Green ain't Lune

My excuse for missing this is that it is only my second reading of RTTW, and I wasn't looking for it the first time through. On page 163 Silkhorn is answering Pig's question about what he had been thinking: "The three whorls. Two large and low, by which I mean near the Short Sun. This one near the stars. I don't know whether Green's bigger than Blue, or Blue's bigger than Green; but both are much bigger than this whorl we're in, the Long Sun Whorl." Now, it's true that he gives no absolute answer to the question of which body is larger, Blue or Green, but the fact that he has been on both worlds, seen both from a lander in space, and was unable to distinguish one from the other by size indicates, at the very least, that there is little difference between them with regard to size. Earth is about four times the size of the moon; Urth is presumably four times the size of Lune. Blue cannot be four times the size of Green, or someone would have noticed. Also, the Green-born inhumi would have had a hell of a time flying around on Blue with all those extra gravities dragging them down. And if it was hard for them to escape Green's gravity to hunt on Blue, as Jahlee indicated, then it would be just about impossible to escape Blue's and return to Green, if Blue had much higher gravity. Does this finally kill the Blue=Urth idea? -Roy

No, because 1) Lune shows signs of Urthlike gravity in TBOTNS, and 2) Silkhorn's statement could be an acknowledgement of the varying apparent sizes of the bodies during his travels on and around them. The gap between Green and Blue could perhaps be bridged at close approach by an expansion of the atmospheres due to tides. This could allow the atmospheres to mingle, but they would also be attenuated so that flying through the thinned air is very difficult even in the lower effective gravity between the worlds.

Where? I can only recall the picture cleaning and a reference to Voladus possibly hiding in "the forests of Lune". Matthew

I don't think that follows. If you see planets from space, you can't tell which is bigger unless you know which one is closer, and it's hard to see how Horn could have had any information about his distances from Blue and Green.

One of the few things I think is clear is that Green, Blue, and Urth have about the same gravity. If Green is the moon, it must have been terraformed even as to the gravity (which of course is possible and might even have been a necessary part of the terraforming, but which there's no direct evidence on). My latest theory about what Wolfe may have had in mind: Blue and Green are a double planet orbiting each other with a period of six years (could someone remind me of the cite for that period?), and orbiting the Short Sun with a much longer period. They would have to be very far from the Short Sun, which therefore would have to be many times brighter than our sun, but I suspect it's possible. This would be consistent with Silkhorn's comment (when he tells us the Gaonese date, somewhere in the first half of OBW) that different towns use different years, which is hard to reconcile with Blue's having a period of about an Earth/Whorl year--you'd think they could all pretty much agree. The only objection I can see to this theory is that "conjunction" would be a misnomer for "closest approach", but I don't think "conjunction" can be the right word anyway. Are there objections? Has someone suggested this before? Jerry

"We know that conjunctions with Green occur every sixth year." (OBW, 182)

"There is argument about the length of the year here, and how well it agrees with the year we knew in the Long Sun Whorl, but the difference must be slight if there is any . . ." (OBW, 129) -Roy

Thanks for both, Roy! The second one seems to shoot down my long-period-satellite theory--and leaves me again with no idea of what Wolfe might have meant.