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Interesting. I'll have to read that---I don't know anything about
it.<br>
<br>
I have one question to start: is Mitchell Catholic?<br>
<br>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 5/18/2014 3:23 AM, Carter, Nicholas
(British Council) wrote:<br>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span
style="font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"">I’m
reading Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell at the moment. In the
middle narrative, set some thousands of years in a future
post-apocalyptic Hawaii, the narrator and his companion
climb to the top of a mountain, using for part of the
journey forbidden metalled roads built by the ancients. At
the top of the mountain they enter a compound of solar and
stellar observatories.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span
style="font-family:"Arial","sans-serif""><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i><span
style="font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"">Ten–twelve
temples waited here’n’there, white’n’silv’ry an’
gold’n’bronze with squat bodies’n’round crowns an’ mostly
windowless. The nearest un was jus’ a hun’erd paces away,
an’ we set off for it first. I asked if this was where Old
Uns worshiped their Smart.<o:p></o:p></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i><span
style="font-family:"Arial","sans-serif""><o:p> </o:p></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span
style="font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"">Haunted
by a feeling of unrightness, of being watched, the narrator
watches as his companion finds a way into the central
building.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span
style="font-family:"Arial","sans-serif""><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i><span
style="font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"">How
she got that observ’tree door open, I ain’t knowin’ so
don’t mozzie me. A sort of umb’licky cord b’tween the
door’s dusted ’n’rusty niche an’ her orison-egg worked in
a beat or two. … A sharp hiss as the observ’tree door
cracked open. Air guffed out stale’n’sour like it was
breathed b’fore the Fall an’, yay, so it prob’ly was. In
we stepped an’ what did we find?<o:p></o:p></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i><span
style="font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"">Describin’
such Smart ain’t easy. Gear there was what we ain’t
mem’ried on Ha-Why, so its names ain’t mem’ried neither,
yay, almost nothin’ in there could I cogg. Shimm’rin’
floors, white walls ’n’roofs, one great chamber,
round’n’sunk, filled by a mighty tube wider’n a man an’
longer’n five what Meronym named a radyo tel’scope what
was, she said, the furthest-seein’ eye Old Uns ever made.
Ev’rythin’ white’n’pure as Sonmi’s robes, yay, not one
flea o’ dirt ’cept what we tromped in. Tables’n’chairs sat
round waitin’ for sitters on balconies made o’ steel so
our foots gonged.<o:p></o:p></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span
style="font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"">And<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i><span
style="font-family:"Arial","sans-serif""> This
gen’rator’s innards was diff’rent from other buildin’s.
The Prescient woman glowed with fass’nation as we stepped
into the echoey chambers, but I din’t. See, I knowed we
wasn’t alone in there. Shipwoman din’t b’lief me, o’
course, but in the biggest space where a mighty iron heart
stood silent was a sort o’ throne s’rounded by tables o’
littl’ windows an’ numbers’n’all, an’ on this throne was a
died Old-Un priest slumpin’ under an arched window. The
Prescient swallowed hard an’ peered close. A chief
stron’mer, I reck’n, she spoke hushly, he must o’ soosided
here when the Fall came, an’ the sealed air’s saved his
body from rottin’. A priest-king not a chief, I reck’ned,
in such a wondersome palace. She got to work mem’ryin’
ev’ry inch o’ that doomin’ place on her orison while I
’proached nearer that priest-king from the world o’
perfect Civ’lize. His hair straggled an’ his nails was
hooky an’ the years’d shrunk’n’sagged his face some sure,
but his Smart sky clothes was spiff’n’fine, sapphires
pierced his ear, an’ he mem’ried me of Unc’ Bees, same
hoggy nose, yay.<o:p></o:p></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i><span
style="font-family:"Arial","sans-serif""><o:p> </o:p></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span
style="font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"">Unlike
in BOTNS, the body only has one head and doesn’t come back
to corporeal life. Nonetheless, the narrator is tempted, or
imagines he is tempted by the long-dead figure, who he
conflates with his tribe’s Satan-figure. He resists the
temptation.</span><span
style="font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"">
(The companion is a visitor a figure from a more
technologically-advanced strand of survivors, who are benign
in intent but who on principle won’t aid the local populace
beyond the level of the current technology they have reached
or aid them in their battles with their savage enemies)</span><span
style="font-family:"Arial","sans-serif""><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span
style="font-family:"Arial","sans-serif""><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span
style="font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"">The
extracts above are of course closer in voice to Riddley
Walker than Severian, and I’ve found no reference at all to
Wolfe in Mitchell’s interviews. Mitchell freely confesses to
pastiche in the novel, (Hoban, William Gibson, Chandler,
Isherwood, Melville etc ) and so I think it’s unlikely he’s
referencing BoTNS. He comes from the tradition of literary
authors dabbling in science fiction, anathema to many SF
fans. However, he does at least, in Borges, Lewis Carroll,
Nabokov and others, share some of the same influences as
Wolfe. I wonder how the two authors’ separate paths led them
to haunted mountain tops and the preserved artefacts of a
crumbled, self-defeating civilisation, presided over by the
preserved body of a hubristic ‘king’.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i><span
style="font-family:"Arial","sans-serif""><o:p> </o:p></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><i><span
style="font-family:"Arial","sans-serif""><o:p> </o:p></span></i></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span
style="font-family:"Arial","sans-serif""><o:p> </o:p></span></p>
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