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I tend to doubt it, mainly because while surgical accidents do occur in which the wrong leg is amputated, such a scenario lacks plausibility when it comes to scanning the head of…
11 Feb 2011, 14:21
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All we know is that Tussah spent a lot on a special embryo. Everything else is inference. Leadership (and perhaps a propensity to hate corruption), with the intention to defeat…
11 Feb 2011, 14:08
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Suppose we accept your argument that Typhon had a particular disdain for computer programs (though it makes it very odd that he had digitised versions of his family made to accom…
11 Feb 2011, 13:43
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In Silk's vision of his parents, his biological father is described as tall and blue-eyed (i think Wolfe tells us this to indicate the biological relationship). Conspicuous by i…
11 Feb 2011, 13:12
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[Timing of Pas's plan] The problem is the plan couldn't really have involved a long scouting period, because of the disintegrating state of the Whorl. The Whorl seems to be at or…
11 Feb 2011, 12:38
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I don't agree with you there. Most people in Viron seem to consider both the gods and the chems real people. Taluses probably less so, I suppose. Black mechanics may disagree, …
11 Feb 2011, 03:18
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Yes, but if Tussah was motivated to get an embryo with leadership skills to drive out the corrupt Ayuntiamento, then great leadership skills are not much of a pointer to Typhon, …
11 Feb 2011, 03:04
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----- Original Message ----- Indeed, it was someone else I was talking to. I know Marc thinks Silk is Typhon's son. - Gerry Quinn…
11 Feb 2011, 01:45
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Like Mucor's, they probably met in a Petri dish. Now I think of it, Silk had a vision of his biological parents. Was it the Outsider that showed him this, or Mainframe? Because…
11 Feb 2011, 01:43
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Computer programs are real people in this story (and in most of Wolfe's work). Also, surely if Silk is to be a tenant, it is Pas who will move in? [Also, I think Wolfe is on rec…
11 Feb 2011, 01:37
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There may not be a technology to engineer minds and personalities as such... but there is certainly a technology to engineer certain mental abilities. Mucor is proof of this. He…
11 Feb 2011, 01:25
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From: Ashley Crill Were any embryos engineered to have a superior military intellect that were destined to conquer, Typhon-style? I have said in the past that I think Silkhor…
10 Feb 2011, 23:04
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There's no particular reason to believe that Pike's ghost was a time traveller. Also, if Neighbours fought with Horn on Green there is no reason to believe they were engaged in dr…
10 Feb 2011, 19:10
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From: Marc Aramini A real quick point I wanted to make. Typhon is definitely, to Severian, a personal tempter, analagous to the devil. However, I think the ACT of crea…
10 Feb 2011, 18:37
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Okay, some reasons for choosing Silk there, but even better reasons for *not* choosing him! If he is Typhon's biologial heir, and a great guy in every way, why spoil it by taking …
10 Feb 2011, 17:06
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From: Marc Aramini --- On Wed, 2/9/11, Gerry Quinn <gerryq at indigo.ie> wrote: But why would Typhon send an embryo of his son to occupy himself? Wh…
10 Feb 2011, 16:53
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----- Original Message ----- Silk's appearance (with Oreb) in the grandmother's tale certainly suggests time travel of some kind. I don't agree that it completely proves it - i…
10 Feb 2011, 16:38
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I don't believe "Neighbour Whorl" means Faerie. The words themselves don't really carry any strong weight. After all, one obvious interpretation is that it just means "the whor…
10 Feb 2011, 15:28
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Scouts that don't come back aren't very good scouts! Besides, if Quetzal came back, the landers must have brought him. Silk as Typhon's son seems more feasible than Silk as Typho…
10 Feb 2011, 01:00
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He also dreams of a woman with red-gold hair, whom Severian identifies with Jolenta. I certainly don't dismiss the latter. I'm not sure how he'd know anything about Typhon, tho…
10 Feb 2011, 00:51
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Indeed, it had also occurred to me that the pit might well be a blast pit for one of the Neighbours' space vehicles. However I'd be inclined to expect a blast pit to have vent c…
10 Feb 2011, 00:43
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I haven't seen that theory before. The main difficulty, as I would see it, is that nobody remembers such a first exodus. Not the Councillors, not the Crew. Nobody knows Green is…
09 Feb 2011, 23:55
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I don't see why. Certainly if humans had gone to Green they could have been bitten. But the Neighbours would still, surely, have had to bring the progeny such as Quetzal to the…
09 Feb 2011, 23:20
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I think it's going to be a general property of horshoe orbits that the period between conjunctions will be very long compared to the orbital period. The reason being that the tw…
09 Feb 2011, 22:52
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By some definitions of "unnecessary". We are told they boarded the Whorl. We are told they infected the humans with inhumi. We know there were inhumi on the Whorl. It is reaso…
09 Feb 2011, 20:14
