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Agree to all that. I think one way to summarize it is to say that the
cosmological scheme of TbotNS is a literary device, like time travel
itself. It's an idea, not a working model. <br>
<br>
As such, it arbitrarily closes off certain possibilities and elides
others. This is similar to the standard problem already pointed out
with branching-timeline models: unless some Overseer is judging the
value of all lines, all lines must exist, even if the likely ones
vastly outnumber the unlikely. So one must simply ignore what doesn't
fit.<br>
<blockquote
cite="mid:mailman.1.1229292474.2269.urth-urth.net@lists.urth.net"
type="cite">
<pre wrap="">----------------------------------------------------------------------
Message: 1
Date: Sun, 14 Dec 2008 14:40:44 -0600
From: Jeff Wilson <a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="mailto:jwilson@io.com"><jwilson@io.com></a>
Subject: Re: (urth) Science catches up to the New Sun
To: The Urth Mailing List <a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="mailto:urth@lists.urth.net"><urth@lists.urth.net></a>
Message-ID: <a class="moz-txt-link-rfc2396E" href="mailto:49456F4C.1000100@io.com"><49456F4C.1000100@io.com></a>
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David Stockhoff wrote:
</pre>
<blockquote type="cite">
<pre wrap="">Are all the universes either human universes or Hiero universes, and
each species are as gods to the other? If so, which was the first?
And what about all the other sentient species?
</pre>
</blockquote>
<pre wrap=""><!---->
Alien sapients seem deliberately off the table in the BOTNS, but as for
your other question, I htink it's been fairly settled that the Hieros
are the humans of a previous incarnation of the universe, so it's a
cycle involving successive forms of the same "species". This may be a
late add on, and not airtight, but it seems necessary to prevent Noah's
God from being a liar.
</pre>
<blockquote type="cite">
<pre wrap="">Second, the Hierodules who supposedly live their lives moving
backward through time. I can grasp going on a time-travel mission in
which one pops in and out of time, but I do not understand beings who
live time backwards, or how that fits into the model. Which is meant?
</pre>
</blockquote>
<pre wrap=""><!---->
I am pretty sure that Barbatus, Famulimus & Ossipago progress moment to
moment in the same direction as everyone else in their current plane of
existence as there is no reverse speaking, dropped objects returning to
their hands, etc. but it is there mission to help supervise Urthly
progress during Severian's life, so they they begin at his end and use
travel once or more likely on multiple ocasions to progressively earlier
periods, speanding months or years at each stop. With their short
lidespans, this is a life-long mission (maybe not for the mechanized
Ossipago) for them even if they skip the boring half of his years, so
they might well be said to live backwards.
</pre>
<blockquote type="cite">
<pre wrap="">Clearly, not only do all universes exist, but all time exists. What
does this do to Apheta's agonistic model? Her race has already either
won or lost its struggle. If it ever once misses in its aim of
raising up Man or being raised up in turn, does it become always
already extinct? And if it doesn't, who cares whether they succeed or
not? Why is it SO IMPORTANT that their scheme succeed? (Humans don't
care if their descendants go extinct in a few centuries--why should
the Hieros care?)
</pre>
</blockquote>
<pre wrap=""><!---->
I think Yesod's time is not the same as Urth's, and most closely aligns
with narrative time, falling somewehre between the Urthly skein of
timelines (mostly parallel but some seriously tangled) and the eternal,
changeless nature of the Catholic God. Most points on Urthly timelines
are visible by the powers in Yesod, but they can be changed by earlier
Yesodi influence so that "later" in Yesod's view Urthly affairs seem to
have proceeded differently in numerous eras.
</pre>
</blockquote>
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