(urth) What's So Great About Ushas?

[thalassocrat at nym.hush.com]

On Mon, 09 Jun 2008 14:15:11 +1000 "Roy C. Lackey" 
<rclackey at stic.net> wrote:
>Andrew wrote:
>>[Digression: I still think that the wounding of the sun might in
>>fact have happened back in Apu Panchu's day. It takes millions of
>>years for photons to travel form the core of the sun to the
>>surface. Wound the core, and perhaps the effects will only be
>>apparent on the timescales required for this. For the story, I
>>think this would be pretty neat thematically: eg the
>>Hierogrammate's plans unfolding over practically *all* of human
>>history. But anyway ...]
>
>Against this are Typhon's comments about his astronomers being 
>wrong in
>their predictions about the rate of change in the sun's output. 
>Contrary to
>their predictions, it had declined by a small but detectable 
>amount in just
>a "few years", followed by crop failures, famine and riots. So 
>Typhon had
>*some* reason to be keeping an eye on the sun even before effects 
>of the
>change became apparent. The change seems to have happened on his 
>watch.

But this is consistent with my story. Only in Typhon's time does 
the reduction in photon flow reach the surface of the sun; before 
that (maybe!) nobody has any cause to think there is anything 
amiss. It's a new phenomenon; his astronomers came up with the 
wrong explanation & so their prognosis was wrong. 

I don't think it's a point that can be definitively settled either 
way. But given the lack of any other explanation in the narrative, 
it just feels right to me that the reason the Ship was close enough 
to the sun to cause an eclipse in Apu Panchau's time was because 
the Hiero-dudes were inserting a black sun. What else was it doing 
there? And to me it's just neat to have the dying of the old sun 
commence with the first appearance of the New. 

But I don't think it's essential to understanding the main story 
line.

>
>>Evidently, the Hierogrammates followed after the Hieros in the
>>latters' quest "higher and higher". I think this brought them to
>>Yesod, only to find the Hieros had already departed for some 
>higher
>>sphere. Now they want to recreate a race of Hieros, but this time
>>under their control. When the new Hieros find the way beyond 
>Yesod,
>>the Hierogrammates will be riding with them.
>
>Wolfe cleverly makes Apheta say that of the *works* of the Hieros, 

>only the
>Hierogrammates remain. What does that really say about the Hieros? 

>Did they
>die off when their universe collapsed or did they escape like the
>Hierogrammates? If they are not on Yesod, where are they if they 
>still
>exist? If they are on some higher plane than Yesod, shouldn't they 

>be even
>more powerful than their "creations", be in a position to thwart 
>unwanted
>followers?

We can only speculate & make up stories about this, of course. 

I suppose the Hierogrammates are in the position of any other group 
intent on storming heaven, in Wolfe's other work (eg, in TWK) & 
elsewhere. 

My story goes that the Hieros were taken up to some kind of really-
truly heaven by the action of divine grace or whatever. The 
Hierogrammates completely misunderstand what this involved, and 
think it's just another step beyond Yesod, one to be climbed or 
forced from below. They see a Jesus figure as being important to 
this, and attempt to create one. Or something like that. We know 
they'll fail, but they don't.

Anyway, I think it's fun to muse about variations on a Paradise 
Lost kind of theme to fill in blanks here.

>Note how that bit about the Hieros fashioning the Hierogrammates 
>to be their
>"companions" sounds a lot like the popular perception of God and 
>the angels.
>Or the Seven Worlds cosmology in TWK, and how some have suggested 
>that its
>Most High God is the Demiurge.

But note that Apheta says in effect that the Hieros did *not* 
fashion the Hierogrammates to be companions. "How could they shape 
companions for themselves, who were themselves ever reaching higher 

and higher?" I don't think they were angels, even to the Hieros. At 
most, senior white collar workers at some stage in the evolution of 
a Hiero-hierarchy (as their name would indicate).