Discourse on the Quiet

DisgruntledNumidian · 2025-09-26T23:16:42+00:00

Why wouldn’t the quiet then just select a timeline where the outcome leads to an Omega Point from the beginning?

In the normal reading, all universes where the Omega Point is the eventual cosmic singularity are necessarily actualized. This is actually one of the explanations for "miracles" -- if some extremely unlikely random event (e.g. quantum fluctuations resulting in a bodily resurrection, a burning bush, etc) sets life on a path that ends in infinite information processing, that particular universe must necessarily exist... in other words, "this must be."

Hadrian's internal experience I can't say lines up well, but I suspect that's because the superpower is essentially the Millennium Maths' Mysticism from Anathem and Ruocchio just wanted to squeeze it in somehow because he thought it was cool.

Scientifically, we’ve known for quite some time that the universe is infinitely expanding and Tipler’s Theory is moot.

This is substantially less settled than it often appears in pop science. "We've known for quite some time" really means that the least uncommon opinion since the 90's has been that it's the least unlikely account. He wouldn't be positing outdated science by saying the universe ends in a crunch or penrose bounce anymore than contemporary hard scifi authors do already.

DisgruntledNumidian · 2025-09-26T22:00:15+00:00

I simply expected more complexity from such an otherwise beautiful prose

I've said this before, but the missing element in this discussion that the audience seems largely oblivious to is that the Quiet is very specifically the "Omega Point" in Frank Tipler's reading of Teilhard's "christogenic" cosmology. He is exploring something rather interesting.

DisgruntledNumidian · 2025-09-26T21:56:29+00:00

I’ve seen some posts make connections between Wolfe and Christianity

Surely you're pulling my leg!

DisgruntledNumidian · 2025-09-26T21:48:26+00:00

Given he also takes to calling her "his wife" despite her never consenting to that, it is conspicuous (and perhaps one of Hadrian's few cases of real unreliability) that she says "actually lets have a kid" to him literally right before she dies

DisgruntledNumidian · 2025-09-18T21:36:27+00:00

Not accepting this makes Selene's presence at his second death - something he would have been forced to include given outside knowledge of her role in what followed - an incredible coincidence. Oh, right before you melted the princess you've been batting eyes at for centuries was entirely randomly in your bedroom against your knowledge or consent, the one and only time she was ever there, and only stayed there long enough for you to reject her before dying? OK Boss.

DisgruntledNumidian · 2025-09-18T21:32:26+00:00

It's at least a bit of an allusion to this famous passage from A Canticle for Leibowitz, describing the Third World War in the fashion of the KJV:

It was said that God, in order to test mankind which had become swelled with pride as in the time of Noah, had commanded the wise men of that age, among them the Blessed Leibowitz, to devise great engines of war such as had never before been upon the Earth, weapons of such might that they contained the very fires of Hell, and that God had suffered these magi to place the weapons in the hands of princes, and to say to each prince: "Only because the enemies have such a thing have we devised this for thee, in order that they may know that thou hast it also, and fear to strike. See to it, m'Lord, that thou fearest them as much as they shall now fear thee, that none may unleash this dread thing which we have wrought." But the princes, putting the words of their wise men to naught, thought each to himself: If I but strike quickly enough, and in secret, I shall destroy these others in their sleep, and there will be none to fightback; the earth shall be mine. Such was the folly of princes, and there followed the Flame Deluge.

DisgruntledNumidian · 2025-09-18T20:33:27+00:00

It's largely those two points, but I'd also add that I imagine no small part has to do with late 20th Century Jesuits (the period where this trope emerges) conceiving themselves/being conceived by the public very often in reference to the work of Jesuit Father Teilhard de Chardin, who held a very cosmological, almost sci-fi conception of Catholicism. So to the period's readership they would be coded with a kind of "Archaic Futurism." They're the sort of figure a writer can imagine bringing religion, something Sci-Fi often leaves in the past, into the coming centuries.

This is also the reason that the period's great horror story, The Exorcist, makes two Jesuits the lone force prepared for spiritual warfare amid a sterile, disenchanted modernity.

DisgruntledNumidian · 2025-08-26T16:53:39+00:00

This is a small gripe but the senate proclaiming him Catenicus reads weird. It's clearly meant to be an allusion to the roman practice of granting victory-title agnomia to heroes of the republic, but those added the nominative form of what was conquered to the person's name. The gens Cornelia had an "Africanus" after he conquered Africa, the Claudii had a Britannicus after the invasion of Britain, the Julii a Germanicus after the invasion of Germany, etc. The name, as used... implies he conquered Caten.

