{ "export": { "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/1696", "note": "Exported from an unofficial mirror of a public mailing list. Copyright in each message remains with the person who wrote it. Email addresses are obscured as `user at host`, the form the original archive published. This file was rebuilt from parsed fields rather than retained headers, so it is faithful in content but not byte-exact.", "addresses": "obscured as 'user at host'" }, "archive": "urth", "thread": { "id": 1696, "subject": "Presence chamber's panels", "messages": 2, "voices": 2, "first": "1999-06-22T15:09:26+00:00", "last": "1999-06-23T16:21:36+00:00" }, "messages": [ { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Michael Andre-Driussi", "address": "mantis at sirius.com" }, "date": "1999-06-22T15:09:26+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Re: Presence chamber's panels", "in_reply_to": null, "reply_link": null, "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Roy,\n\nMe say:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 3, "text": "Re: that symbol in the presence chamber that makes Jonas say he's on\nUrth.<<" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "You say:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "The crimson sign was on the outside of the door to\nthe chamber, not in the chamber itself. Jonas may not even have noticed the\nsign. When Sev hears a tread upon the stair he forces the door open. Once\ninside, the door closes and the light brightens. After looking around the\nchamber he examines Jonas's face, which is \"still fixed\", but looks like the\nface \"almost, of a man about to wake...\". Then, after ignoring what Sev has\nbeen saying to him, is when Jonas says: \"I know where we are,\" ... \"and\nraised one arm stiffly to point toward something I had taken to be a folding\nscreen.\" Sev asks where, and Jonas answers \"On Urth\", then walks across the\nroom to the panels." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "At this point, Roy, you are being either contentious or sloppy! Because on\nthe same page, a mere four sentences beyond your paraphrase, when Jonas\nstrode across the room to the folding panels, Severian notes: \"Their backs\nwere set with clustered diamonds, as I now saw, and =enameled with such\ntwisted signs as had been on the door=\" (II, p. 167--emphasis mine).\n\nYou will probably argue that these aren't necessarily the exact same shapes\npainted on the door--but surely you will concede that they are of the same\nilk, the same writing system, both on the door and in the chamber?\n\n(FWIW, I think it is that detail about clustered diamonds that made me\nwonder if the writing system was more like \"Chaldean\" [a magical system\nwherein letters look like occult constellations of stars--if you've ever\nseen the old Avon paperback edition of NECRONOMICON then you've seen some\nexamples--or the one used on the title page of my Wolfe related chapbooks,\nthat's a crude one] than like \"Chinese\" [which is also on the table of\nconsideration because of all the Asian pointers in the antechamber].)\n\nYou say:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "He had been confused since he got zapped, obviously, because he'd known\nfor years that he was on Urth. He had earlier had a \"flashback\", so to\nspeak, to a time when there had been a blackout aboard a spacecraft he had\nbeen on. He may be in the throes of another such flashback when he sees the\npanels, causing him to forget that he was already on Urth, but recalling\nanother time he had been on Urth in the presence of such mirrors.This raises\nthe issue: where had Jonas had prior knowledge of these kinds of mirrors?\nAfter all, they are not, evidently, a common means of transportation around\nthe universe." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "FWIW, your notions of zapping are interesting and seem valid--whether this\nis the plowman's reading or the metaphysical truth remains uncertain (but\nthat's nearly always the case with this baffling text).\n\nBut beyond that, help me with the logic here--you are saying that:\n\nA) the symbol doesn't say \"Urth\" and\n\nB) teleportation mirrors are not common to the Briatic universe, through\nwhich Jonas has done more travelling than perhaps any other character, yet\n\nC) Jonas sees the mirrors and associates them with Urth because it was on\nUrth that he saw them before.\n\nI find the third statement to be a bit of a stretch--I mean, at that point\nyou might as well go whole hog and say \"because =these= are the exact\nmirrors he saw before, and he really =does= know exactly where he is now.\"\n\nAs to how and where mirror tech is used, I'm afraid that most of our\ninformation relates to that =other= sailor, Hethor--surely he isn't lugging\naround something that unfolds into a phonebooth-sized box? And yet, could\nHethor really summon the salamander--or those flying mounts?!--through a\ndingus the size of a cosmetic compact mirror?\n\n(Are notules Briatic critters or not? On the world where they are commonly\nused, that world that Jonas seems to have visited, are they drawn through\nmirrors from other universes, or are they gathered in caves?)