(urth) Cumaean???

[Jeff Wilson]

Dan'l Danehy-Oakes wrote:
> On Dec 14, 2007 11:07 AM, Pedro Pereira <domus_artemis at hotmail.com> wrote:
>> Severian time can be from
>> 100.000 years to 1 million years in the future, but the Sun at that time
>> will be as "healthy" as it is now. I think the reason behind the "dying Sun"
>> is artificial. Maybe something done by the Hierogrammates or by Tartaros
>> (black hole in the hearth of the Sun?).
> 
> We are told explictly that there is a black hole in the heart of the Sun, and
> it is at least implied that the HieroFoos put it there.

I thought it was Scylla, or one of that lot. though, I suppose they 
could have done it with some Hiero

> But I think 100K to 1M years is too short a time: some serious geology takes
> place between Sev's time and ours, enough so that human structures
> (made of materials strong enough to endure the process) are subducted
> into the ground and then uplifted as part of mountains. I'm not sure how
> long orogenesis actually takes, but I'm guessing it's on the order of millions
> of years. Any geologists in Da Howse?

Not a degreed geologist, but proper orgenesis takes millions of years as 
does most any plate tectonic process. I don't think this length of time 
can be supported in the face of the translator's comment that he has 
photographed contemporary buildings that still exist in Severian's time.

The juxtaposiiton of fossils and human artifacts can be explained by 
Severian interpreting what finds in terms of his eclectic education, 
"fossils" actually being sculptures or artificially petrified items like 
the bodies at Saltus, or any of number of deep time scenarios detailed 
in previous SF and hinted at in SWORD around p.75. (morlocks, alien 
colonies, abandoning the surface after atomic wars, etc.).

-- 
Jeff Wilson - jwilson at io.com
< http://www.io.com/~jwilson >