(urth) House Absolute
Jeff Wilson
jwilson at io.com
Mon Dec 1 12:47:35 PST 2008
Matthew Groves wrote:
> Again, this is the mistake of reading Wolfe as hard-sf. Wolfe's future
> doesn't have to be consistent with scientific theories of geology or
> plate tectonics. When he wants to connect his world to images of the
> present or past, he does so with recognizable architecture; when he
> wants to show the great age of Urth, he shows us the effects of erosion
> and sedimentation and subduction kneading the ruins our world into
> unrecognizability or oblivion. Nessus is Buenos Aires. Nessus is
> Byzantium. Incan ruins are still standing, but the technology of the
> fare future is found as if fossilized. That's the logic of Urth.
> Wolfe's Urth is a rhizome of associations and allusions to thousands of
> years of history and literature. It's consistency lies in the coherent
> structure of that rhizome, not in scientific plausibility.
>
> Therefore, if the elapsed time between our present and Severians is a
> pertinent detail, then the clues to it will be found among the nodes of
> that rhizome. The Lexicon Urthus 2nd ed. has some interesting things to
> say about this under "History of Urth." (BTW, can someone tell me what
> the abbreviations P.S. and S.R. mean in this book?)
They relate to the reckoning of time in years, which you've just said is
a mistake, so I won't burden you with this spurious notation.
--
Jeff Wilson - jwilson at io.com
< http://www.io.com/~jwilson >
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