(urth) Urth - Earth links

[David Stockhoff]

On 10/14/2011 11:31 AM, Marc Aramini wrote:
>
> A really really quick point I wanted to make.  The idea that everything in Severian's manuscript happened before our present time always felt like a slight retconning in that Jordan interview to avoid offending a protestant but spiritually inclined interviewer.
>
> Wolfe, while raised a somewhat lax Protestant, converted to Catholicism late and seemed to be a bit more in tune with the general orthodox "laxity" of the Genesis story and especially its first 11 chapters (or indeed, all bible stories) in which the inspired truth doesn't have to be literally true but is true symbolically or as parable that simple man can grasp (John Paul II said evolution might be "more than theory", which is actually more than a scientist would probably say).  Having said that, Gene is still spiritually inclined and, in my opinion, appreciates that inclination in his readers.
>
> For example, Jordan says something about God promising to never visit another flood on mankind.  Gene says, that's a previous iteration, because he knows he has a cyclic reality and it seems a way out of the trap without saying, "well, the first 11 chapters of Genesis are parables, James. Like the good samaritan: he's true without ever having actually existed, a figment of Jesus' imagination"
>
> When Severian casts his manuscript into the rift in urth of the New Sun, that manuscript could have ended up ANYWHEN, for that ship sails through time.  Yes, Gene intended his creation ot by cyclical, but I don't think he necessarily intended that iteration to be necessarily in the past until James Jordan called the truth of the Covenant down on him, at which point Gene created a very very simple solution already written into his story.  That's my theory anyway.  It could have been in the past or the future, but it wasn't placed in the past until the covenant came up by a more literally inclined Protestant reader, who would vest more authority in the Bible rather than the Catechism.
I think the fact that the Translator refers to the future supports this 
flexibility.

I think there are two simultaneous, opposite, and complementary 
approaches to successfully imagining and completing a story cycle like 
the Sun series. (1) Work out critical stuff that your narrators 
experience firsthand or that characters discuss a lot in GREAT detail. 
(2) Bullshit the rest as you go.

But make sure you identify separate "piles" of ideas that are 
compatible. For example, in the "super-Internet" pile goes: a society 
run by thinking machines; a society of mind-controlled humans run by 
machines; a society of mind-controlled humans run by humans; a society 
of propaganda-controlled humans; a society of humans who dream together; 
a society of humans who .... This way, vague references such things can 
change without contradicting one another too much.


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