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Neighbours become Neighbours, just as humans become humans Inhumi become whatever species they are imitating. Essentially, dream travellers take on the shape of their souls. S…
09 Feb 2011, 19:45
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Fair enough - we could also note that the creation process is more *important* than good and evil: "Which does humanity need more? Justice and peace? Or a New Sun?" That seems …
09 Feb 2011, 19:37
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It's not just hinted at in the text - we're pretty much told that that was done. [Except we don't know they brought the inhumi back to Green afterwards. Maybe they just killed …
09 Feb 2011, 18:49
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No... we've never seen that. In all cases of dream-travel we've seen, only souls have been transported. It's not at all clear that the Neighbours could transfer natural-state i…
09 Feb 2011, 18:13
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Well, the Cargo have for some considerable time been trashing the landers, filling the tunnels with criminals and mutated hyenas, and even having wars down there. So on the whol…
09 Feb 2011, 17:24
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If we believed him, we'd assume they had ships capable of getting there and back. If it was clear that the canoes we know of couldn't do it, we'd guess that they had bigger ones…
09 Feb 2011, 16:40
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But their orbital period around Saturn is only 0.7 days... so those four years are equivalent to about 2000 years on Blue! - Gerry Quinn…
09 Feb 2011, 15:59
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Well, we know they travelled between planets somehow, and to the Whorl, and perhaps to wherever they live now. They detected the Whorl as it approached their solar system, and v…
09 Feb 2011, 15:53
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Severian does seem to leap to the conclusion that Miles is Jonas on the basis of rather slim evidence, although apart from the speech mannerisms, he has apparently seen visions o…
09 Feb 2011, 15:44
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Most of the safety infrastructure might be internal. Suppose there are pressure sensors and airtight seals dispersed throught the maze of tunnels under the surface of the asteroi…
09 Feb 2011, 12:50
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I think horseshoes are a bit problematic. If you look at Cruithne's orbit, its actual distance from Earth varies on a short scale with a period of one year. Over a longer term, t…
09 Feb 2011, 12:26
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I forgot about that. But one or both could have an elliptical orbit. Again, I don't know whether precession would make this unrealistic or not. And 35000 leagues is incredibly, …
09 Feb 2011, 03:36
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It can work if they have circular orbits that are quite close together, so that Green orbits their star in 6/7 of a Blue year. Green will go around the star slightly faster than B…
09 Feb 2011, 02:38
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And to the landers as well. And perhaps other stuff. But there wouldn't be just holes open to space - they'd have to break in somehow. - Gerry Quinn…
08 Feb 2011, 21:42
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How do you mean "better than boring through the hull?" Windcloud said he was on the Whorl - he doesn't say how he and his team got in. Maybe they obtained access by way of a lan…
08 Feb 2011, 21:35
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Maybe they used a laser. The fact is, we are told they visited and left inhumi. As for inhumi being on the Whorl from the beginning - apart from any evidential issues, the obvi…
08 Feb 2011, 19:24
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There's also Urbs, which I suppose just means 'city'. And 'Viron' might come from 'environment' (c.f. Brian Aldiss's 'Total Environment'). Methinks Typhon's planners had the imag…
08 Feb 2011, 19:16
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It *does* say the Neighbours went to the Whorl. "There" in "There the Vanished People went?" is the Whorl. I've added a bit more to the quoted text for more context. It seems t…
08 Feb 2011, 18:08
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The Neighbours brought inhumi to the Whorl. We are told in Chapter 11 of _Return to the Whorl_: *********************************************** Then, "Sometime back like you I …
08 Feb 2011, 09:24
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I don't think it is impossible that there could be a religion in which they are different - but I don't see any indication that this is so. The two names seem to be used in iden…
03 Feb 2011, 12:06
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************************************* I can't remember what her name was, but she was truly beautiful, the way the quietest are sometimes. I never knew up till then that Fechin kn…
01 Feb 2011, 22:08
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Here's your list of "examples": Typhon, Dorcas and Jolenta are not androgynous in any normal sense of the word; they are presented as distinctly masculine and feminine, even if th…
01 Feb 2011, 22:01
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From: Mr Thalassocrat Now recall Sev in the inn at Saltus, when Vodalus' henchmen come for him. This is the first time (I think) that Sev enlarges on his memory, revealing that…
31 Jan 2011, 23:27
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If in a book of a thousand pages, a relatively minor character is an androgyne, it hardly points to anything in particular, any more than another character being half-man, half-r…
31 Jan 2011, 23:21
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How so? It was expecting - very reasonably - to find only easy meat in Becan's household. Casdoe actually opened the door for it! Had Severian not been there, the alzabo would…
31 Jan 2011, 22:14
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