\n\n(Inire's mirrors obviously work for sending and receiving--it may be that\nthere are mirrors which can only do one or the other. Inire's summoning\nmakes it seem like \"fishing,\" in the sense that one watches for shapes and\nthen either allows them to manifest or reboot the device and watch for\nanother shape. If valid, then Hethor's summoning time would be largely\ntaken up with rebooting, throwing back all the Fishes, waiting for\nsomething more powerful to show up: the salamander, the slug, the notules,\nthe worm of white fire, etc.)\n\n=mantis=" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Roy C. Lackey", "address": "rclackey at stic.net" }, "date": "1999-06-23T16:21:36+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Re: Presence chamber's panels", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "mantis," }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "Two weeks ago Mitchell Bailey wrote:\nIt was at the door to Inire's specula chamber in the Second House that\nthe \"crimson teratoid sign\" Sev surmised to be of extraterrestrial\norigin appeared. That seems to be what we're interpreting as radioactive\nor biohazard warning symbols." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "To which you replied:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": " And Jonas seems to interpret those same symbols as some form of writing;" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "he" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "seems to read the one as saying \"Urth,\" or words to that effect. FWIW." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": " I took \"the one\" to refer to the \"crimson teratoid sign\" on the door. My\nmistake.\n\nYou have written:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "But beyond that, help me with the logic here--you are saying that:\n\nA) the symbol doesn't say \"Urth\" and" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": " I don't think it does. Why should it? The chamber and the specula are\nalready on Urth." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "B) teleportation mirrors are not common to the Briatic universe, through\nwhich Jonas has done more travelling than perhaps any other character, yet" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": " Again, as I said, there is no hint in the text that teleportation is or\never was a common means of transportation. I would agree with Mitchell, who\nsaid: \"I get the impression that this type teleportation is the exclusive\nprovince of Father Inire and a few of his peers, and was installed by and\nfor him.\"" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "C) Jonas sees the mirrors and associates them with Urth because it was on\nUrth that he saw them before.\n\nI find the third statement to be a bit of a stretch--I mean, at that point\nyou might as well go whole hog and say \"because =these= are the exact\nmirrors he saw before, and he really =does= know exactly where he is now.\"" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": " It's possible, but, I agree with you, improbable. Yet we can agree, I\nthink, that it was either one of the symbols ( the \"glyph\" on the door, or\none of the \"twisted signs\" on the panels) or the sight of the panels\nthemselves that caused Jonas to make his pronouncement about being on Urth.\nIf the former, and Jonas \"read\" the symbol to mean \"Urth\", then his\nrevelation is pointless; just a confused android rambling on about the\nobvious--that he was in fact where he had already known for years he was--on\nUrth. If the latter, it leads to the improbable conclusion already\nmentioned, that he has seen the same or similar panels on Urth before, but\nhis pronouncement is equally pointless. Either way, he is stating the\nobvious, because it is unarguable, from the text, that he was ever in doubt\nabout what world he had been wandering for years.\n\n So what is the point of the scene? Do we dismiss his utterance as the\nconfused rambling of an android who is out of his head, akin to his earlier\nmutterings about the blackout? If so, then none of this matters, and there's\nno point in speculating about it. Yet we continue to do so because, I think,\nwe all sense there is more going on here than meets the eye.\n\n So here is a wild theory--a fan fiction, if you like.\n\n When Jonas said \"I know where we are.\" and \"On Urth.\", that is what Sev\nheard and wrote down. Or is it? Or did Jonas say \"On Earth\", which Sev heard\nand wrote down as \"On Urth\"? How could he tell the difference?\n\n Consider: Jonas has undeniable knowledge--literary, historical,\nmythological and geographical--about what the reader recognizes as our\nEarth, but which is lost on Sev. For Sev, Jonas's guarded revelations about\nUrth's past belong to the Age of Myth, which is our age, or part of it. Of\nall the characters in the Urth Cycle, Jonas is far and away the closest to\nour own era, in terms of personal knowledge of our Earth.\n\n Which brings me back to Jonas's utterance. If he said \"On Earth\" rather\nthan \"On Urth\", it puts an entirely different spin on the scene and saves\nhim from having made what is otherwise a meaningless statement. Sight of\neither the glyphs or the panels causes him to realize that Urth is indeed\nEarth; the Earth that he has known in his time travels with the Hierodules,\nand where he may even have been manufactured, in lands now sunk beneath the\nsea, long ago in the Age of Myth.\n\nRoy" } ] } ] }