(urth) Future Echoes: Hut in the Jungle +

David Duffy David.Duffy at qimr.edu.au
Fri Mar 20 14:57:55 PDT 2009


On Fri, 20 Mar 2009, John Watkins wrote:

> Dorcas thinks that the Claw works by reversing time.  I've always thought
> that that was wrong-headed--that it just works because it's divine
> power--magic.
>

My thinking on this matter, which noone ever seems to agree with ;)
(though perhaps it is too obvious), is that BotNS is a dialogue with
several concepts of Frank Herbert's.  So, the Autarch accesses the
memories of his predecessors after using a drug a la _Dune_, and humans can
ascend to godlike powers a la _The Godmakers_ by being able to channel
phenomena from any time at a given physical location.  IIRC, the example in
that book is the newly deified hero can easily destroy a object because there is always a 
history of superheated plasma for any location in the universe.

So, the superpowers are limited by previous and I guess future events
at the given locus, so he can find out of season hyacinths at a lake,
and reanimate someone who was alive at some time, but only if they were
alive at that place the godling is operating from.  Severian's
failures occur because there hasn't been an appropriate history to revert
to eg the psychopathic woman in the oubliette.

Cheers, David Duffy.



More information about the Urth mailing list