(urth) Re: Increate on trial
maru
marudubshinki at gmail.com
Fri Apr 1 19:02:06 PST 2005
"Sister-list"?
Before my time- a little history please?
~Maru
David Kirby wrote:
> James Wynn wrote:
>
>> Personally, I've come to like the idea of a "futuristic novel" set in
>> a vast distant future that occurs in the staggeringly distant "past"
>> (if that's the proper word for something that occurs beyond multiple
>> iterations of the collapse and rebirth of Time).
>
>
> Actually, I like the idea, too. There are, uh, cycles within the Cycle,
> and this idea undergirds the vastness of that proposition.
>
>> Its just the sort of twisting Wolfe does all the time with his
>> stories and characters. Maybe he didn't think of it until later but I
>> don't find it especially undermined in the text (even the quote David
>> Kirby mentioned since the Bang-Gnab theory Wolfe is playing with was
>> similar to the parallel universe concept of String theory). I don't
>> see it as a plot hole at all.
>
>
> From what I've read on this list and its now-deceased "sister" list,
> it's also like Wolfe to say things that undermine conclusions that are
> reasonably reached from basic readings of his texts. I suspect he does
> this on purpose, to keep us digging, but that may be giving him too
> much credit; he certainly enjoys readers' reactions to puzzles and
> "Easter eggs" he places in the texts. Even if he does think everything
> is crystal clear.
>
> And despite what I recall being the ascendency of the Bang-Gnab theory
> in the early '80s, when NEW SUN was first published, doesn't current
> thinking have it that the universe won't "Gnab" on us, won't
> continually expand, but will reach a state of (very desolate)
> steadiness? That's the assumption of Brian Greene's 2004 book, THE
> FABRIC OF THE COSMOS; it is likely based on 2003 ideas and data, but I
> don't recall seeing anything more recent.
>
> So maybe Wolfe *thought* he was correct when he talked about (or
> "translated") the Bang-Gnab theory, but our (*cough,* *cough*)
> *vastly* superior knowledge of the cosmos renders that assumption
> incorrect.
>
> (I'm sure you're aware, by the way, that the parallel universe concept
> of "hard" physics dates to the 1950s, quite a while before string
> theory came along in any form.)
>
> -- David
>
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