(urth) UotNS and how it screws with your head

David Stockhoff dstockhoff at verizon.net
Tue Jul 13 13:34:11 PDT 2010


It's maddening, isn't it?

It makes sense that a scheme of universes proximate in space could also 
be proximate in time, or could equally well be expressed as such, or 
only when convenient. A system of flows (necessarily "downward" if 
you're talking about flows) from the Increate could just as well flow 
from time to time, or TO the Increate.

I think he's at both ends, because he's actually outside time and space. 
I think Able's world is especially well designed to confuse top and bottom.

The higher universes could easily be in the future.

As for the limits to universes, there is no difference between an edge 
and a beginning/ending, is there? And you could only see both end and 
beginning, fore and aft, if the universe is very small or you are going 
very fast.

Cliff Judge wrote:
>
>
> On Tue, Jul 13, 2010 at 1:38 PM, David Stockhoff 
> <dstockhoff at verizon.net <mailto:dstockhoff at verizon.net>> wrote:
>
>     So you're thinking power could be drained from past Sun to future
>     Sun? That's interesting---not what I thought at all. Sensible though.
>
>     I assume that all universes coexist, and they are layered like a
>     wedding cake, or like Able's world. Love flows from the top.
>     Rotating spigots moved by elves and fairies control the flow.
>     Devils punch holes in the frosting. What goes down does not come
>     up, because the love is indeed inexhaustible.
>
>     Typhon preceded the Autarchs. Thus, he preceded FI, who began the
>     program of rehabilitation. But it's hard to see what Typhon did
>     that could be so horribly wrong, beyond indulging in his own
>     creation (i.e., the Whorl).
>
>     If a Conciliator bridges gulfs and closes gaps, could he also add
>     1+ (-1) and get 0?
>
>
> Remember that in BotNS it is spelled out that the cosmology involves 
> an expansion / big crunch concept of the universe - I apologize for 
> being bad with quotes on this list but when Famulimus is explaining 
> the sucession of races that led to the creation of the Hierodules he 
> states that the universe expands, then collapses in on itself and 
> expands again. In UotNS Severian refers to each such cycle as 
> a....manuvantara? An obviously Hindu word that I looked up and refers 
> to one instance of creation by a Manu, which is in turn created by 
> Brahma.
>
> (I understand that the cosmological models most popular with 
> physicists these days involve a constant expansion until entopy has 
> reached max, but on the other hand, some recent papers have thrown 
> credibility towards the concept that black holes in our universe 
> connect to white holes in other universes, so Wolfe seems to be 1 for 
> 1 here).
>
> The voyage from Briah to Yesod in UotnS seems to take place in "real" 
> time, as it would in a more simply-troped science fiction world, where 
> there may be FTL travel through hyperspace, different than time 
> travel, different than travel to "other dimensions" or "alternate 
> realities." In other words, a gateway to another universe was opened 
> at 1200 hours in our universe and the ship was through it by 1205 
> hours. But while adventuring on the ship, Severian had two occasions 
> to find himself floating in space perilously close to being lost in 
> the void. The first time he looks forward and sees the end of the 
> universe, aft and sees the beginning. The second time, he sees Briah 
> compress into a ring which the ship passes through to wind up in Yesod.
>
> So it may be that Yesod is simply a future cycle of our universe...not 
> a sidestep or trapdoor in spacetime but an advanced step in a series 
> or sequence. Indeed, Apheta states that we of Briah can have a world 
> like Yesod if we choose it.
>
> In this way, perhaps the Increate exists at the end of time, the 
> ultimate cycle. Energy to fuel the suns flows backward through time 
> from Him.
>
> Or maybe not? The talk of "higher" and "lower" universes reminds me of 
> something I noticed during the re-read of BotNS, which I mentioned 
> here a couple weeks ago...there is something Wolfe emplys a couple of 
> times where Severian confuses down with up. When the undine saves him 
> from the neuphars as an apprentice....I believe he described it as 
> being pushed up, then pulled down, then waking up on the stone stairs. 
> (The undine pulled him down and out from underneath the nenuphars, 
> then pushed him up in reality.) When he goes into the drink in the 
> Garden of Sleep, a hand reaches up from the bottom and grasps his, and 
> pulls him DOWN - then the next thing we know, Dorcas has pulled him UP 
> to the surface. Perhaps the most telling event was his ride in the 
> grav-led with Typhon, up to the gallery in the head. He feels a 
> terrifying plummet, and then comes out and asks Typhon "how can we 
> have come up to such a height, when it felt as though we had fallen so 
> far?"
>
> What this might do to a theory of higher and lower universes, such as 
> we have in Wizard Knight, is place the Increate at the top - but you 
> get to the top by going DOWN. In this way, the energy that flows out 
> of the suns and into "lower universes" - the collected energy of ages 
> of human existence, life, work, joy, perhaps - flows TO the Increate.
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