(urth) Short Story 49: Westwind

[Marc Aramini]

I do mention that a reader could easily be critical of a ruler who sits in luxury leaving his people in a slum and offering to help them only indirectly (ie not at all) but I think that is reader hostility to the concept of a deity that would not interfere.  From a traditional  perspective this distance is to allow freedom - without the possibility of random events or negative things, what kind of free will or choice do people have? I don't think Wolfe has a problem with that remoteness as the prayer symbolized here is the cure for that remoteness, and perhaps from a devout person's perspective this is what God has offered.  

I wouldn't say the ruler is better to his people than God is ... Just more tangibly present.  The ruler could very easily be a simulation given the technology from all that he actually walks among the people.

I think it's more a symbolic representation of a personal relationship with God than escapist fantasy, but that is a semantic kind of distinction. 



Sent from my iPhone

On Aug 19, 2013, at 5:01 AM, Jerry Friedman <jerry_friedman at yahoo.com> wrote:

> 
> 
> From: Gerry Quinn <gerry at bindweed.com>
>> From: Marc Aramini
>> 
>>> Is the old lame woman’s indictment of the Department of Truth getting 
>>> their spittle
>>>   on the message of the ruler a kind of back handed slap at either world 
>>> governments
>>> or organized religions bringing their own spin to so many factors of the 
>>> spiritual
>>> world?  Maybe.
>> 
>> I haven't read the story, but it sounds like organised religion.
> 
> ...
> 
> Or corrupt clergy in organized religion.
> 
> Has anybody read the story as an attack on the Christian God?  The ruler
> treats his subjects much better than God treats his worshipers in Christianity.
> Of course it's unlikely that Wolfe meant that, but it might amuse somebody.
> More plausibly, it could be escapist fantasy: Wolfe wishes he could have
> direct, unambiguous contact with the ruler.
> 
> Jerry Friedman
> 
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