(urth) Future Echoes: Hut in the Jungle +

Jordon Flato jordonflato at gmail.com
Fri Mar 20 15:06:20 PDT 2009


*doesn't agree with*

:)

On Fri, Mar 20, 2009 at 2:57 PM, David Duffy <David.Duffy at qimr.edu.au>wrote:

> 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.
>
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