-The Night Face, I, p. 549.
He also says:
"'...good ylem, Commandant...'"
-op. cit., I, p. 547.
Read hard sf and learn:
"'The most probable event is immediate extinction, and a re-birth of both universes from the primordial ylem.'
"'Ylem?' Amalfi said. 'What's that? I've never heard the word before.'
"'The ylem was the primordial flux of neutrons out of which all else emerged,' Dr. Schloss said. 'I'm not surprised that you hadn't heard it before. It's the ABC of cosmogony, the Alpher-Bethe-Gamow premise. Ylem in cosmogony is an assumption like "zero" in mathematics - something so old and fundamental that it would never occur to you that somebody had to invent it.'"
-James Blish, The Triumph Of Time IN Blish, Cities In Flight (London, 1981), pp. 467-596 AT CHAPTER SEVEN, p. 579.
The earliest cosmogonists did not know enough to assume a primordial flux of neutrons and Roman mathematics lacked "zero." Such assumptions are not old and fundamental but newer and more sophisticated.
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
Alas, in all my previous readings of THE NIGHT FACE, I don't think I ever paid much attention to "ylem." I merely hurried on to follow the story's plot. But I did use the links you gave to look up that word.
Ad astra! Sean
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