{ "export": { "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/3362", "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": 3362, "subject": "Silk-23 skidooby doo", "messages": 2, "voices": 2, "first": "2002-07-17T00:22:13+00:00", "last": "2002-07-17T12:58:20+00:00" }, "messages": [ { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Michael Andre-Driussi", "address": "mantis at siriusfiction.com" }, "date": "2002-07-17T00:22:13+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Silk-23 skidooby doo", "in_reply_to": null, "reply_link": null, "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "Rostrum quoted me and 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": "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." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "No, not exactly. Look, Pig is carrying Silk, right? And has been for some\ntime. Searching for Silk for some time, too. So that whole thing was set\nin motion some time ago.\n\nIIRC there is no monitor where Silk and Hyacinth have been living, just as\nthere was no functional monitor around Silk until the time of big changes\nin TBOTLS. So in order to get a Silk-soft to Silk-43, a god would have to\nget a sturdy mount and basically walk on over there, with enough might and\nmajesty to physically drag Silk-43 to the nearest functioning monitor for a\nforceful switcharoo. Which is why Pig is a good choice for a message\ncarrier, but why Pig cannot replace Silk (lacking the Silk-body).\n\nAnyway, it seems to me that Pas and Neighbors are not in league at all, but\nworking at somewhat cross-purposes, coincidentally with the same tool that\nwas lying around moping. It is Horn's mission that makes the Pig mission\ngo through, despite all the screw-ups (blindness, role-reversals).\n\n(OTOH, I don't remember if Pig saw Hyacinth dead or not. He was communing\nwith her ghost in the ruins later on, of course -- that was the big tip\nthat he had Silk-soft in him. But it is also perhaps telling, in that the\nsetting is one that would be fresh to Silk-23 . . . well that and\nextra-poignant to Silk-43, so it is a wash.)" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Another: 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." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Passilk-n would be based upon Silk-23, wouldn't it? Living 20 years in VR\nheaven, apart from mortal-Silk's ordeals, or kept on tape, I'm not sure\nwhat. (I mean, they just show him like a puppet for a second -- less than\n\"visiting day\" at Mainframe.) In another post today I mentioned that I\ndon't see any Pas elements in the Narrator, myself, so I'm not comfortable\nwith Pig carrying Passilk rather than Silk." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Another: 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." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Unless Silk-43 failed to the point of self-destruction, which would tend to\nillustrate that the 20 years had been disasterous, even for a superman.\nOTOH, Pig was launched before Silkicide -- I'm not claiming he is on a\nmercy mission, nor that Pas knows Silkicide will come, only that Pas is\ngoing to press Silk back into active service. Quit sulking, Achilles, and\nget to work!" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Another: 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?)" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I thought Silk-23 was recorded at the pool in the hotel, at the happiest\nmoment in his life. I thought what happened on the airship was he was\nshown the scan (which he had not been aware of before), and rather than\ncheer him up, it made him feel even worse. So bad that he nearly . . .\nwell, you know.\n\n=mantis=\n\n\nSirius Fiction\nbooklets on Gene Wolfe, John Crowley\n30 copies of \"Snake's-hands\" until OP!\nhttp://www.siriusfiction.com/" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Michael Straight", "address": "straight at email.unc.edu" }, "date": "2002-07-17T12:58:20+00:00", "subject": "Re: (urth) Silk-23 skidooby doo", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "On Tue, 16 Jul 2002, Michael Andre-Driussi wrote:\nI 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." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "This is my strongest objection to the theory, which you didn't respond\nto." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "No, not exactly. Look, Pig is carrying Silk, right? And has been for some\ntime. Searching for Silk for some time, too. So that whole thing was set\nin motion some time ago." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I guess I'm not clear on this point. My understanding of Pig's story was\nthis:\n\nPig and other mercenaries are looting a manteion and Pig kills an auger\n(which would put them somewhere in the cultural sphere of Viron, so it\ncan't be that long ago). Silk sees this in the window and posesses Pig\n(why?). Pig is then blinded (by who? why?) and Silk is stuck. This is\nthe reason for Horn's mission of mercy, not that Mainframe needs the bit\nof Silk in Pig, but that the bit of Silk is unhappily stranded in Pig and\nwants to escape just like Scylla wants to esacape from Oreb.\n\nMy take was that this all happened fairly recently, long enough ago that\nPig has gotten used to navigating blind, but not long enough for him to be\nresigned to his blindness (although how much of that is Silk prompting\nPig so that he can escape?)" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Passilk-n would be based upon Silk-23, wouldn't it? Living 20 years in VR\nheaven, apart from mortal-Silk's ordeals, or kept on tape, I'm not sure\nwhat. (I mean, they just show him like a puppet for a second -- less than\n\"visiting day\" at Mainframe.) In another post today I mentioned that I\ndon't see any Pas elements in the Narrator, myself, so I'm not comfortable\nwith Pig carrying Passilk rather than Silk." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Maybe so. I hadn't thought Silk could run around Mainframe by\nhimself. We know there is a composite entity Passilk, and we hypothesise\na pure Silk-23 in storage somewhere. But then there are references to\nSilent Silk and Silver Silk as possibly distinct from Passilk, so maybe.\n\nBut then, wasn't part of your original evidence for PigSilk --> HornSilk\nthe bit where HornSilk declares that there is a sense in which Pas has\ncome to Blue? That would imply PigPasSilk --> HornPasSilk." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "I thought Silk-23 was recorded at the pool in the hotel, at the happiest\nmoment in his life. I thought what happened on the airship was he was\nshown the scan (which he had not been aware of before), and rather than\ncheer him up, it made him feel even worse. So bad that he nearly . . .\nwell, you know." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Is there textual evidence for this? My recollection is that Kypris offers\nSilk divination on the airship. So I imagine a split at that point. \nHuman Silk shudders at the very idea and walks away. Digitized Silk\ndiscovers it's an offer he can't refuse.\n\nBy your reading, Kypris makes the offer after she's already digitized\nSilk, and to a later Silk who never gets digitized. What would she have\ndone if the later Silk had said, \"Sounds great, beam me up!\" Erased the\nearlier Silk and replaced him with the later one?\n\n-Rostrum" } ] } ] }