{ "export": { "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/3354", "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": 3354, "subject": "Silk-23 skidooby", "messages": 3, "voices": 3, "first": "2002-07-15T19:26:04+00:00", "last": "2002-07-16T16:35:45+00:00" }, "messages": [ { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Michael Andre-Driussi", "address": "mantis at siriusfiction.com" }, "date": "2002-07-15T19:26:04+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Silk-23 skidooby", "in_reply_to": null, "reply_link": null, "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "Rostrum quoted me and wrote:\nAnyway. My position has been that Silk-43 brain-data was erased from the\n43-year-old Silk body; Horn brain-data was downloaded via the Neighbors\n(by-passing the whole monitor mechanism); later on, Silk-23 brain-data was\ntransferred from Pig to Horn-in-Silk via the eye and the monitor." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Interesting theory - and kind of sinister - instead of Silk conquering Pas\nin Mainframe, Pas is secretly still around pulling all the strings.\n\nBut the Narrator can't be a complete reboot back to the Silk-23 back-up\ndata, because he still knows and is trying to avoid facing the fact that\nHyacinth is dead.\n\n\"I could not look upon Hyacinth, dead.\" - isn't that a line from a famous\npoem (with someone else's name in for Hyacinth)?" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Well, since in this reading I take it as Horn alone who sees Hyacinth dead\n(Silk-43 being completely gone), it is Horn who sees her. Silk-23 comes\nlater, via the eye transfer; and Silk-23 would be even more shocked and\ndistraught over the memory (I'm assuming that Horn and Silk-23 can access\nthe memories of Horn) than Horn, who was the actual witness.\n\nAdding to the confusion is the question of who the Narrator is when he is\nactually writing the words of a given book. (Percentage-wise, for example.)\n\nBut back to the idea of erasing the 20 years of failure. FWIW, it is a\nmessier \"nuts & bolts\" version of (a reading of) Severian's \"I am not the\nfirst Severian\" deal, where Severian is clearly the optimized product and\nwe don't see the un-edited Severian. It is also similar, in the literary\nworld, to that Borges story where young Borges goes into the hotel where\nold Borges is committing suicide. In the comic world, it has some\nsimilarity to how in the \"Adam Warlock\" series, the depressed Adam Warlock\nof the future (all friends died; betrayal and ruin) commits suicide by\nfolding himself back into his younger self in an attempt to avert that fork\nin the life-path that led to such a dead end.\n\n=mantis=" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Michael Straight", "address": "straight at email.unc.edu" }, "date": "2002-07-16T15:47:29+00:00", "subject": "Re: (urth) Silk-23 skidooby", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "On Mon, 15 Jul 2002, Michael Andre-Driussi wrote:\nWell, since in this reading I take it as Horn alone who sees Hyacinth dead\n(Silk-43 being completely gone), it is Horn who sees her. Silk-23 comes\nlater, via the eye transfer; and Silk-23 would be even more shocked and\ndistraught over the memory (I'm assuming that Horn and Silk-23 can access\nthe memories of Horn) than Horn, who was the actual witness." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I don't think this works. For one thing, the only way I can swallow Horn\nsteadfastly refusing to acknowledge the obvious during his return to the\nWhorl (that he is a spirit posessing Silk's body - an almost commonplace\nidea given Horn's experiences) is that Silk himself is preventing it in\norder to avoid facing up to Hyacinth's death.\n\nFor another, it only works if Pas and the Neighbors are in league\ntogether, because by your \"sinister\" reading, the Neighbors wipe Silk-43\nand then later Pas completes the plan by engineering the reboot with\nSilk-23.\n\nAnother: This contradicts your \"Silkhorn gets some Silk from Pig after\nrestoring his sight\" theory. Because Pig was posessed fairly recently,\nand not by pure Silk, but Passilk-42, or maybe Passilk-43 minus a few\nmonths (weeks?). The only source of pure, unadulterated Silk-23 would be\nfrom the tape backups on mainframe.\n\nAnother: It really undermines the whole healing of Silk theme. Silk-23\ncoming to terms with the fact that he's suddenly older and a widower seems\nmuch less interesting than Silk-43 overcoming his grief. \n\nAnother: Silk-23, recorded when Silk was on the airship, feeling\ndepressed, suddenly finding himself older and Hyacinth dead -- we ought to\nsee a major shift in Silk's personality between when he says goodbye to\nPig and when at the end when he gets on Hari Mau's lander. (Maybe the\nkids didn't understand what had happened and didn't know to depict it?)\n\n-Rostrum" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "James Jordan", "address": "jbjordan4 at cox.net" }, "date": "2002-07-16T16:35:45+00:00", "subject": "Re: (urth) Silk-23 skidooby", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": " I tend to agree with you. The Neighbor said Silk's spirit was \ndying, not that it was dead. I've assumed Silk-43 continued on, but rather \ndormant and wounded, while Horn ran the body. A new infusion via Pig would \nmost likely be Passilk-42, as you noted, and if Wolfe is playing with this, \nit might factor in to the greater political wisdom Silkhorn shows after his \nreturn to Blue. Silk-43 had not been a successful leader on the Whorl. \nSilkhorn on Blue is quite successful, perhaps as a result of combining \nwisdom both from his failures as Ur-Silk and what he had experienced as \npart of Good-Pas. Something to consider.\n\nNutria" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "At 11:47 AM 7/16/2002 -0400, Rostrum wrote:\nOn Mon, 15 Jul 2002, Michael Andre-Driussi wrote:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "Well, since in this reading I take it as Horn alone who sees Hyacinth dead\n(Silk-43 being completely gone), it is Horn who sees her. Silk-23 comes\nlater, via the eye transfer; and Silk-23 would be even more shocked and\ndistraught over the memory (I'm assuming that Horn and Silk-23 can access\nthe memories of Horn) than Horn, who was the actual witness." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "I don't think this works. For one thing, the only way I can swallow Horn\nsteadfastly refusing to acknowledge the obvious during his return to the\nWhorl (that he is a spirit posessing Silk's body - an almost commonplace\nidea given Horn's experiences) is that Silk himself is preventing it in\norder to avoid facing up to Hyacinth's death.\n\nFor another, it only works if Pas and the Neighbors are in league\ntogether, because by your \"sinister\" reading, the Neighbors wipe Silk-43\nand then later Pas completes the plan by engineering the reboot with\nSilk-23.\n\nAnother: This contradicts your \"Silkhorn gets some Silk from Pig after\nrestoring his sight\" theory. Because Pig was posessed fairly recently,\nand not by pure Silk, but Passilk-42, or maybe Passilk-43 minus a few\nmonths (weeks?). The only source of pure, unadulterated Silk-23 would be\nfrom the tape backups on mainframe.\n\nAnother: It really undermines the whole healing of Silk theme. Silk-23\ncoming to terms with the fact that he's suddenly older and a widower seems\nmuch less interesting than Silk-43 overcoming his grief.\n\nAnother: Silk-23, recorded when Silk was on the airship, feeling\ndepressed, suddenly finding himself older and Hyacinth dead -- we ought to\nsee a major shift in Silk's personality between when he says goodbye to\nPig and when at the end when he gets on Hari Mau's lander. (Maybe the\nkids didn't understand what had happened and didn't know to depict it?)\n\n-Rostrum\n\n\n--" } ] } ] }