Subject: (urth) brief comment

From: maa32 <maa32 at dana.ucc.nau.edu>
Date: Sun, 07 Apr 2002 04:40:47 +0000

Roy, no big deal, but there IS a scene when he actually is looking at the moon 
and commenting: 
"Green came up, bigger and brighter than we ever see it on Blue.  Or want to, 
either." (pg 714 in SFBC BOTSS, chapter 17)

He is talking about Lune here.  We are saying the same thing.  I'm kind of 
intrigued by the recent idea that Lune could have near urth gravity.  
But doesn't the fact that at 30,000 leagues Green is still not as big as Lune 
indicate that Green can't be much bigger?  I mean, Lune would have to be 
really damned close if Green really were larger at all, and it can't be THAT 
close.

Marc Aramini

--

---

From: Mark Millman <millman at heimdallr.dyndns.org>
Date: Sun, 07 Apr 2002 05:04:30 +0000

Marc,

I'm afraid that your uncritical acceptance
of the 30,000-league figure for Green's
distance from Blue may be a bit dangerous;
after all, Wolfe's characters make mistakes,
conceal the truth, and lie outright all the
time.  This figure is given at second hand,
produced by a culture that's had only one
generation of planetside life--the estimate
may be influenced by scales within the
Whorl, where the skylands are only twice as
far away as the Long Sun, and city lights
in those regions are evidently visible at
night.

Likewise Juganu's comment, "We are every-
where":  we don't know whether it's a self-
aggrandizing boast, a calculated statement
meant to dishearten his listeners, or an
unthinking assumption.  Is Juganu even
aware of Urth before Horn enlists his help
to travel there?

Mark Millman
(Nacre)

On Sat, 6 Apr 2002, maa32 wrote:

> Roy, no big deal, but there IS
> a scene when he actually is
> looking at the moon and com-
> menting:
>
> "Green came up, bigger
> and brighter than we
> ever see it on Blue.
> Or want to, either."
> (pg 714 in SFBC BOTSS,
> chapter 17)
>
> He is talking about Lune here.
> We are saying the same thing.
> I'm kind of intrigued by the
> recent idea that Lune could
> have near urth gravity.  But
> doesn't the fact that at 30,000
> leagues Green is still not as
> big as Lune indicate that Green
> can't be much bigger?  I mean,
> Lune would have to be really
> damned close if Green really
> were larger at all, and it
> can't be THAT close.
>
> Marc Aramini

--

---

From: Roy C. Lackey <rclackey at stic.net>
Date: Mon, 08 Apr 2002 19:46:18 +0000

Marc wrote:

>>Roy, no big deal, but there IS a scene when he actually is looking at the
moon and commenting:
"Green came up, bigger and brighter than we ever see it on Blue.  Or want
to, either." (pg 714 in SFBC BOTSS, chapter 17)

He is talking about Lune here.  We are saying the same thing.  I'm kind of
intrigued by the recent idea that Lune could have near urth gravity.<<

Please don't get started on that! As mantis has already hinted, if there is
any evidence to support that idea, it's extratextual. No scene, directly or
indirectly, takes place on Lune in the Urth Cycle, and there's not a word in
the text about Lune's gravity.

>>But doesn't the fact that at 30,000 leagues Green is still not as big as
Lune indicate that Green can't be much bigger?  I mean, Lune would have to
be
really damned close if Green really were larger at all, and it can't be THAT
close.<<

I could offer the feeble excuse that, on the occasion you cited above, Lune
had just risen and therefore Urth's atmosphere magnified Hoof's view of it,
just as Moon looks bigger near the horizon than at zenith on Earth, and Hoof
had limited occasions to observe relative sizes, but I don't know that that
would be sufficient reason for his blanket statements that Lune appears
larger than Green.

Silkhorn's statement, cited earlier, that implied there wasn't much
difference in size between Blue and Green, coupled with these recent
arguments that seem to indicate that Green must be close in size to Lune,
leads to the conclusion that all three bodies are about the same size. Add
to that my observations about the problems a much higher gravity on Blue
would present for the inhumi, and where does that lead to?: That Blue and
Green are about the same size and have about the same gravity, and both
correspond to the size and gravity of Lune. That Blue is therefore the size
of Lune, which means that Blue can't possibly be Urth. That Silkhorn & Co.
woke up on Urth and just didn't notice that they weighed six times as much
as they were used to.

No, I can't account for the apparent discrepancies in the text, or the
apparent violations of the laws of physics. I just don't see any good reason
to believe that Blue is Urth/Ushas.

I can't endorse your theories about trees/inhumi/Neighbors/people either,
but I will concede that there _is_ something odd going on wrt trees in the
SS series--I just don't know what. Here's one you haven't mentioned before.
Near the end of the second chapter of RTTW, Pig is seized by both fear and
wonder when he discovers that he is in the midst of a wood but can't touch a
tree or be touched by one. It is his proximity to Silkhorn that seems to
account for it, but he doesn't know that.

-Roy

--

---

From: Michael Straight <straight at email.unc.edu>
Date: Mon, 08 Apr 2002 19:55:36 +0000

> account for it, but he doesn't know that.

Could this be that he's following Silkhorn, who is using his
Neighbor-given ability to find paths through bushes?

Although it's possible that this works because the trees are moving to
make a path for Horn, the way it's described in the text it seems more
like some sort of extraordinary perception Horn has that enables him to
see the one clear path that most people can't find.

-Rostrum

--