<html><head></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; "><br><div><div>On Aug 13, 2010, at 11:31 AM, David Stockhoff wrote:</div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"><blockquote type="cite"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: separate; font-family: Helvetica; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: none; -webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; font-size: medium; ">That's exactly what I have proposed: branching Briahs. From the back end, these will look like multiple Briahs, although branches do die.<br><br>Gerry Quinn wrote:<br><blockquote type="cite"><br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">From: "António Marques" <<a href="mailto:entonio@gmail.com">entonio@gmail.com</a>><br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite">DAVID STOCKHOFF wrote:<br></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite">I agree that the homologue interpretation is valid. I don't see any<br></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite">confirming reason for it outside an analysis of Tzadkiel's remarks. All<br></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite">there is, is pushing the explanation farther and farther away: well,<br></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite">there's ANOTHER universe with ANOTHER race, and THEY created YESOD, and ...<br></blockquote></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite"><br></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite">Which actually is said in the text. Of course, the text may mean otherwise.<br></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite"><br></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><blockquote type="cite">You and Lee seem interested in not having more than two universes, Briah and Yesod. Others see little sense in that idea.<br></blockquote></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">I can accept that Wolfe was playing with the idea of multiple cycles, but at the same time I think of this a possibility rather than the only true reading of the text.<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">Also, I wonder whether talk of more than one Briah is really meaningful. We have alternate timelines such as that of Ash and the Green Man, which could be said to refer to two Briahs splitting from one root. We have other time shenannigans. Yet nobody uses this to argue for multiple Briahs, although the Briah of Ash is quite different from the Briah of the Green Man, at least as far as Urth is concerned.<br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><br></blockquote><blockquote type="cite">Okay, we can hypothesise that each Briah is a bundle of related timelines that don't connect much to the set of timelines bundled together as a different Briah, except at the start and finish of each Briah. Maybe that makes sense. But I'm not sure such detailed hypothethical cosmologies are a great jumping off point for further analysis. Even physicists are running out of useful detectable signals that can distinguish between different cosmological hypotheses these days. We should recognise that this is likely for analysts of BotNS also!<br></blockquote></span><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"></blockquote></div><br><div><br></div><div>Yes, but there's such linearity between Pre-Briah imploding (Yesod looking forward and back, the flower cycle of divine years, the word "succession" being used, past tense for post-Briahan dealings, etc.) and a new universe, Briah, the one housing Urth. The Pre-Briah also had an "Urthlike" planet that was also emprical and the center of the universe for a time (empirically not cosmographically). I suspect that was Earth. It was the planet whose humans created the Hierogrammates, killing uncountable billions in the process, and it took the rest of that universe's life. I suppose there was an action which triggered the universe's collapse, and the completion of the Hierogrammates sounds as good as any. Did they destroy that universe and escape to Yesod?</div><div><br></div><div>Another question is, when Severian activates the White Fountain, is he imploding Briah, and birthing Post-Briah?</div><div><br></div><div>If so, I guess Urth becomes Rth or Yrth or something.</div><div><br></div><div>:)</div><div><br></div><div>...ryan</div></body></html>