Subject: (urth) redux on objections

From: maa32 <maa32 at dana.ucc.nau.edu>
Date: Tue, 26 Mar 2002 17:53:24 +0000

Here is one more thing that bugs me: has the Short Sun narrator been gone TWO 
YEARS or THREE YEARS?  you can't get the same number in the text.  Conjunction 
has happened. More time dilation? How long has Horn been gone?

Someone (Blattid, right?) posted a huge list of objections.  I mostly agree 
with Andy's defenses.
I NEVER posited a space warp that the whorl flew into - i thought it flew in a 
circle. As far as I know, you can control direction in a space ship or you are 
doomed to an eternity of going forward.

Polyploidy is instant speciation - that's the whole point.  It can spring up 
in one generation, and disappear in one generation.  No time needs to pass to 
create new species.

I NEVER said that Blue was Urth of the past - it is Ushas of a somewhat 
distant future - enough time for the trees to kill the colonists on Lune, come 
to Urth, kill everyone there and die out or "move on" in one (or a few) 
generation(s) before the whorl comes back to recolonize the planet. So many 
things are the same (flooded planet, wall underwater, analog species)  And I'm 
sorry, hybridization is SOOO textually prevalent, as is man to flower imagery.
I HAVE posited a prototype green man - who isn't green yet. He can't feed in 
the winter, he doesn't eat, and he has normal limbs.  Who is he? Your humble 
narrator Silk. and he has wounds from branches - he runs into a tree as soon 
as Hyacinth dies.

As I've said before, the moon (green) is in an oscillating, self correcting 
orbit around blue - it can always be seen in the sky. It was pulled from its 
decayed orbit by the new sun.  Green orbits Blue in oscillation, sometimes 
close, sometimes far, but that has nothing to do with its orbital period.

also, there is every indication that the children of polyploid species are not 
the same. Look at the corn - the second generation is weaker and even a 
different color.  Indeed, a return to the haploid state is necessary for 
children to be viable - and this is what we have in the life cycle of the 
inhumu, clearly delineated in the text. If the Neighbors go a generation or 
two, perhaps they will lose those excess limbs.  (If they can regain fertility 
at all, because hybrids are notoriously infertile).
Also, the inhumu do not gain excess limbs because they do not instantly create 
a new species: they are simple sexual producers who feast on blood, save it, 
and then incorporate that DNA into their children.  That is different than the 
trees instant consumption and recombination.  They are different species 
working on the same terraformed principles.

And Gene wolfe sets up the mystery of the vanished people as something that 
can be solved: Silk/Horn claims that his son already knows where the vanished 
people went and where they came from, but that it would be better if "he 
figured it out for himself", which  implies that a reader of the text should 
be able to figure it out, too.

Marc

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From: Roy C. Lackey <rclackey at stic.net>
Date: Tue, 26 Mar 2002 20:25:53 +0000

Marc wrote:

>>Here is one more thing that bugs me: has the Short Sun narrator been gone
TWO YEARS or THREE YEARS?  you can't get the same number in the text.
Conjunction has happened. More time dilation? How long has Horn been gone?<<

As I said before, three years, at the time of Blanko's war. (IGJ, 294)

>>As I've said before, the moon (green) is in an oscillating, self
correcting orbit around blue - it can always be seen in the sky. It was
pulled from its decayed orbit by the new sun.  Green orbits Blue in
oscillation, sometimes close, sometimes far, but that has nothing to do with
its orbital period.<<

No, Green is _not_ always visible in Blue's sky.

    "Night had come already to the eastern sky, scattering the short suns of
other whorls across its black velvet. Soon Green would rise, almost a second
sun, yet baleful as a curse . . ." (Exodus, 383)

-Roy

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From: Dan'l Danehy-Oakes <ddanehy at siebel.com>
Date: Tue, 26 Mar 2002 20:43:49 +0000

> Someone (Blattid, right?) posted a huge list of objections.  I
> mostly agree with Andy's defenses.

