(urth) House Absolute
Jeff Wilson
jwilson at io.com
Wed Dec 3 16:45:04 PST 2008
Tim Walters wrote:
>>> What's the artistic point of the cliff scene, world-famous for its
>>> evocation of deep time, if not to show that a gazillion years have
>>> passed?
>> To show that many, many human societies have arisen, fallen, and been
>> trampled unto dust, and the dust piled upon dust until it has become
>> fused into rock.
>
> Well, yes, exactly. That takes a gazillion years, not 20,000, and is more
> powerful for representing a gazillion years of human futility rather than
> 20,000.
Petrification and fossilization can happen in as little as 100,000
years, and things might be sped up by the odd industrial spill of
futuro-embalming fluid or nuclear bombardment could speed things up in
theory. It would still take millions of years for the layers to be
thrust upward on a mountainous scale without a cataclysm on the scale of
the White Fountain's arrival.
> I thought you (or somebody) was proposing that Typhon had artificially
> created these cliffs, which completely vitiates this reading. Certainly
> there's no natural process that can create such a cliff in 20,000 years.
>
>>> What's the artistic point of mentioning the cooling of Urth's core, if
>>> not
>>> to show that a gazillion years have passed?
>> To show the ironically ignorant nature of the far future civilization (
>> paraphrasing "there is another word for it I can't recall, but lightning
>> is what makes it go") who continue to be brought down by human hubris in
>> their attempts to ascend to godlike heights of wisdom.
>
> This might fly if there were textual evidence for it.
"Lightning," Master Gurloes said as he rammed the loose cable home.
"There's another word for it, but I forget. Anyway, the revolutionary
here runs by lightning."
--
Jeff Wilson - jwilson at io.com
< http://www.io.com/~jwilson >
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