(urth) Tzadkiel/Melek Taus
David Stockhoff
dstockhoff at verizon.net
Wed Jul 14 04:32:04 PDT 2010
I always suspected Wolfe of deliberately using pulp cliches in BotNS. I
had no idea he applied the principle so thoroughly. It almost has the
effect of reading about ancient, clever technologies like ballistae and
water clocks.
Jeff Wilson wrote:
>
> Typhon responds, "Why should gravity serve Urth, when it can serve
> Typhon?" I interpret this as an adjustable antigravity effect, where
> the sled and Severian's viscera fall freely as the acceleration of
> gravity is reversed, then restored just in time for the sled to cease
> rising at its destination and then lock in place. The flier's buoyancy
> seems to be always present, but uses conventional action-reaction
> propulsion to move, causing the screaming noise that accompanies the
> hasty departure of of Vodalus , and explaining why people riding in
> them don't feel as though they are falling.
>
> Reverse-matter buoyancy has made something of a comeback with Robert
> L. Foreward's notion of "negative mass", but at the time
> gravity-reversal of antimatter was an obsoleted SF device since word
> had gotten around the readership that antimatter was only electrically
> reversed, not gravitationally. Wolfe's deliberate use of this outdated
> concept alongside a similar but distinct outdted antigravity concept
> makes me wonder if the mirror-traveling trick of accelerating light
> and the reflected objects across or beyond the universe was also a
> plot device previously used band then discarded by previous authors.
>
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