Yes, that was me. And some of the defenses were good, but miss the
point -- which, however, Andy himself _does_ get: that (in his own
words) "there is no *compelling* reason to believe" the Blue=Urth
theory. 

You have a very pretty theory, which however requires a great deal 
of defending -- that is, your hypothesis requires a significant 
number of related hypotheses to make it feasible. For such a 
jerryrigged theory to be acceptable, it requires some kind of 
"smoking gun" _textual_ evidence -- some place where the author
is unambiguously (or, well, as unambiguous as anything ever gets
in Wolfe) pointing us at it. And while the whole hybridization thing
is clearly tremendously important, it isn't a smoking gun for this.

Consider, though, that most of your theory works perfectly well
_without_ adding the "Blue = Urth" hypothesis. I still am less than
convinced that the Narrator is a tree that becomes a Neighbor, takes
over Horn's life, and gets transmigrated into Silk's body, but by
itself it's worthy of consideration; it's only piling "Blue = Urth"
on top of it that it becomes top-heavy and collapses.

> I NEVER posited a space warp that the whorl flew into 

My apologies. I thought someone did -- I was pretty sure this
was your explanation of how the Old Sun could be visible as a
star from the Grue system.

> Polyploidy is instant speciation - that's the whole point.  

Only if it is transmissible. Highly questionable. And even more
questionable that it would arise uniformly among humans, 
crocodilians, and elephants, in a way that completely pushes
the "old" species out of existence.

> I NEVER said that Blue was Urth of the past 

No, someone else (I don't recall who) suggested that.

> hybridization is SOOO textually prevalent, as is man to flower imagery.

Absolutely; this stuff is important. 

> I HAVE posited a prototype green man - who isn't green yet. He
> can't feed in the winter, he doesn't eat, and he has normal limbs.
> Who is he? Your humble narrator Silk. 

H'mmmm... I think that, like Blue=Urth, this is unnecessary for 
your more general hypothesis (and indeed, if Blue =/= Urth, the
whole question of the "green man future" is irrelevant. No doubt,
an eight-legged irrelevant.)

> and he has wounds from branches - he runs into a tree as soon 
> as Hyacinth dies.

Completely conjectural, of course, and unneeded ...

> As I've said before, the moon (green) is in an oscillating, 
> self correcting orbit around blue 

What on _Earth_ (or in space) is a "self correcting orbit?"

> Also, the inhumu do not gain excess limbs because they do not
> instantly create a new species: they are simple sexual producers
> who feast on blood, save it, and then incorporate that DNA into
> their children.  That is different than the trees instant
> consumption and recombination.  

Just a fussy point. One male inhumu; one female inhuma; many inhumi,
male or female or both.

And weren't you saying earlier that the inhumi _were_ the trees?
Or, no, that was the Neighbors. I'm so confused!

> They are different species working on the same terraformed
> principles.

I guess the biggest question here would be "why in Hell would
anyone 'terraform' (I assume you mean "genetically engineered
principles") species to do this? "H'mmm. Alzabos, notules,
salamanders ... naaah, there aren't enough monsters in the
universe to really threaten our species' survival. Hey, I know! 
I'll create a bunch of monsters that incorporate the DNA of
their victims and absorb memory! And the trees can go all
polyploid to have extra limbs!" H'mmmm. No, I really have a 
lot of trouble imagining anyone's motives for this...

> And Gene wolfe sets up the mystery of the vanished people as
> something that can be solved: Silk/Horn claims that his son
> already knows where the vanished people went and where they
> came from, but that it would be better if "he figured it out
> for himself", which  implies that a reader of the text should 

Quite likely. That doesn't mean that this is the answer.

--Dan'l

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From: matthew.malthouse <matthew.malthouse at guardian.co.uk>
Date: Wed, 27 Mar 2002 11:21:44 +0000

>What on _Earth_ (or in space) is a "self correcting orbit?"

Big engines, feedback sensors, hidden computers.  Think Microsoft
Automatic Update; and probably just as reliable.  ;-)

Matthew

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