(urth) Seawrack and the Mother
David Stockhoff
dstockhoff at verizon.net
Sun Sep 23 15:18:54 PDT 2012
On 9/23/2012 10:50 AM, Marc Aramini wrote:
>
>
> --- On *Sun, 9/23/12, David Stockhoff /<dstockhoff at verizon.net>/* wrote:
>
>
>
> Yes, I had meant to include a passing comment on that as well. If
> the universe is double-sexed (dioecious?) like us, it must be
> either hermaphroditic or dyadic. Either way it must mate with
> itself to produce or create or even to become itself.
>
> If it is single-sexed (monoecious), then I guess we're just
> supposed to forget about the missing sex. (In the same way, we're
> not supposed to notice that Eve's offspring either mated with
> others or mated with one another.) Which does seem like a step
> toward acknowledging that the universe is not like us at all, not
> at all.
>
> And I think one of the motives of SF is to deal with this dual
> reality: first that we congenitally, helplessly want the world to
> shape itself to us, and second that it never will, and in fact
> (thanks in part to science) seems if anything increasingly
> uncaring. (For instance, the earth will not forgive us for global
> warming, nor is it likely to save us from it.)
> _______________________________________________
>
> I do think the manner of reproduction of life in Wolfe is
> intrinsically important, from Sev and Apheta's fecund white fountain
> coupling to the mating rituals of the inhuma, and that asexual means
> of transferring the self obsess both the cannibalistic analept of the
> Alzabo and other faucets of both new and short sun, but I do want to
> make one counterpoint to your final paragraph.
> Wolfe, the spiritual engineer, is certainly not intrinsically opposed
> to science, but is rather critical in a psuedo-didactic
> way, critical of the final goals and motivations of man. the little
> parable of a man who complained all his life that Pas had messed up
> the whorl - at the culmination, he faces Pas, and Pas asks, "so you
> could have made the Whorl better?" "Yes, I reckon I could." "That's
> what I wanted you to do, make it a better place." screams that humans
> and their desires and wants shape the world ... with nobility of
> purpose, the world actually becomes a better place. To ascribe a cold
> callous naturalistic reading to Wolfe in the sun sequence has always
> seemed slightly skewed to me, and is my problem with the majority of
> Wright's criticism.
> Wolfe is not a naturalist; if anything he's an eclectic
> symbolist/spiritualist who embraces paradoxes. Much more
> ideologically akin to a Hawthorne than a realist like Howe. Thus, the
> world spiritually shapes itself to us each and every day.
>
>
Thanks Marc. I like that counterpart very much.
More information about the Urth
mailing list