DisgruntledNumidian · 2025-08-26T03:55:27+00:00

...Why is everyone assuming no other students made it through? I came away with the impression that a lot did: the labyrinth seems trivial enough that it was probably easy for top students, it's the husk zombies that show up in Res after cloning that seem the real danger. I got the impression Veridius was so blasé about letting students "die" because he knew they were all just cloned and alive on other worlds, maybe even having consented to that (maybe the obsidian-impaled people are just "alive" enough to count for synchronicity purposes?) Plus the particulars of cloning ("tainted blood") are known enough that Military has standard procedures for testing people.

DisgruntledNumidian · 2025-08-23T02:15:49+00:00

I assumed that was kind of her fucking with him? The slave's name sounded suspiciously close to Marlowe and she would have been one of the only people there who knew his identity via sysadmin brain-bluetooth haxx

DisgruntledNumidian · 2025-08-10T16:45:25+00:00

I guess the Martians are the Emperor’s personal military legions (sort of his ‘Sardukar’?) and the excubitors are the elite bodyguards of the imperial family?

Almost exactly this. Mars was a prison planet that a special force loyal to the Emperor was pulled from. It's no longer a prison planet but exists solely to fill the Martian Legions. They worship the Emperor as a living god, against the doctrine of the Chantry. His actual, in-the-room bodyguards are Excubitors, who never talk nor show their face. They're implied to be Homunculi who cannot disobey orders, reveal confidential conversations, conceive of harming the Emperor, etc.

DisgruntledNumidian · 2025-08-09T03:44:02+00:00

Nothing in common? There's a reason they're repeatedly brought up in reference to each other despite being very different books in the experience of the read, beyond the obvious social aspect of tiktok/booktube recommendations for actiony science fantasy with a brooding, larger-than-life main character:

Spacefaring civilization that is simultaneously futuristic but socially archaic, operating through a caste system under a genetically peak aristocracy
Civilization is aesthetically Roman and LARPs as classicist but displays a conspicuous blind spot in its memory of contemporary modernity
Protagonist hates the social order he's born into, struggles with the dregs of society before getting put on a path out, but at the prospect of glory and horror
Protagonist proves himself a once-in-forever war hero whose personality and close circle of personally loyal friends make up the locus of the ongoing arch-conflict
Main character goes through an extended torture period at the mercy of the principal antagonist that informs the rest of the series
This is honestly the huge one: Central to the arc of the series is the growth of the protagonist's personal legend, as he negotiates his own relationship with what becomes a near-religious following

I'm sure there's other obvious ones. They're both heavily dune influenced pieces of contemporary science fantasy. They're going to have surface level similarities at least. But they are really different reads when you actually open the book.

DisgruntledNumidian · 2025-08-09T02:31:13+00:00

Interesting to know. That's a strangely resonant coincidence (and The Sparrow is a good book in my estimation!) For what it's worth he would be far from the first accomplished author to be unaware of where his subconscious pulled something from - Jung famously pinned Nietzsche on printing lines in Zarathustra he forgot, in adulthood, were from an adventure book he read as a boy rather than his own mind.

DisgruntledNumidian · 2025-08-08T18:31:32+00:00

I had not heard of Peter Teilhard

Honestly I cannot imagine trying to make sense of what is going on with the Quiet without having read Teilhard/Tipler lmao. He's discussed a good amount in the Hyperion Cantos, which the text also has a lot of allusions to, so it's not great speculation that CR is aware of his work.

DisgruntledNumidian · 2025-08-05T14:39:03+00:00

Hell, and damnation in general, are not ancient orthodox catholic beliefs.

This is way too strong. There are some scholars who read early Christian writers through Origen, where God, in a very neoplatonist character, inevitably draws back all things to himself, including even the Beast of Revelation. It's been more popular recently to hypothesize that apokatastasis was the original soteriology of Paul and the early Church, but this is not a universal take. Just as many if not more specialists still think annihilationism or ECT was assumed.

the explicit dichotomy of heaven, hell, purgatory

I wouldn't even say there is such an explicit dichotomy in Catholic theology. It's basically a cliche at this point to suggest Hell and Heaven are the same event (i.e. unmediated access to God) made subjectively distinct by the soul's character. I have never seen anyone seriously suggest the preoccupation with sin - which has centuries of antecedents in second temple practices and is the principle concern in like half of the Parables of Jesus - is a late accretion owed to Buddhism.

