(urth) The significance of Apu Punchau

[David Stockhoff]

I'm skeptical that that means anything much, since if it is a painting 
it can be assumed to be a copy of a copy of a copy. Its exact 
composition is irrelevant. It doesn't need to come straight from 1980. 
But it is a peculiar problem, isn't it? The Bean painting here is 
clearly a version of the one Rudesind is cleaning (with an extra figure 
Severian does not mention, which itself means nothing since he 
misinterprets what he sees): 
http://www.alanbeangallery.com/JFKvision-new.html It was painted 
(copyrighted) in 2004. I think it's a stretch to conclude Wolfe meant 
the painting to suggest an alternative path to the same destiny, 
although it's easy to argue both that the constraints of physics would 
yield the same technology (gold-foil surfaces, stiffened flags) and that 
Wolfe, as an engineer, would embrace that argument. The actual history 
of painting is full of such impossible contradictions, and the thin 
distinction between imitation and forgery is a very Borgesian idea. But 
I concede it's not as strong a piece of evidence as I thought. I think 
the best interpretation of this painting would assert the purely 
literary nature of the game Wolfe plays, over any rigid 
universe-as-clockwork-mechanism sci-fi cliche. Still, there are 
suggestions in the text that Urth is Urth many times over. We just beat 
that theory to death a few weeks ago, but I'd like to hear more evidence 
either way. ------------------------------ Message: 6 Date: Tue, 30 Dec 
2008 00:29:53 -0600 From: Jeff Wilson <jwilson at io.com> Subject: Re: 
(urth) The significance of Apu Punchau To: The Urth Mailing List 
<urth at lists.urth.net> Message-ID: <4959BFE1.4060202 at io.com> 
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed David 
Stockhoff wrote:

> > Well, that's one theory that has been raised---that Urth is in a "later" 
> > universe than Earth. The idea of Urth being a subsequent "run" is 
> > intriguing. But it's both unnecessary and unsupported.
> > 
> > Perhaps the plainest problem with this is the existence of the lunar 
> > module photograph.
>   

We worked out earlier in 2008 that the composition of the picture 
described does not match any of the publicized Apollo 11 photos. If it 
is literally a painting, the artist took considerable liberties or it is 
some other moon landing. Alan Bean does similar paintings, but did not 
begin until 1982.

-- Jeff Wilson - jwilson at io.com < http://www.io.com/~jwilson > 
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