From: "James Wynn" 
Subject: RE: (urth) Christians and Christs: A new RPG?
Date: Mon, 17 Jun 2002 09:39:06 -0500

The thought occurs to me that the Deluge of Ushas *could* be the Deluge of
Noah - that the Story of Noah could be the a mythological telling of the
Ushas Deluge...OR the Noah story could be a PROPHECY of the Ushas Deluge!!!

...or (as I'm inclined to believe) Wolfe was toying with the idea of the
ultimate beneficial intent of even G-d's most punitive actions - and took up
the icon of the world-wide flood to show it (I'm pretty certain that Wolfe
does not believe in a historical Deluge).

Seen this last way, Wolfe's NS, LS, and SS books stories are "mythological"
sci-fi rather than "speculative" sci-fi. That is, one cannot expect to draw
a line from the Messiah's Earth to the Conciliator's Urth. You can do it
technologically, linguistically, geographically, and in literature. But
Biblically? No. That's just too much to ask even from Wolfe. Even Tolkien
balked at attempting to create such a world - insisting that there is NO
religion in Middle Earth (except the false worship of Sauron by the Swarthy
Men).

C. S. Lewis DID draw such a connection in both his Space Trilogy and the
Narnia series. But when he attempted to add a tenuous connection (in the
space trilogy) to Middle-Earth, Tolkien deeply resented it.

If Wolfe IS bringing into the Long Sun and the Short Sun books the actual
G-d he worships at Mass, then I'll bet a dollar he does not see Silk's world
and history as any more potentially "actual" than Tolkien saw Middle-Earth
when he included in it the origin of "Hey-diddle-diddle".

I'm not sure I'm making myself clear. Sorry about that.

-- Crush


-----Original Message-----
From: Jeff Wilson [mailto:jwilson@io.com]
Sent: Sunday, June 16, 2002 7:55 PM
To: urth@urth.net
Subject: Re: (urth) Christians and Christs: A new RPG?

>      From:
>           James Jordan 

>          BTW, when Wolfe told me that he was thinking of Briah as a
> previous universe, I took it at face value.

The transcript does not render your question clearly at all; what
exactly =did= you ask him, if you can recall at 11 years' remove?

> I don't think it matters much, for I have not
> been able to see that it is some kind of major interpretive clue -- except
> that it does allow him to have a flood over the earth, which in our
> universe would be problematic because of the promise to Noah. That aspect
> of the narrative is "cleaner" if this a pre-Noah universe.

Is it possible to dodge the promise some other way? Was Urth ever
abandoned by humanity? Could the flood be local in nature, or due to
some other cause, perhaps Abaia? The flood lasts far too long to be due
to the White Fountain alone.

--
Jeff Wilson
How Am I Posting? 1-800-555-6789
"If your SecOp can see you, so can the enemy." -Cpt Law


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