(urth) vanished people=Hieros

Jeff Wilson jwilson at clueland.com
Mon Nov 7 17:51:07 PST 2011


On 11/7/2011 11:46 AM, Lee Berman wrote:
>
>> Jeff Wilson: If they (shackles) stop Severian, why not the Green Man?
>
> I'm guessing you mean how do Typhon's soldiers shackle Severian if he
> could time-space travel out. The obvious answer would seem to be that
> such travel is not consciously available to Severian at that time, like
> his healing, earlier in the story. Perhaps we can agree that time travel
> is under conscious control by the Green Man at the time of his "capture".
>
>> *everything* in the books that is present in Urth's physical plane
>> before or after entering higher dimensions and/or transcending time is
>> shown moving physically as part of the process. The Green Man runs back
>> into his future...
>
> *everything* in the books is told to us by Severian, a guy with a medieval
> perspective. I take the description of muscular movement as a means of
> achieving space-time as metaphor. How are actin and myacin fibers supposed
> to burn sugar/ATP and achieve super-light speed?

The movement is no more metaphorical or supersonic than that required to 
ascend a staircase to board a plane or a descend one to enter a subway. 
It seems very likely to me that the Corridors of Time are commonplace on 
Urth; some are bound to architecture that anyone can use, like the 
Botanic Gardens or Ash's house, while others are navigable by those few 
who can see them or at least envision them. In either case, a modest 
effort allows a modest rate of travel, while spanning creation on the 
scale of days or moments requires very powerful devices like The Ship or 
Inire's mirrors.


-- 
Jeff Wilson - jwilson at clueland.com
Computational Intelligence Laboratory - Texas A&M Texarkana
< http://www.tamut.edu/CIL >



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