(urth) Re: Increate on trial
David Kirby
dbkirby at pressroom.com
Thu Mar 31 15:08:34 PST 2005
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
--
==============================================================
"It is possible I already had some presentiment of my future."
== Gene Wolfe, Shadow of the Torturer
David B. Kirby, dbkirby at pressroom.com
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