(urth) Science catches up to the New Sun
James Wynn
crushtv at gmail.com
Sun Dec 14 11:20:07 PST 2008
>Clearly, not only do all universes exist, but all time exists.
>What does this do to Apheta's agonistic model?
>Her race has already either won or lost its struggle.
>If it ever once misses in its aim of raising up Man or
>being raised up in turn, does it become always already extinct?
>And if it doesn't, who cares whether they succeed or not?
>Why is it SO IMPORTANT that their scheme succeed?
>(Humans don't care if their descendants go extinct in a
>few centuries--why should the Hieros care?)
Well, it is frustrating in that Apheta is clear about what they do and why
they do it but not why it is necessary to do it as opposed to doing
something else. So it is not clear whether Wolfe ever considered any of
that. But --since I think manvantara are more like parallel dimensions than
anything else-- let's go back to Green's guitar string analogy:
Adjacent dimensions are like adjacent parallel guitar strings that are tuned
to the same note. When you play one, the other vibrates. Consequently
adjacent dimensions seem to be similar. In "There Are Doors", men in the
other dimension wear black at their weddings because men will die shortly
after sex. But in our dimension, we do it because THEY do it. Well, what
would have happened if a manvantara next to the Hieros's did not have the
Hieros escape? What if they were never created? It could be a problem. What
if another race of beings escaped to Yesod and began tinkering with other
manvantara as the Hieros did?
It could be seen as a matter of existential importance for the Hieros to
continue the process for every nearby manvantara and then for ever
manvantara near those.
J.
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