{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/3340",
    "note": "Exported from an unofficial mirror of a public mailing list. Copyright in each message remains with the person who wrote it.  Email addresses are obscured as `user at host`, the form the original archive published. This file was rebuilt from parsed fields rather than retained headers, so it is faithful in content but not byte-exact.",
    "addresses": "obscured as 'user at host'"
  },
  "archive": "urth",
  "thread": {
    "id": 3340,
    "subject": "Urth Scylla & Blue Mother",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "2002-07-11T14:14:53+00:00",
    "last": "2002-07-11T14:14:53+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0207-1324@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Charles Reed",
        "address": "cmreed at link.com"
      },
      "date": "2002-07-11T14:14:53+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) Urth Scylla & Blue Mother",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Hello.\n\nThis is my first posting to the Urth mailing list, so I just want to say\nhowdy to everyone.  I've read pretty much all of the (no-longer-active)\nWhorl archives and am gradually working my way through the Urth\narchives, and all of it's really fascinating.  I almost feel like I know\na lot of you.\n\nAnyway, to cut to the chase, I just recently (within the last month)\nfinished reading the Long Sun and Short Sun books, and am now rereading\nthe original New Sun books.  In reading through the Whorl archives, I\nnoticed that several people seemed to have trouble reconciling how the\nGreater Scylla from Urth knows how to communicate with the Mother from\nBlue.  At the risk of presuming to know more than my betters (and of\nrepeating something that has already been pointed out), I think I have\nan answer:  In THE SHADOW OF THE TORTURER, Chapter XIII (titled \"The\nLictor of Thrax\"), after Severian finds out that he is to be exiled to\nThrax instead of executed, he climbs to the top of the Matachin tower\none last time and surveys his surroundings.  Here's the relevant quote\nfrom page 104 of the paperback Timescape edition:\n\n\"I saw a caique, with high, sharp prow and stern, and a bellying sail,\nmaking south with the dark current; and against my will I followed it\nfor a time -- to the delta and the swamps, and at last to the flashing\nsea where the great beast Abaia, carried from the farther shores of the\nuniverse in anteglacial days, wallows until the moment comes for him and\nhis kind to devour the continents.\"\n\nIn light of the phrase, \"carried from\" there seems to me to be only two\nways to read this passage, if you want to reconcile it with the fact\nthat Scylla and the Mother are somehow of the same race of beings:\n\n1) The original home for creatures like the Greater Scylla and Abaia was\nBlue, and somebody from Urth had been to Blue in the far distant past\nand brought to Urth the sea-creatures that they found there. Or ...\n\n2) The original home for these beings was entirely someplace else, but\nsomebody had brought these creatures to both Blue and to Urth.\n\nPersonally, I find the second one to be more probable but the first to\nbe more intriguing, especially sine it might help explain how/why Typhon\nchosen the Green/Blue planetary system for colonization.  (He probably\nhad access to records of the time when humans were still space-farers.\nIf so, and if he knew that the Green/Blue system had been previously\nvisited by Urthmen, then that could have led to his choice.  This raises\nsome interesting questions, though, about what Typhon knew of the great\nsea beasts, but that's another topic, isn't it?) In any case, both of\nthe above possibilities reconcile the difficulties of Scylla/Mother\ncommunication, don't you think?\n\nI don't how much I'll be able to contribute in the future, but I've\ngrown to really, really love Gene Wolfe's work and am glad that there\nare people who like to discuss it.\n\nCharles"
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}