(urth) Urth-Earth links

[Marc Aramini]

--- On Wed, 10/19/11, Gerry Quinn <gerry at bindweed.com> wrote:


From: Gerry Quinn <gerry at bindweed.com>
Subject: Re: (urth) Urth-Earth links
To: "The Urth Mailing List" <urth at lists.urth.net>
Date: Wednesday, October 19, 2011, 5:16 AM




 


 

From: Lee Berman 

This is from Lee, I think:
> I think the model makes sense. The thing is, if this story is going to retain a
> semblance of Judeo-Christian relevance, I think a human occupied universe makes
> some sense. Nobody really wants a green blob or crystalline structure Jesus 
> (well at least not Gene Wolfe, I guess).
 This is from Gerry:
I don’t see why not.  Wolfe’s aliens are often humanoid, but by no means always, and in many of his stories (certainly including the Urth cycle) he indicates that robots and androids as pretty much equivalent to people, and often morally superior.   Even if all the aliens in the stories evolved from humans (and I personally think it’s pretty clear that they did not) the robots and androids obviously cannot have.  A robot Jesus is not part of the Solar Cycle, obviously, but the concept would sit better with it than with most SF novels, crystalline structure or no.
 
- Gerry Quinn
 In this case, I feel the human nature of a messiah is very very necessary to Wolfe's orthodox redemptive mindset: for a true scapegoat or savior to be valid, it must be part and parcel of the group it redeems.  
 
Perhaps imitation approaches transubstantiation, but the possibility of goodness in humanity to be chosen over evil, coupled with the perfectibility of the soul, would certainly never preclude a human savior, (though, if we want to map a reconciliatory path to Severian, he may just be ultimately the projection of a very advanced machine system by the end of Urth)
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