(urth) UotNS and how it screws with your head

Tue Jul 13 13:44:37 PDT 2010

On Tue, Jul 13, 2010 at 4:34 PM, David Stockhoff <dstockhoff at verizon.net>wrote:

> 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.
>

This reminds me of C.S. Lewis's words about Milton's (fictive?) cosmology.
I slogged through Paradise Lost for the sake of saying I had, only really
enjoying the fights, but Lewis fortunately provides this insight:

"[Milton] invented a most ingenious device for retaining the old glories of
the builded and finite universe yet also expressing the new consciousness of
space.  He enclosed his cosmos in a spherical envelope within which all
could be light and order, and hung it from the floor of Heaven.  Outside
that he had Chaos, the 'infinite abyss', the 'unessential Night', where
'length, breath and highth/And time and place are lost'."

Now imagine that, instead of Heaven, this sphere hangs from the floor of a
larger sphere, that hangs from the floor of a larger sphere yet...and
imagine that each sphere is continually contracting and expanding, dying and
being reborn.  And some spheres have more than one sphere hanging off of
them.

But maybe there is a terminal sphere (or a set of terminal spheres) that
really does (do) hang from the floor of Heaven.  Eventually.

> 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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