User:SOTO/Forum Archive/Inclusion debates/@comment-45692830-20200803153341/@comment-6032121-20200803213255

I think you're overlooking a lot of facts about the nature of this story. For one thing, it does have a narrative element. The very subtitle of the the Cosmology presents its subject thusly: "On the Evolution of Universes, the Creation of History, the Usefulness of Biodata and the Construction of Worlds in Bottles."

- Introduction to “The Cosmology of the Spiral Politic”

At least one element of this self-summary, “the Creation of History”, clearly relates an event in the DWU, not mere facts, and the text does so from an in-universe point of view, so it's not really reference material in the way that (for example) AHistory or The Gallifrey Chronicles are, to take two reference books which deal with the early history of the Time Lords too.

At several points, events in the DWU are related in this same in-universe manner, events not yet recorded in preexisting stories. If that's not narrative, what is? Part V, in particular, is nothing short of a retelling of the beginning of the Eternal War, from a very different lens than the one we're used to — being that it posits that the Yssgaroth were in fact the Great-House-equivalents of the Spiral Yssgaroth, twisted by the process of travelling from one universe to the next, rather than an inherently monstrous species or a mere nonsentient phenomenon (as TBotW in-universely speculates). That story, of course, is told cagily, via a historian's ramblings and theories, but so are The ArcHive Tapes, which were recently ruled solidly valid.

Because, yes, and furthermore, I am unsure why you think this presents itself as an in-universe "history textbook" any less than The Book of the War. It's clearly a companion to TBotW in every respect; the (anonymous) in-universe writer of the text of the story is clearly a character within the DWU, referencing events that are real as far as they are concerned. Just from the first section: "There are other universes. That much is known. They are distanced from us by chronology, in the sense that (…)"

- Part 1 of “The Cosmology of the Spiral Politic”

Emphasis mine on the wording which makes it clear this is the work of an in-universe cosmologist, talking about their universe at a specific point in time, and within a specific scholarly context (some facts that are known to Lawrence Miles, and to the reader, are not known to the writer).

Ultimately, I think this is a case where it comes down to authorial intent. There is a literal mountain of evidence that TBotW was intended to be a (very postmodern) novel, and both its publisher and its various authors used the term in relation to their work. Have Lawrence Miles or Mad Norwegian Press ever commented on Cosmology in published sources, and if so, did they call it reference material, or a short story? That is the question we must ask ourselves. If the former, well, fair enough, this should be invalid.

But if this was indeed intended to be a short story in the DWU, I think it can certainly be read as such. And as you state, it would be in the interest of the Wiki if this were the case. (Though of course, that is more a problem with our own policies — Rule 1 is due for a revisit someday, as several recent debates have shown.)