Date: Wed, 17 Jul 2002 06:50:15 -0700
From: Michael Andre-Driussi 
Subject: Re: (urth) arcologies like mountains

Matthew wrote:
>As Severian travels north he comes to new mountains, sharp, uncarved
>(which also touches upon the time between Typhon and tBotNS).

Nope, not in the text I read.  If you can find it again, please tell.
(Perhaps you are mistakenly thinking of URTH and the era of Apu Punchau.)

> The raising
>of new mountain ranges by conscious intervention rather than eon-long
>techtonic activity would have been an event of staggeraing magnitude to
>rival the coming of the New Sun itself.  The lack of mention of such an
>event could be allowed but set against it is the long continuity (of
>decline, to be sure) implied in the whole atmosphere of the Commonwealth.
>
>Yeuch, I just don't believe it.

You don't have to believe it.  There are plenty of readers who believe, for
example, that the Old Sun is dying of natural causes; or that Lune's orbit
is a natural function of time rather than engineering; or that all those
weird animals evolved on Urth (implying evolutionary time scales); etc.
(Everyone has their own mix and match.)

It seems to me that there are many such cases of misdirection in the text
where things once seem very big and then shrink down.

For the rest: As a matter of fact, I have considered in the past how
artificial continent raising might be a requirement, if only to allow a
certain continent to sink under the waves during a global deluge and not
come up again when the high waters retreat.

But what I was talking about in this case was not whole continents, but
rather mountain ranges.  Of supercities.  Decayed into gigantic tells.

As for the mine at Saltus: well, urk -- do you believe that excavations of
Roman cities prove that they were in place a million years ago?  Probably
not.

=mantis=



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