(urth) Shapeshifting Evidence and Principles

[Roy C. Lackey]

Andrew wrote:
>Thinking of Alpheta and her kin wafts me towards cosmological
>thoughts which touch on your point. I really don't believe Wolfe
>expects us to be very happy about the BOTNS universe. Angelic
>beings whose idea of justice is slow genocide in retribution for
>the sins of distant ancestors? Redemption via accelerated genocide?
>Mutant bureaucratic moth-creatures supevising the affairs of the
>worlds?
>
>Nah. It's all wrong. The BOTNS powers & dominions are separated
>from the Increate, like Gabriel in Melito's story: "The Pancreator
>is infinitely far from me." In LS/SS, the Outsider comes inside,
>and, IMO, things are fundamentally, cosmologically diffrent.

The many references made to the Increate in the Urth Cycle leave little room
to doubt that Increate means God, as, for example, Dan'l uses the word God.
Severian, at least, believed that he was doing God's will when he destroyed
Urth. "It came to me that when the Increate had chosen me his instrument to
destroy the land, only babes and beasts had died in innocence." (URTH, 333)

-Roy