Subject: (urth) Space Vampires from the Green Planet!

From: Michael Straight <straight at email.unc.edu>
Date: Tue, 26 Mar 2002 16:16:41 +0000

Regarding the similarity of Urth and Blue/Green lifeforms and their
ability to eat each other, this is an old standard convention in science
fiction.  Let's remember that the Short Sun series are, among many other
things, Wolfe's take on the pulp planetary exploration novels complete
with Vampires from Outer Space!  In these novels, the fauna from other
planets are just like ours, with extra limbs or two heads or blue
fur.  See also Star Trek.

Many otherwise "hard" science-fiction novels gloss over having Earth-like
plants and animals on other planets.  Some, like Larry Niven come up with
some kind of justification for it (planets all seeded by earlier space
empire), others just ignore the question.  In general, if the characters
don't bring up the unlikelihood of other planets having such similar
plants and animals, you're just supposed to ignore it and get on with the
story.

Given these conventions, I think Wolfe is using the extra limbs to denote
alien-ness, while the similarity of life allows for low-tech colonists and
monsters that suck their blood.  (Note also that the colonists had to
bring their own crops.  They aren't able to subsist only on the native
Bluvian crops.)

-Rostrum

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From: Michael Andre-Driussi <mantis at siriusfiction.com>
Date: Tue, 26 Mar 2002 17:01:56 +0000

>plants and animals, you're just supposed to ignore it and get on with the

Right.  We (well, me and someone else around here) were more distracted
when hard sf guy Vernor Vinge had human kids crash on a random planet that
just happened to have edible grains and protein . . . as a case of random
chance, like a voyage to an uncharted planet, this seemed a bit far off the
thinking at the time A FIRE UPON THE DEEP was written (the 90s).  And it
could have been fixed, it seemed, with a single sentence.

Back to Typhon.  I don't think there is any sense of the Whorl being an
exploration vessel: it is a colonization ship.  It is not looking for a
home, stopping at every oasis in the desert of space, it is going straight
to the place, non-stop.  The target star system is, therefore, presumed to
be known in advance.  Of all the uncolonized-yet-colonizable planets in the
galaxy, surely a ruler will select a planet that has compatible DNA
(especially if the colonization effort is one ship).  This is part of the
"habitability" package, after all, and has been since the 1960s: another
factor, just as gravity, sunlight, oxy/nitrogen atmosphere, atmospheric
pressure, water, length of local day, etc., but one that comes near the end
of the stream.

As for Typhon loading an ark to repopulate Urth. No.  This function is
being carried out, either by design or by accident, by the Ship Tzadkiel.
>From the play by Talos; from the plan for the sailors in the Hall of
Justice (iirc it was: if the sailors win, they can stop the New Sun, if
they lose they can populate Ushas); from the way that guards bring news of
ships dropping off people at the time of the deluge (echoing the play): it
seems like Tzadkiel drops off Adam&Eve packets onto Urth in lean times,
just as Tzadkiel seems to snatch people up in other times (all that trade
in slaves).

=mantis=

SIRIUS FICTION
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From: Dan'l Danehy-Oakes <ddanehy at siebel.com>
Date: Tue, 26 Mar 2002 17:57:53 +0000

Mantis wrote:

> As for Typhon loading an ark to repopulate Urth. No.  This
> function is being carried out, either by design or by
> accident, by the Ship Tzadkiel. From the play by Talos; from
> the plan for the sailors in the Hall of Justice (iirc it was:
> if the sailors win, they can stop the New Sun, if they lose
> they can populate Ushas); from the way that guards bring news
> of ships dropping off people at the time of the deluge
> (echoing the play): it seems like Tzadkiel drops off Adam&Eve
> packets onto Urth in lean times, just as Tzadkiel seems to
> snatch people up in other times (all that trade in slaves).

... and you know what? This is the best argument I've seen for
the WHORL returning to Urth: Tzadkiel (or Tzad's masters) rerouting
it to repopulate. It still falls a smidgeon short of a smoking gun,
but it provides a much more plausible reason, imho, than Typhon
giving enough of a damn about posterity to want to repopulate Urth
after the coming of the New Sun (which, I believe, he intended to
prevent anyway ... though he's clever enough to play both ends 
against the middle this way).

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From: matthew.malthouse <matthew.malthouse at guardian.co.uk>
Date: Wed, 27 Mar 2002 10:34:52 +0000

>just as Tzadkiel seems to snatch people up in other times (all that trade

And in support: such a move would be contrary to Typhon's ambition to
(re-)conquor his stellar empire.  He doesn't care about Urth, the
backwater, any more than as a springboard from which to re-enter the
bigger game out amongst the stars.

But that does leave me pondering the old question "why did he do it?"
Typhon's conversations with Severian first when awoken on his couch and
later (in Severian's experience) as Severian is traveling the history of
Urth definitely suggest a man right up there at the cutting edge of the
tyranting business. Long tern strategems or back-up plans don't really
seem to be Typhon's style.

Matthew

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