(urth) This week in Google Alerts

[David Stockhoff]

On 11/2/2011 4:12 PM, Lee Berman wrote:
>> Maytera Marble: "When we were outside like him [The Outsider], living in the Short Sun Whorl before this one was finished and peopled, we worshipped him. No doubt you knew that already, Patera...."It wasn't called manteion, either. Something else."
>>
>> >Gerry Quinn: In Typhon’s empire, Christianity has retreated to the downtrodden and disparaged:
>> >that is to say, it is mainly to be found among the chems.
>
> That is a reasonable theory, Gerry. I respect it even while finding it less probably than other
> theories. As previously noted, The Outsider is persistently presented as a dark (not evil) god.
> Wolfe has said Severian is an aspect of The Outsider and Severian himself has become a dark
> (though not evil) god by the end of UotNS. (and when the dark gods don't come, their "place is
> taken by a demon.")
>
> Unless Severian is Jesus or his second coming, I can't see the Outsider as our Jehovah. As a
> demiurge, The Outsider would make an ideal god for chems, presumably being more material and
> less of the spirit than a human being. Moreover, the greatest masters of chem programming are,
> who else, but the dark mechanics.
>
> Perhaps you were thinking that the word Matera Marble was searching for was "church"? I think
> it was "temple". Manteion is a place for the worship of false gods, Pas and his family. I think
> in Briah the worship of the true god is worship of the dark, mysterious Outsider.

Why do you think it was "temple" and not "church"?