male hyacinth

A couple months ago I posted on the evidence for a male hyacinth, and I was taken aback to discover that someone else thought that up independently - it was kind of a joke. Let me briefly go over why I thought so: right before Silk meets Hyacinth for the first time, he finds all kinds of statues of boy toys for the gods: Ganymede and Catamitus, both boy lovers that I normally associate with Musk. But Hyacinthus is the same kind of mythic figure: male lover of Apollo, stricken dead by the jealous wind. But instead of Musk, he immediately meets Hyacinth, who has fake breasts. Then later, in Calde of the Long Sun ,Patera Quetzal, when Silk claims that he slept with a woman, says he doesn't believe that his augur has done that. It sounds like nothing, but Wolfe has a ton of those double entendres in his work. I'm just surprised that someone else came up with the same thematic idea - the evidence isn't as sketchy as the evidence that suggest that Patera Pike is Blood's father, but it's pretty sketchy. I don't see the chem part as convincing, but I think Hyacinth could certainly be an ex-male who had a little transformation enacted and it explains the sterility of Silk's relationship. I don't know how seriously to take these things, really. Not as seriously as a take a lot of the other stuff I post. Marc Aramini

male

I too the statuary, Hyacinth's potential androgeny etc as re-inforcement of Musk's character and lifestyle. I'm far from convinced that - even with Wolfe's infamous multi-layered work - there's any need to see more to it than that. If one posits that Hyacinth is ex-male, male , chem male or female one has to answer what purpose it serves. More what purpose would it serve to have Silk fall in love with such a being. That would seem contrary to Wolfe's normal path in such matters and would require explanation. Matthew