1. I should not expect Earwa to be perfectly thought out in every respect, since no writer is God, but there seem to be actualized philosophical principles in the world of the Second Apocalypse. Some of them are created by the Tekne (the Inverse Fire and the No-God), some have unknown origin (the Outside, possibly the Judging Eye), and some are sorcerous (Chorae, though I feel only to an extent). This troubles me since there are no real world alternatives to such things, and so I can't relate. Which means any kind of logical reasoning about the nature of the world of Earwa is fundamentally flawed (more than usual), because those are things in themselves, working as you want them to or as needed for the narrative. Could you comment on this issue?

2. In my opinion, there is (after the end of "The Unholy Consult") one and only one undoubtedly heroic character in the Second Apocalypse and that character is Anasurimbor Serwa. She was, of course, by no means perfect, but her intentions and actions (as I see them, and my sight is also by no means perfect) speak for themselves. She followed her father, because she wanted to save the world. She battled the Horde and suffered hardships of the Great Ordeal. She lived through Ishterebinth. She saved Moenghus. She was capable of love, and loved Sorweel. She mourned him when he died. She saved Mimara, Achamian, and Esmenet before attending to her mission, which makes her human as opposed to Kellhus. Oh, and she also killed a dragon with all its retinue. A dragon that kept the entirety of the Great Ordeal at bay. Some people argue that your books are misogynistic. And yet the most heroic character in them is a woman. Are you laughing now? I know I would be, quite evilly so!

1) The incompatibility between meaning (intentionality, in philosopher jargon) and mechanism is the crux from which the whole book hangs: the books simply inherit this incompatibility, exacerbate it with an eye for exploring its texture and implication.

2) A couple evil cackles, here and there. In terms of the extra-textual arguments I made criticizing feminist piety back when, I feel vindicated in a number of different respects. Not only has serious discussion allowed biological differences back to the table, there seems to a growing recognition that the movement needs to fundamentally retool its messaging mechanisms: I've had the strange experience of watching feminists interviewed arguing that the shame tactics so effective in the twentieth century now simply aggravate the problem. That's all for the good, though I fear that progressivism faces almost insurmountable headwinds given the way connectivity empowers extremisms of all stripes. The turn of political events in the US haunts me... to the point of developing a Cassandra complex.

As for the story, Serwa and Mimara were always in the cards, as was the democratization of sexual violence. Since the point was to cue outrage, to trick readers into making the same kinds of snap moral judgments and rationalizations that appall them in the text, I don't look at coming to the conclusion as any kind of moral vindication or ingroup credentializing. The point all along was that rationality flies out the window once our outrage buttons have been pushed, and that this applies universally, which is to say, as readily to liberals as to conservatives.

Quote from: Cû'jara-Cinmoi on July 28, 2017, 08:51:29 pm

Interpretative indeterminacy, or what I call 'Crash Space' in my philosophical work, is what this series is ALL about, so if you were expecting a traditional discharging of narrative mysteries, you were bound to be disappointed: the idea is to cue our meaning-making instincts in the absence of any definitive interpretation.

What questions can we ask which wouldn't invalidate to various degrees this goal, Scott?

Edit: Also while I'm sure getting back into raw writing rather than redrafting must be exhilarating, might you continue at TPB in future?

I'm sure those on the short end, dismayed by the indeterminacy, would be inclined to smell a postmodern rat, a way for an author to immunize him or herself from making any sort of 'errors.' But what can I do aside from shrug, reaffirm that I did work tremendously hard on this final book, and reassert that frustrating our meaning-making reflexes was paramount among my goals? Those things I am asked that belong to the signal I hoped would transmit will get a direct answer, as in the case of the hologram for instance. If that minimal signal doesn't come through for certain readers, then I failed those readers. But I thought, and still think, the exercise was well-worth risking such failures. If it proves that these individual failures aggregate into the commercial failure of the series of the whole, then so much the worse for me. But I will still insist that those who do feel betrayed by the ending actually 'get' the book in a way more profound than they know.

It's crash space. A place where every judgment of error doubles as an affirmation of success. You know more intimately than most, I'm sure, how this stuff has genuinely animated my thought.

Speaking of TPB, I find out today how much of the data from my old harddrive they were able to salvage, as well as how much it's going to cost.

How should we take the Mutilated's statement that the No-God is the Absolute?   Is it just rhetoric on their part or is the No-God a mechanical device that somehow uses God?  I have thought that the No-God being a device that interacts or uses God in a mechanical manner would be an easy way to explain both how it controls the weapon races (beings without "Free Will") and the Bode (everything with "Free Will" can feel the emanation of Divine Will but aren't suborned to it).

