Date: Mon, 10 Jun 2002 16:02:15 -0500
From: James Jordan 
Subject: Re: (urth) Some problems if the Pancreator/Outsider is theHoly

At 03:08 PM 6/10/2002 -0500, you wrote:
>James Jordan wrote:
>
> > .... remember that Urth is a universe-cycle before ours. These events
> > predate the promise to Noah by about 50 billion years maybe. We don't know
> > that such a promise had been given to any Urnoah in Urth history. Nor,
> > returning to the first point, do we have to assume that God managed Briah
> > precisely the same way He manages our cycle.
> >
>
>I've come across this stated in the archives before; is the source an
>extra-textual Wolfe interview or the like?

         Yes.

>The reason I ask is because it seems
>odd that in a whole different cycle of creation you'd still get the Apollo 
>moon
>landing whose picture is recognizable as such.  And as someone else mentioned,
>how would Severian's box with BOTNS make it through the singularity?

         Well, the fact that is does somehow pass through the singularity, 
on board the Ship perhaps, or in the Yesod Library, is the intra-textual 
indicator that these events are in our past. That's always the problem with 
Wolfe: which of the tiny hints are important and which of the hints are not 
hints at all?


>That aside, what's going on with that window into the 20th c. in the botanical
>gardens?

         Protestant missionaries of the Theoanthropos. Well, like the 
Apollo picture, somehow this earlier BangganB of the cosmos is much like 
ours, but not quite the same. I do think we have an incarnation of the 2nd 
person of God in this earlier cosmos, the aforementioned Theoanthropos, the 
original Conciliator of which Severian is an application, but as 
Dan'l  mentioned, from some Roman Catholic perspectives the atonement of 
the Son is "eternal" so it could "happen" in time more than once. If this 
was not in Wolfe's mind, then I doubt if we are supposed to press the 
problem of a repeated crucifixion.
         But then, if we allow Wolfe the "liberty" to have a previous 
incarnation and atonement-of-infinite-worth in the Briah cosmos, then how 
are we to "know" that Severian's manuscript is from a previous cosmos and 
has made it into ours? Which "hint" do we take as simply a liberty we grant 
the author, and which "hint" we take as internal to the argument of the 
narrative? After all, maybe Wolfe just "somehow" got Severian's book from 
the future and "somehow" (golden spectacles?) was able to translate it, and 
we are not supposed to ponder further? Or, maybe it fell back to him 
through the corridors of time, instead of proceeding forward to him from 
the previous BanggnaB. Is there another "hint" that resolves the question? 
This is the problem and frustration when reading Wolfe!

JBJordan Nutria


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