(urth) Gideon

[Roy C. Lackey]

Dave Tallman quoted and wrote:
> > Okay, assume that to be true and see where it leads. To trouble. I
*hate*
> > time travel stories. <g>
> >
> >
> I'm sorry you feel that way, because so many Wolfe novels have some. In a
> way that's good, because it gives us some background on how Wolfe handles
> the paradoxes. He usually provides a way to change the past without
> destroying the character involved.

He makes attempts to minimize the paradoxes, but they are still there.

> 1) The "Free Live Free" model is mostly out, because Cassie would merge
into
> Margaret for as long as she was there.

 Right. In FLF, no two versions of Whitten are in the same "present" at the
same time.

> However, its model of accumulating
> knowledge from the future to the past is an interesting one, especially
the
> way Whitten's original mission becomes unnecessary. We are left with a
> Whitten who remembers going to the future in a world where that didn't
> happen, a world changed as a result of a trip he will no longer take. He
> doesn't pop out of existence even though he has invalidated his past.
> (However, the merge gave him a stable anchor-point Margaret doesn't have).

Right. So long as Margaret exists, she is living testimonial to her failure.
Cassie doesn't need Margaret for anything. Margaret's role could have been
played by anyone. But Cassie is everything to Margaret.

> 2) The Talos play, based on its own description by Severian as the
> Conciliator in "Urth of the New Sun" looks like a fixed-universe loop, but
> there might be ways to build it up with overridden Whitten-like trips.
There
> had better be, because rewriting Sev's life has happened at least once.

Even in a "fixed-universe loop" such as in the Urth Cycle, there is still a
paradox.

(I don't want to get diverted on a tangent, so I'm not going to ask if an
astronomer on Urth would have seen a white hole approaching on the day Sev
left for Yesod.)

[snip]
> Meeting Margaret at the end could actually be of benefit to Cassie in an
> accumulating knowledge scenario. Margaret could pass on tips on what she
> did, what didn't work, and so on from multiple cycles. That doesn't seem
to
> have happened in this novel, though Cassie could be lying to Klauser.

I still say that meeting Margaret at the end is the proof that whatever she
does will fail, otherwise Margaret couldn't/wouldn't be there. On a side
note, why *didn't* Margaret recognize herself on the street near the bank?
Presumably, Margaret had lived through Cassie's trip to the bank and should
have been expecting her to be there.

-Roy