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<div class="gmail_quote">On Tue, Jul 13, 2010 at 1:11 PM, Lee Berman <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:severiansola@hotmail.com">severiansola@hotmail.com</a>></span> wrote:<br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="PADDING-LEFT: 1ex; MARGIN: 0px 0px 0px 0.8ex; BORDER-LEFT: #ccc 1px solid"><br>Nice post John. My thinking has leaned in the same direction, heavily influenced<br>by the (surprisingly) hard SF, (shockingly) foresighted 1972 book, The Gods Themselves,<br>
by Asimov. I don't feel it is considered a very seminal work though it did win the Hugo<br>and Nebula. Surely Wolfe read it?<br><br></blockquote>
<div>I assume so...for the record, it's my favorite Asimov book by a fair margin. Second is The End of Eternity.</div>
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<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="PADDING-LEFT: 1ex; MARGIN: 0px 0px 0px 0.8ex; BORDER-LEFT: #ccc 1px solid">As you say, Severian's (and Apheta's?) creation<br>was a White Fountain in Briah. But it was a black hole they created in Yesod<br>
(no snarky comments please). Was Yesod (or maybe Sol) left with a black hole that they<br>will need to repair?<br></blockquote>
<div>I don't know. Maybe they really have divine tech that allowed them to, er tap...that is, to ritualistically perform...yeah. There's not term for it that won't lead to jokes. But conceivably (haha!) they circumvented creating a black hole in Yesod by opening a direct pipeline to God. Or just to a higher universe, and created a black hole there and a fountian that goes through Yesod to Briah. </div>
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<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="PADDING-LEFT: 1ex; MARGIN: 0px 0px 0px 0.8ex; BORDER-LEFT: #ccc 1px solid"><br>We have heard the black hole in Urth's sun was created as a punishment. But could we<br>infer that it (also) was created when a nastier version of Severian travelled to Briah<br>
to get a white fountain to bring back and heal the black hole for a nastier version of<br>Urth in Abbadon?<br><br></blockquote>
<div>I think it's speculation either way, isn't it? If the black hole is a biproduct of creating a white fountain, wouldn't the same apply in reverse, so that maybe the Hierogrammates or whoever created a white fountain in Abbadon as a biproduct of punishing Urth?</div>
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<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="PADDING-LEFT: 1ex; MARGIN: 0px 0px 0px 0.8ex; BORDER-LEFT: #ccc 1px solid"><br>Wolfe is usually portrayed as a devout Catholic but, given his writing, I have serious<br>doubts whether he has the same view of grace and the "God Is Love" stuff that most<br>
Christians have or are supposed to have. He really seems to have a dark and pessimistic<br>side which comes out in pretty much all his work. Where, in his work, is the shining,<br>uncompromised redemption we must (as christians) eventually, somehow achieve? Is he<br>
saving that for his last novel maybe?<br>
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<div>I think Wolfe, like Tolkien, has a dark view of the world and of human nature. The light of God, as he writes of the Claw, is "the only light we have"--the rest is darkness, Tolkien's "long defeat." I think Wolfe would say that the shining redemption is waiting in the next world if it's anywhere.</div>
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