(urth) Brook Madregot runs between

[António Pedro Marques]

Jerry Friedman wrote (12-08-2010 02:25):

> (By the way, how did Severian understand them?  And are "isangoma" and
> "tokoloshe" words in his language, or did he transcribe them phonetically?  Did
> he transcribe "Paris" phonetically, which means Robert and Marie were speaking
> English, or did Wolfe put Paris in because Robert was talking about a city where
> you study art?  Usually we should probably ignore Wolfe the translator, but here
> I'm tempted to think about him.)

That one is tricky. If the translator knew that whatever the original was, 
it was 'a city where you study art', then he knows much more about Urth than 
he is telling us. Though we tend to ignore the translator and when we do 
not, we only think of him as someone who knows just the language - but 
that's hardly credible, isn't it? Is there any backstory for the translator?

As to Urth being Earth, I don0't think Wolfe ever intended it that way. I 
think his idea was always that the BNS told what *might* happen in our 
universe, and it did do by telling what *did* happen in a very similar one. 
Similar but not equal, as the name Urth instead of Earth implicates.
And why that one universe? My guess is that here there aren't infinite 
universes just different in a detail or two. There is ours, and there is 
Briah, which is quite similar but not equal*, and all the rest are even more 
different than Briah. I think Wolfe is telling us the story of the most 
similar parallel universe there is to our own. And our own will be the one 
to produce the Hieros. As long as we heed Wolfe's warnings. Which we will, 
otherwise there would be no story to tell.

(*) There may have been a Jesus on Urth, I find it very hard not to there 
have been. All the rest is too similar, and an 'inferior' Jesus makes no 
religious sense. But the Church, taken as the body of believers, failed 
there. The religious organisations on Urth are not the historical successors 
of the original Church.