Date: Thu, 10 Jul 2003 10:24:02 +0930
From: jonathan mann 
Subject: Re: (urth) time looping


mantis wrote

> Time travel "message to self" loop thingie.  In Heinlein you have DOOR INTO
> SUMMER.  In movies you have either "Groundhog Day," where the narrative
> hero is going through every loop from beginning to optimized end; or
> something like "Donny Darko," where it is the final loop only and thus more
> like DOOR INTO SUMMER (and Severian's Narrative).


There's also FREE LIVE FREE, in which the loops 'optimize' 
the person being looped.  Never let it be said that Wolfe 
underexplores a theme.  Maybe there's more than one Wolfe, 
and different books with similar themes are by different 
versions.

Actually, I just came up with a more serious idea: couldn't 
the looping be analogous to the auctorial drafting process? 
  We already know that Wolfe goes through a lot of drafts, 
each of which 'optimizes' and ties the books more closely 
together.  What if each iteration of this added another 
iteration to Severian?

--jabiru
[Delurking now.  Animal or animal products, right?]




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