(urth) (no subject)

[David Stockhoff]

Just like the Sign of Addition.

Is it a past survival or a future one? I was going to mention to Lee the 
other day that his theory reminded me of Childhood's End, where an 
advanced race of benign red devils comes to rule us and prepare us for 
some Enlightenment that always struck me as on the level of meeting God.

On 12/16/2010 1:03 PM, Matthew Weber wrote:
>
>
> On Thu, Dec 16, 2010 at 9:46 AM, Lee Berman <severiansola at hotmail.com 
> <mailto:severiansola at hotmail.com>> wrote:
>
>
>
>     But I remain unconvinced that our God and Jesus Christ make any
>     appearances in the Sun series.
>     I'd need either more direct Christian references (call it a
>     crucifix, not a "rood"=rod) or fewer
>     monsters and demons.
>
>
> I would think that "rood" is used primarily to refer to a cross, or 
> the Cross.  The sense in which it means "rod" or "staff" is even more 
> obscure than the Christian one.
>
> I have to confess that the assumption I sometimes see at work here, 
> that Wolfe always takes the longest way possible around everything, 
> baffles and bemuses me.  Using the word "rood" to signify a cross or 
> crucifix is a way of distancing the phenomenon; if he merely said 
> "cross" or "crucifix" it would seem very cozily Christian to us.  But 
> the BotNS is set in a far future in which Christianity may be only a 
> distant, mythic memory--or perhaps it's a distant past in which 
> Christianity has not yet appeared.  So calling it a rood rather than a 
> crucifix or cross renders it intelligible and retains a slight whiff 
> of Christianity (as a survival of long ago?) without suggesting that 
> the denizens of Urth practice what we understand to be the Christian 
> faith.
>
> -- 
> Matt +
>
> Let each man pass his days in that wherein his skill is greatest.
>     Sextus Propertius (54 B.C.-A.D. 2), Elegies, II, i, 46
>
>


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