(urth) Original Sin and pagan gods

[Bob Miller]

Interesting.  Possibly both Heinlein and Wolfe, or Stapledon to Heinlein to 
Wolfe or two-pronged--both Heinlein (Unpleasant Profession of Jonathan Hoag) 
and Stapledon having an effect on the man I think of as the best living 
writer?

Bob

 >From: "Roy C. Lackey" <rclackey at stic.net>
 >Reply-To: The Urth Mailing List <urth at lists.urth.net>
 >To: "The Urth Mailing List" <urth at lists.urth.net>
 >Subject: Re: (urth) Original Sin and pagan gods
 >Date: Wed, 9 Aug 2006 23:45:40 -0500
 >
 >Dan'l quoted and wrote:
 > >> Somewhere is a statement to the effect that with each cycle there is
 >some
 > >> slight improvement made. Maybe, given enough repetitions, something
 > >> approaching heavenly perfection will be achieved. Eternity can't get
 >any
 > >> longer. <g>
 > >
 > >I don't recall such a statement, but I've often wondered about this. It
 > >implies a structure not unlike that in Stapledon's STAR MAKER, in
 > >which the Star Maker creates successively more complex and successful
 > >universes (ours being somewhere in the middle) until It creates one 
which
 > >achieves a level of universal sentience and perfection that allows that
 > >universe to become, well, the Star Maker. Import that construct to the
 > >Christian framework and you get a Creator whose "practice" universes
 > >gradually get better and better until finally one is "good enough" for
 >the
 > >Creator to be born in it as Christ.
 >
 >The statement is one page earlier than the other quotes I gave from 
chapter
 >XXXIV in CITADEL.
 >------------------------------------------
 >     "Just as a flower blooms, throws down its seed, dies, and rises for
 >its
 >seed to bloom again, so the universe we know diffuses itself to nullity in
 >the infinitude of space, gathers its fragments (which because of the
 >curvature of that space meet at last where they began) and from that seed
 >blooms again. Each such cycle of flowering and decay marks a divine year.
 >      "As the flower that comes is like the flower from which it came, so
 >the
 >universe that comes repeats the one whose ruin was its origin; and this is
 >as true of its finer features as of its grosser ones: the worlds that 
arise
 >are not unlike the worlds that perished, and are peopled by similar races,
 >though just as the flower evolves from summer to summer, all things 
advance
 >by some minute step.
 >      "In a certain divine year (a time truly inconceivable to us, though
 >that cycle of the universes was but one in an endless succession), a race
 >was born that was so like to ours that Master Malrubius did not scruple to
 >call it human. It expanded among the galaxies of its universe even as we
 >are
 >said to have done in the remote past, when Urth was, for a time, the
 >center,
 >or at least the home and symbol, of an empire."
 >-------------------------------------------
 >
 >-Roy
 >
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