(urth) UotNS and how it screws with your head

Cliff Judge transentient at gmail.com
Tue Jul 13 13:40:23 PDT 2010


There's something nicely alpha/omega-ish to the idea that the Increate is at
both top and bottom. Like the two statues that flank a major Buddhist temple
- one them with its mouth open "AAAAAUUUU" and the other with its mouth
closed "MMMMMM".

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.
>
> 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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