From: "Roy C. Lackey" 
Subject: Re: (urth) Re: The irrigation of Lune
Date: Mon, 4 Mar 2002 15:59:03 -0600

Rostrum quoted me and wrote:
>> Who is responsible for the black hole in the sun is an important plot
point,
>> it seems to me, because it bears directly on the ultimate goal of the
Urth
>> Cycle; the pretext for, and the coming of, the New Sun. If Man, in his
>> presumptive arrogance, caused the wounding of the sun, that is one thing.
If
>> agents of the Increate caused it, as retribution, that is something else
>> entirely. I have always adhered to the latter view, and I think the
weight
>> of evidence from the fifth volume of the series supports that view.
>
>You've left out the third option, which I think is the correct one, that
>the wounding of the sun was caused by extraterrestrial enemies of Man,
>Abaia and Erebus, who swim between the stars (and whose sister, I believe,
>is the Mother on Blue).

And hartshorn wrote:
>I have always assumed that the sun was wounded by Typhon.
>
>The idea that it was in fact done by Abia and her cohorts is an interesting
>one:
>
>Perhaps Typhon had it done *in alliance with* her?   The idea of Typhon
>allying with these forces for revenge, or simply as a sort of Sampson
>strategy, is compelling.

Revenge for what? Typhon didn't want to pull the Temple down; he wanted to
create a new empire with Urth, the ancestral home of mankind, as its
symbolic center. He would have been cutting his own throat to ally himself
with any party bent on the future of ice.

"I have told you that I was autarch on many worlds. I shall be autarch
again, and this time on many more. This world, the most ancient of all, I
made my capital. That was an error, because I lingered too long when
disaster came. By the time I would have escaped, escape was no longer open
to me . . ."

The Red Sun wasn't part of his plans.

As for Abaia & Co. being responsible for the black hole: if they were, then
it was only a symbolic gesture. Man had long ago dispersed across the
galaxies. Whatever happened to Urth, a used-up backwater planet, would have
no impact on the species, was of no real consequence for Man, at least in
this iteration of the universe. Urth's only importance, even for the
Increate, was symbolic. If Abaia & Co. were responsible for the wounding of
the sun, then they were unwitting agents of the Increate, who were doing His
bidding, whether they would or no. The entire purpose, in Wolfe's universe,
of the wounding of the sun, of Sev's sham trial, and the coming of the New
Sun, was to satisfy the whims of the Increate. As Tzadkiel told Sev:

"Or if you wish to put it another way, you have already passed your testing,
which was an examination of the future you will create. You are the New Sun.
You will be returned to your Urth, and the White Fountain will go with you.
The death agonies of the world you know will be offered to the Increate. And
they will be indescribable--continents will flounder, as has been said. Much
that is beautiful will perish, and with it most of your race; but your home
will be reborn."

-Roy


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