(urth) House Absolute

[Jeff Wilson]

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 >