny.playboy.com>
Subject: Go Down, Moses
Date: Fri, 27 Jun 1997 16:32:56 -0400
At 12:26 PM 6/27/97 -0700, you wrote:
To me Silk has more of a Mosaic flavor to his character than Christic. He leads his people out of bondage to a promised planet. However, he does not get to walk in the Land himself. I mean, "Exodus"? The burning bush?
Kieran Mullen
What it the Moses role was played by Quetzal?
He is never really seen as a leader of the people. His image is primarily serpentine, and therefore devilish in this mythology (IMO). I don't think that Moses led the Hebrews through the desert so they could get eaten in the promised land :-).
I also don't mean to press the point to strongly. Symbolism is not allegory. We don't have a Mr. Goodworks and a Ms. Gossip running around. It also occurs to me that Wolfe's soteriology (story of being saved) doesn't have to rigorously following the Biblical paradigms.
Can anyone think of sf novels that follow other spiritual traditions off planet? I think it's in Simmons Hyperion, where he replays the story of Abraham and Isaac. (There are lots of such novels that involve the Christian tradition). By "follow" I don't mean simply that there are Moslems or Buddhists on another planet. I mean novels that use their cosmology on an sf scale.
Kieran Mullen