(urth) Agia's Weapons

[David Stockhoff]

On 12/21/2011 11:52 AM, Lee Berman wrote:
> David Stockhoff: Could pedo/hebephilia not be a clue to a deeper evil rather than a sign
> of identity?
>
> In BotNS, I think it serves both purposes. Incest also. Remember how Dorcas considers
> herself to be an unclean spirit?


Yes, but she doesn't try to enslave Urth.
>
>> if there is "real" evil in Severian's world, then it will find that willingness and bring
>> it to fruition. Thus, Hethor's use of sorcery, Agia's use of every weapon available, the
>> Leech's (and possibly Baldander's) abuse of children in the pursuit of further knowledge
>> and power, and the undines' blind hope that an executioner autarch will see things their way.
>
> Yes. I see Urth/Ushas as Wolfean allegory for earth's Flood. The idea being that evil exists,
> in some manner, independently of a human being. Earth (like Urth) was overwhelmed with evil
> to an extent that humanity could not resist it, because of fallen angel, demon-human mating
> (i.e. Nephilim). Evil had become intrinsic to our race. Only a genocidal Flood could remove it,
> saving the one pure family left. In BotNS, the sailors on Tzadkiel's ship had been away from
> Urth long enought to not be (genetically) corrupted by the alien invaders and they were used
> to repopulate Ushas as Noah's family was used to repopulate earth.

Possibly. The narrator does refer to many alien corruptions without 
excluding humans.
>
>> BTW, making Inire the source of all these seems to defeat the point of
>> evil---if evil had a point source it would be a disease, not a moral choice.
>
>
> I think, to Wolfe, it is both.  By analogy, is alcoholism a disease or a choice?


It can't be both---they are utterly and diametrically opposed 
conceptions of evil---but they can work in combination. I proposed a 
"predisposition" to evil, which all humans have to some degree but which 
allows choice and action. There can be no point in writing fiction about 
the total lack of moral choices, even within a structure (cultural, 
political, paranoid-narrative) that forces those choices. Free will is 
very much a problem in BNS, even given that the protagonist gets to make 
his choices more than once.
>
> After the Flood (on Ushas and earth) evil still exists, but sufficiently reduced that it can be
> resisted by humanity with "good" choices. Though perhaps some people, for whatever reason, can
> be born or twisted into such an evil nature that good is no longer really a choice for them?

Severian's theory of incremental moral progress from iteration to 
iteration does seem to suggest this, or at least the reverse of it. And 
I have to admit that Wolfe's structures (throughout the Sun Cycle) do 
suggest an affinity between morals and genetics, though I have assumed 
that this is metaphoric, not real. Your theory seems to move fluidly 
between "evil" and "corruption" in a way that I find creepy but by the 
same token impossible to refute. Fiction is always about the worst 
possible things one can imagine.