(urth) Re: Crush on trial

[Adam Stephanides]

on 3/24/05 11:16 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
>> 
>>> 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.
> 
> I don't know why that would be. The Cold Urth generations are surely much
> less fruitful, die earlier, and lose more in childhood than the New Urth
> generations or generations on planets like Blue and Green.

But as soon as they were evacuated they'd start breeding at normal rates.

> Each generation 
> that is only a little more fruitful will yield exponential increases in only
> a few centuries. I have no idea how many Urthlings survived the Deluge, but
> I'm guessing more than you are, I think.

Asked who will survive, Baldanders says "Those on ships, possibly. Those
whose ships are in the air or in the void, certainly. Those who live under
the sea already, as I have now for fifty years." (300) Probably only a few
of the first group would survive. There would be only a few of the second
group. The third group is Abaia's slaves; we don't know how many there are
of these, but I doubt it's their fate Sev is concerned with. We can also add
those, like Odilo, who manage to survive by clinging on to some debris, but
again there will probably be only a few of these. (The extent to which the
pre-deluge Urth has been forgotten after only two generations, in the Ushan
village Sev comes to, is further evidence that there weren't many
survivors.) 

Note that we're not talking about a big tidal wave: the continents *sink*
(153, 300, 339). (I know it's scientifically implausible, but plausibility
doesn't seem to be a particular concern of Wolfe's in UotNS.)

I can see that one could argue that the total number of humans ever existing
would be maximized in the New Sun future (e.g. by assuming that humanity
will expand to occupy all the habitable planets in the galaxy, and will
increase on each planet to the limits of its carrying capacity), but it's
hardly a certainty. Personally, I wouldn't want to kill millions of people
on the chance that such an argument might be true (even assuming such a
transaction would be morally justified).
 
>>> Green and Blue in "The Short Sun" are
>>> undoubtedly better than Master Ashe's world
>> 
>> They're better than being drowned, too.
> 
> Yes, but now you are being argumentative. They can't all be evacuated or
> Master Ashe would be studying a depopulated planet.

Ash is studying a depopulated planet: in the time corresponding to the top
level of his house, his house is the only thing not covered by ice. But
you're correct that not everyone would be evacuated: Ash says "No, not
everyone. Some would not go, some could not be found. No home could be found
for others." (CotA, ch. 17, p. 131, Timescape edition). But the impression I
get from Ash's words is that most were evacuated. (Note that carrying
capacity is not a problem; and why should it be? If the ship can travel
backwards and forwards in time, then the number of trips it can make is
limited only by the need to avoid colliding with itself.) In any case, more
would be evacuated than survived the coming of the New Sun.

--Adam