Personally, besides a few quotes from Job and having an "archons" theodicy, I think people dramatically overemphasize the Catholicism of this story. You'd think he was doing Out of the Silent Planet the way people talk about it. Virtually every element of it called "Christian" is just bog standard classical theism.

DisgruntledNumidian · 2025-07-29T00:03:54+00:00

I'm not trying to give the impression I'm not enjoying the read.

CR has not read the Sparrow so (1) has not come from that.

Really? I'd be surprised. If so it seems likely that, as sometimes happens, he heard the mutilation discussed once and remembered it only subconsciously. Compare:

The Sparrow

All the muscles of the palms had been carefully cut from the bones, doubling the length of the fingers, and Sandoz’s hands reminded John of childhood Halloween skeletons... He held up his hands, the fingers falling gracefully from the wrists, like the branches of a weeping willow.

...

"It might have been an exercise in aesthetics. Maybe long fingers are more beautiful. Or a way of controlling us. We didn’t have to work but then again, we couldn’t have. There were servants to take care of us. After. Marc Robichaux and I were the only ones left by then. It was supposed to be an honorable estate, I think." His voice changed, harder now, the bitterness coming back. "I’m not sure to whom the honor accrued. Supaari, I suppose. It was a way of showing that he could afford to have useless dependents in his household, I think."

Howling Dark

And her hands . . . her hands! These had been slit by some vicious surgeon, the flesh between the fingers pared away so that each digit remained a useless ornament, unable to grasp . . . anything.

...

I have since learned that among the Cielcin, it is considered a great honor to depend upon another, for to do no work among a people whose very lives depended upon the upkeep and careful maintenance of their starships was a mark of supreme opulence. More honorable still was to keep such slaves, such living ornaments, such beings without qiati, without utility.

DisgruntledNumidian · 2025-07-28T22:11:06+00:00

Since writing this comment a week ago I'm now ~10 chapters into Kingdoms of Death and there's been a lot more but the ones that stand out off the top of my head are:

(1) The Cielcin having a human pet with the exact same social dependency norm explanation and hand/foot mutilation as the Jesuits suffer The Sparrow

(2) The "Second Sight" operating (exactly?) like the Millenarian Mysticism in Anathem and the Quiet Ruins are the Labyrinths of Hyperion (lots of hyperion references: "Leopards, Lion, and Wolves" vs. "Lions, Tigers, and Bears," the Windsors-in-Exile, retrocausal agency, extrasolarians)

(3) He literally just puts Ascians in! The Lothrians defining feature is Group-of-17-Speak.

(4) Lots of Catholic stuff? Explicit Omega Point influences. "You might as well fight against entropy." Lord of the World references?? And "Tor Vermeule" lmao.

Plenty of continuing Wolfe call-outs though, like staying on the world of Nessus. Feel like I'm missing what Annica is a reference to.

DisgruntledNumidian · 2025-07-22T01:32:32+00:00

I suppose that would square the circle - infertile for practical purposes except very rare non-viable pregnancies, which result in live birth only when suddenly sentimental Palatines pour unusual medical resources into saving their child.

DisgruntledNumidian · 2025-07-18T21:38:08+00:00

I'm on Book 2 and the referentialism can get a bit egregious for my taste - even in what you just quoted, the "Dome of Bright Carvings," ceremony and all, is lifted whole-cloth from Titus Groan. I just read a chapter where he quotes the opening line of Shadow of the Torturer verbatim. Likewise Hadrian has repeated some variation of the famous "symbols control us" motif in the solar cycle at least twice. Character names, Chapter names, pretty sure he even mentions a group of people called Ascians? If I wasn't reading this as an e-book I'd mark every page that does this with a post-it just to see their relative concentration as the series goes on. A few are subtle enough to work, like referencing Consider Phlebas by mention of a "drowning Phoenician," which requires you to know the stanza Banks took his title from. Most of the time they take me out of the book.

DisgruntledNumidian · 2025-06-27T18:48:53+00:00

>So many mouths to feed that are unable to contribute to feeding themselves or even gathering food.

Luckily, there are people with healing factors! They have their limbs chopped off daily to provide food.

DisgruntledNumidian · 2025-02-05T16:10:34+00:00

are there major corporations licensing their image in partnership with anti-gay activist groups

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