(urth) UotNS and how it screws with your head

[John Watkins]

On Tue, Jul 13, 2010 at 12:25 PM, David Stockhoff <dstockhoff at verizon.net>wrote:

>
> Do we have a better explanation for the black hole? I haven't seen one.
>
> I've been assuming it has something to do with Typhon.  I also have a wacky
hypothesis that there are clues to how this may have occurred in other Wolfe
books, but I really don't have an account for it at this point.  So I guess
I have to fall back on my point about theme, and saying that we're told,
repeatedly, that the white fountain comes from another universe, not from
the sun itself in the past, and that we never see Severian taking any action
that could account for the black hole being placed in the sun when he's
running around in the past.

The one thing I'll say for the alternate hypothesis is that the timelines do
seem to match up.  If the White Fountain enters the universe in Typhon's
time and is using the sun as its power source, it is an unusual
coincidence.  However, the coincidence is necessary to put
Severian-as-Conciliator in Typhon's time.



> John Watkins wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> On Tue, Jul 13, 2010 at 12:03 PM, Gerry Quinn <gerryq at indigo.ie <mailto:
>> gerryq at indigo.ie>> wrote:
>>
>>    I think it was the white fountain too.
>>         Of course, there is another issue with the white fountain, which
>>    Mr. Thallassocrat, at least, may find interesting.  The concept of
>>    a white hole comes from the maximally extended Schwarzschild
>>    solution for a black hole.  Few nowadays think that white holes
>>    exist in nature - but if one does it should be associated with a
>>    black hole (though perhaps in a different universe).
>>         It would also make sense in that the result of combining the two
>>    should be to negate both - this doesn't seem so probable if an
>>    arbitrary black hole meets an arbitrary white hole.
>>         Could Severian, therefore, also have created the black hole in the
>>    Sun?
>>
>>  I don't think so...
>>  I think the black hole in the Sun exists as a white fountain in the lower
>> universe (Abbadon?)
>>  It would follow that the white fountain Severian creates exists as a
>> black hole in Yesod or some higher plane.  There may be an incredible number
>> of layers of universes...
>>  Metaphorically (and maybe literally), I think Wolfe is making a point
>> about grace.  The layers of universe ultimately terminate at what Dante
>> would have called the Empyrean, highest heaven, where infinite energy
>> miraculously fonts from the Godhead.  God, being the well that never goes
>> dry, can give without taking, breaking the law of conversation of energy.
>>  This has a parallel with ethics--in love, humans partake in the divine
>> essence, and so love is giving without taking, et cetera.
>>  These points would be lost, or their effectiveness reduced, if the white
>> fountain and the black hole were one and the same.
>>
>>         - Gerry Quinn
>>
>>        *From:* Cliff Judge <mailto:transentient at gmail.com>
>>
>>
>>        And then they engage in what a couple of Wolfe's characters
>>        call the "warm congress" and Severian says, I entered Yesod,
>>        or rather, it enclosed about me, yada yada, and then he
>>        describes his orgasm as this terribly serious cosmic event,
>>        and talks about something that is conceived from the union.
>>        Then he states that what was conceived was himself.
>>
>>        Now as a reader who has just decided that its pretty clear
>>        that Dorcas is his grandmother, Ouen is his father, and btw I
>>        like the idea that his mother is Catherine, of whom a khaibits
>>        is slain every year at the Feast of Holy Katherine, there is
>>        something in my brain that really WANTS to take the easy way
>>        out here and say, right what was conceived was "himself"
>>        meaning the actual white fountain that will replenish the sun
>>        of Urth.
>>
>>        But part of me is also thinking....yeah there it is, Severian
>>        is his own father.
>>
>>
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