Subject: (urth) blonds of the Commonwealth

From: Michael Andre-Driussi <mantis at siriusfiction.com>
Date: Mon, 15 Jul 2002 19:03:31 +0000

Hartshorn wrote:
>I never really understood this point.   Isn't there somewhere in the BOTNS
>where Severian says that it is known that each continent has a pattern for
>humanity, and that if people move from one land to another they will change
>to fit it?
>
>If so, how come there are European lloking people in South America (or for
>that matter, North America?)

Right, the implication being that the Europeanoids have not been living on
that continent long enough to be genetically altered into looking like the
red-brown people of Apu-Punchau.  If you can find the quote, iirc Severian
gives the number of generations that the transformation requires.

So, like the blond Argentines today, the Europeanoids have come from
elsewhere, in their case arriving maybe just a few thousand years before
Severian's time.

=mantis=

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From: Alice K. Turner <aturner6 at nyc.rr.com>
Date: Tue, 16 Jul 2002 06:35:12 +0000

> elsewhere, in their case arriving maybe just a few thousand years before

Logically, this is ridiculous. Here in New York, when Wombat, Ranjit and I
take the subway (not all together, or not yet), when we look up and down the
car we see profiles that could have come off Mayan tomb reliefs, bright
purple turbans, giggling teenagers with Asian faces and Brooklyn accents,
sheerly Slavic faces. noble Arab features and those that resemble African
carvings, neon hair, every shade of black, brown, yellow and white, and
sometimes the wildest costumes (including those of Orthodox Jews)--and we're
so cool that if an exultant or a character like Ossipago walked in we'd only
flick an eyelid. The daughter of one of my colleagues is
Italian-Chinese-Irish-something-else-that-I forget. That's the present and
the sure future, in reality. And that, I think, would be true in the
Commonwealth. Though not among the Ascians, who are satirically presented.
And GW has chosen to take the satire further in the next two series: the
Trivigaunts are not racially satirized, but in terms of feminism, a cliché
of male American humor in fantasy (see -The Land of Oz- 100 years ago). But
in the SS series, he does racially satirize societies, specifically Indian
and Italian. To me not very successfully--a real ho-hum genre feel here--but
feel free to disagree.

So the world of Apu-Punchau represents the far, far past, when tribes are
separated and racially alike. Severian's time sort of mirrors the realities
of America, very mixed (blonds quite normal, as they definitely are in
Illinois--first time I ever saw blond construction workers), with some
skiffy exoticism thrown in--Europeanoids needn't come from "elsewhere"
(though in my own schema the whole thing is set in a transposed Europe
anyway). And then Wolfe makes a right (I thought of using left, but it's
definitely right) turn into Vancean satire (lots of separate societies to
make fun of) in the next two series.

=alga

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From: Andy Robertson <andywrobertson at clara.co.uk>
Date: Tue, 16 Jul 2002 07:18:32 +0000

>>----- Original Message -----
>>From: "Alice K. Turner" <aturner6 at nyc.rr.com>

>>Logically, this is ridiculous.

Not at all.   Massive mixing of populations is historcally a very new thing,
the consequence of massive, fast, travel, and that has stopped in Severian's
time for reasons of technological exhaustion.   The peopel of the
Commonwealthe are not a pan-human mixture:  travel is by foot, and
immigrants are very rare.    You can argue about the relevance of this to
the real future, but not Wolfe's internal logic.

    hartshorn

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From: Alice K. Turner <aturner6 at nyc.rr.com>
Date: Tue, 16 Jul 2002 15:36:38 +0000

A thought to add to my own last post: there is a logical explanation, or at
least a novelist's explanation, for the culturally, racially and sexually
segregated cities (or enclaves) of the Whorl and Blue. It's that old joker
Typhon/Pas at it again. He wants his "ark" to preserve as many or Urth's
customs and bloodlines as possible, so he sets up these artificially
segregated cities and preserves "ethnic purity" (or the cultural equivalent)
by setting them all at each other's throats. (Helps keep the population down
too--a lot like Yahweh, our Typhon.)

-alga

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From: Andy Robertson <andywrobertson at clara.co.uk>
Date: Tue, 16 Jul 2002 15:53:37 +0000

----- Original Message -----

> too--a lot like Yahweh, our Typhon.)

Seems obvious enough.

More to the point, it is obviously the best policy for colonising a new
world, preserving the greatest variability and making sure someone will be
preadapted to survive at a low tech level whatever the environment.

But Pas did not make the cities war with each other: that just comes
naturally.   Rather he separated the cities as much as possible.

    hartshorn

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From: Michael Straight <straight at email.unc.edu>
Date: Tue, 16 Jul 2002 15:53:59 +0000

> too--a lot like Yahweh, our Typhon.)

Isn't there a passage in the Long Sun books that all but says this
explicitly?  Maybe when Silk is talking to Sand about all the cities
having armies and being set against each other so they won't gang up and
storm Mainframe?

But yeah, it's Typhon's version of Babel.

-Rostrum

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