In TTT, Kellhus says the Mangaecca squat, chanting about Aurang's real body to relay him to the Synthese.  But, the Consult's Brain Trust seems to be restricted to just Mek, Shauriatus, Aurang and Aurax (and then the Mutilated).  Were there any other Minds among the Consult for the past 2 millenia or has it just been those four?  If so, given their .. dilapidated status how did Consult programs like breeding the Inversi actually function?  How did they manage it with so little sane manpower? 

How much of the Tekne do the Mutilated understand?  They've attached batteries to a lasergun and fixed a nuke, but is it limited to electrical engineering (which they could understand just by taking things apart and using their big brains) or have they learned any of the fundamentals of physics, chemistry, or biology?

Edit: Is the Chair of Hooks meant to be a device we should recognize and go "Ha! The Inchoroi used a [insert] as a chair!"?  Because I can't figure out what its original purpose was based on its description. 

Edit 2: Kakaliol kills an Erratic and can't find its soul.  Did this poor Erratic actually manage to find Oblivion?

There's no real world sense to be made of this: the Absolute, the unconditioned condition, is chimerical, a kind of cognitive perpetual motion machine. So fictionally speaking, the question is what kind of plausibility tales can you cook up. The Mutilated go pure objectivity, sapience absent sentience, while Kellhus goes pure subjectivity, sentience absent sapience. Press in either direction, and you trip into conceptual crash space, which is why all philosophical investigation of the theme remains mired in endless disputation.

Your second question leads me to believe that pretty much everyone has missed a certain boat, in which case, I can only say, RAFO!

The Mutilated have at best an operational knowledge of the Tekne devices they have happened upon - a Dunyain operational knowledge.

As for the Chair of Hooks, no, I had nothing devious in mind - I'm not even sure what you have in mind Jurble! As for the scene with the Erratic, yes, this is the implication.

Can you tell us what was up with the Old Father ordering the skin spy to preserve Mimara?  Even once we know the 'false prophecy' refers to the misunderstanding about the Anasurimbor returning at the end of the world I'm still not sure why they thought Mimara could prove beneficial to their cause.

So if you look at prophecy in superpositional terms, then any given prophecy will only be true of one set of forking paths. If you believe that a meta-prophecy lies buried among those prophecies, then you will be circumspect about the ways you wage war against destiny. There's no end to the potential counterfactuals when it comes to the Judging Eye, given the apparent randomness of its opening and closing. If the Consult has any inkling of Mimara's importance, they will be circumspect.

Is Mimara giving birth in Golgotterath meant to be a little meta-joke - that Golgotterath, the most wicked place in all of Creation, is now Earwa's actual Jerusalem?

Or Bethlehem. I'm not sure the inversion counts as 'joke' though - at least not of the ha-ha variety!

A lot of the questions have been put forward and even answered already. Something I was wondering about, what was the ultimate point of the Serwa vs the Dragon scene? The Ordeal's fight to enter the Ark seemed futile, considering the context of the Golden Room, and I don't quite see what the Serwa scene does for the narrative. Serwa's feats had been legendary already, I did not feel or understand the necessity of this setpiece.

I'm not sure I get the question, even if it were the case that the battle lacked downstream consequences. To the extent that war is generally pointless, all war stories are mountains of futility with peaks of 'closure' here and there. I can't tell a realistic story without including dead ends. The Glossary is literally packed with them!

I just wanted to say thank you all once again. I appreciate all kind words - if I don't quote or respond to them directly it's simply for the sake of getting to as many questions as I can.

I wish I had a meaningful question, but beyond the title, I don't want to spoil the story for myself, so I will only ask that perpetually annoying reader question... how long?  Have you inked a deal yet?  Will it grow from 2 to 3 books, or are you set on 2?
Also, you mentioned on TPB that the film/TV rights were optioned. Have you heard of any movement on that project?  And if it moves forward, how much creative control will you retain?

Amazon welched on the TV deal. In fact, they sacked everyone involved in it and several other deals with several other authors. Typically, a letter of agreement is as good as a contract in the biz. Once again they have proven themselves innovators.

A deal for the next books is in the works, but quite a bit depends on how well things go with TUC and the degree to which it bootstraps the backlist. Even if that happens, I'll keep on writing. The innovative folks over at Amazon have developed a great platform for authors to go it alone.

And yes, the world really is that crazy.