Subject: (urth) Blue is Hell!

From: Adam Stephanides <adamsteph at earthlink.net>
Date: Thu, 23 May 2002 14:30:46 +0000

When I read alga's statement that the inhumi were demons, my first thought
was Green = Hell, Blue = Purgatory, Whorl = Heaven.  (I'm sure this must
have been mentioned before.)  But on second thought, I saw a few problems
with this schema.  For one thing, I'm pretty sure there aren't supposed to
be any demons in Purgatory, even just visiting.  For another, Purgatory is a
temporary abode for souls, but the Bluvians aren't going anywhere: even if
they repair more landers, once the Whorl has left they have no prospect of
interstellar flight.  Finally, the Whorl, with its decaying infrastructure
and civic unrest is hardly heavenly.

So it occurred to me: if the inhumi are demons, perhaps Blue and Green are
both Hell, with Blue being the upper circles and Green the lower circles, so
to speak.  On this reading, Silk's coming to and departure from Blue would
correspond to the Harrowing of Hell, when Christ after his resurrection
descended to Hell and brought some Old Testament figures, who had all been
in Hell up to that point, up to Heaven.  So Silk's companions on the boat
would be those worthy of being saved.  (Seawrack's presence seems
incongruous from this perspective, but Dante, at least, put Eve in Heaven.)
And poor Hide, Hoof, Daisy and Vadsig would be damned, along with the rest
of the Bluvians.

How's that for a depressing reading?

--Adam

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From: Alice K. Turner <aturner6 at nyc.rr.com>
Date: Thu, 23 May 2002 21:38:00 +0000

No, Adam, I don't think Blue and Green are Hell or Purgatory. I think Wolfe
contemplated a "what if?" pair of worlds where mythological spirits and
personages that Catholics are still taught to believe in are real, and
colonizing humans must cope as best they can. Having come up with Quetzal
and his ilk (he may not yet have thought of the ilk when he first limned
Quetzal, a terrific character), he then devised angel figures, the Neighbors
(and in the Bible, too, angels are much more elusive creatures than demons),
and a saint struggling literally with his own humanity but also able to
perform miracles. Now let's see, how can I (Wolfe) put this into sfal terms?
It's a good concept and on that level not a bad working-out; throw in the
Mother as Rahab, or Tiamat left over from an older religion, and Seawrack
from legend--a terrible temptation to sin in spite of herself. (Or is she
cannier than we know?)

Adam, I agree with you about the slap-dashery of these books, and have said
so before. (Of the three, IGJ was the one I liked best when first reading
it.) But the reason I'll stick with my Biblical reading is that for me it
works. Catholic mythology--doctrine, I guess, they call it--explains a lot
of things here. Some (not all) of the mess comes from the attempt to tie the
whole huge machine of 11 books in three series conceived at different times
for different reasons together. It's like Windows!

-alga

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