Subject: (urth) ship-building timeline for the Whorl

From: Michael Andre-Driussi <mantis at siriusfiction.com>
Date: Thu, 07 Nov 2002 21:56:12 +0000

Roy wrote:
>If Sev's prophecy was true, then Typhon had to have
>already been scanned into Mainframe and the ship launched; that or those
>things happened fairly soon after Sev made the prophecy.
>
>Either way, it's hard to reconcile the NS and LS texts. We know that Marble
>and the other servant chems were older than the _Whorl_ itself, and
>Hammerstone told Silk that the soldier chems were being stockpiled for
>twenty years before coming aboard the ship. A painted canvas cloth at
>Orchid's place was "a crude mockery of Campion's celebrated Pas enthroned."
>The original showed two-headed Pas, along with a couple of mighty taluses
>"still at work upon the whorl".

This is a strangely literal take on a metaphorical painting!  Unless you
really think Typhon was out there driving a bulldozer at the end? <g>
Iconically, the painting shows "Pas made the Whorl."  There would be no
point in showing a one-headed Typhon making the Whorl -- even though it is
true, it would contradict the truth that the Cargo has been indoctrinated
with: and the painting was presumably painted by Cargo =after= launch,
wasn't it?

>Now, the hollowing out of an asteroid and all the work needed to turn it
>into a giant spaceship, stocking it with flora and fauna, soil, water, etc.,
>would have been the work of years. At what point in the construction of the
>_Whorl_ did Typhon get his second head? Clearly he had it before the ship
>was launched, but did he have it before construction started? That doesn't
>seem possible, because Typhon surely didn't have Piaton's body for twenty
>years or more; that certainly wasn't his plan.
>
>If Typhon underwent the operation *after* construction started, how did that
>affect his original intent in building it? If the _Whorl_ took a long time
>to build, as it surely did, were his seven children the product of his
>original body or Piaton's?
>
>And how is it that so massive an undertaking as the building, stockpiling,
>and launch of the _Whorl_ left no lasting echoes on Urth in Sev's day, just
>a thousand years later? Sev and the Commonwealth seem completely ignorant of
>it.

I don't understand the problem.  He was building the generation starship in
imitation of the old Empire, then he got the graft just before the Whorl
was ready to launch, then he had himself scanned (or maybe even rescanned),
and then the Worl was launched.  Sometime after the Whorl was launched, the
rebellion began and there were no ships with which to escape Urth.

When the Conciliator visits Urth the rebellion is in full swing, maybe even
relatively close to its end.

Since you did not bring up the apparent biological ages of the scanned
kids, that is not a part of your factoring.

As for lasting echoes, well gosh, the near total depletion of material
resources on Urth would seem to cover this rather well!

=mantis=

Sirius Fiction
booklets on Gene Wolfe, John Crowley
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http://www.siriusfiction.com/

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From: Roy C. Lackey <rclackey at stic.net>
Date: Fri, 08 Nov 2002 05:24:37 +0000

>resources on Urth would seem to cover this rather well!

IIRC, past ages of Urth were marked by the depletion of some natural
resource, e.g., copper, uranium, etc., or am I confusing some other book
with the NS? IIRC, then much of Urth's material resources were long gone
before Typhon came on the scene. Besides, the insides of that asteroid
probably provided a lot of material.

Let me restate the problem. The _Whorl_ took a long time to build. The
stockpiling of chems shows that, minimally, twenty years passed between the
planning stage and its launch. Also, Typhon so associated his face with his
authority that he declined other means of extending his biological life;
that is why he had his own head grafted to Piaton's body. He didn't
anticipate that Piaton's strength might extend to "holding to the action of
the heart". In other words, Typhon's two-headed state was never intended to
be anything more than a temporary means to an end. Anyone as vain as Typhon
didn't want his visage marred by a second head.

So, when Typhon decided to build the _Whorl_ (for whatever reason), he *did
not* plan to have himself scanned as a two-headed god. At some point before
the launch, events overtook him. He was forced to change his original plans
and have himself scanned *after* he had been grafted to Piaton. (Why he
didn't have himself poured into a custom-made, look-alike chem body, like
Loris, and Potto, and the others, I don't know.) But, so far as I know,
Typhon never set foot in the _Whorl_. There was *no reason* for his scanned,
digitized personality to have been depicted as two-headed. Given Typhon's
vanity, it doesn't make sense for it to have been done that way.

The entire pantheon of Pas and his family and friends is all the more a
travesty, some sort of sick joke, apparently. Yet the manteions in the
pre-fabricated cities were built before the human cargo was put aboard. The
Sacred Windows, the gods in Mainframe, all of that seems to have been
planned from the beginning. Did Typhon's original plan call for him to be
scanned as his one-headed self (with a new body)? Did he have time to have
the Writings composed to reflect his two-headed godhead, create the whole
mythology that permeates the _Whorl_? Why bother? If he wanted to play god,
he didn't need to be two-headed to do it, and from his egocentric viewpoint,
it wouldn't have been desirable.

Crush wrote:
>IMO this is
>because the provider of all Typhon's super-technology which was the secret
>behind his rise to power, had left on the Whorl --- Quetzal. The head was
>the last thing Q provided him with before he left. Hmmm "Q"? "The name's
>Typhon. Pas Typhon."

Uh, Quetzal was an inhumi. The inhumi have no technology. None at all. They
are not good with their hands--probably because they don't have any in their
natural state. <g> Not to mention that it was well over 300 years from the
time the _Whorl_ was launched until Q was shot in the tunnels. I don't think
they live that long.

Crush asks:
>BTW: Is 1000 years from Typhon to Severian a firmly established time span?

The author of LEXICON URTHUS puts it at about 1,100 years. Close enough.

-Roy

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From: James Wynn <crushtv at hotpop.com>
Date: Mon, 11 Nov 2002 14:24:45 +0000

Roy wrote:

Crush answers
Since I haven't finished the SS yet, I'm sticking my neck out a bit... but
clearly technology is not incomprehensible to inhumi regardless of whether
they *use* it on Green. Quetzal is an engineer, since he "designed himself"
the intricate door latch to his Prolocutor quarters. Just as he also had no
trouble figuring out human political systems sufficiently to manipulate
them, I presume technology of other cultures would be transparent to Q.

I presumed that Q got on the Whorl by way of Urth (which would require -at
least - exposure to technology and that he be very old) based on his
discussion with Remora in LS3:1:
Q ponders the "cyclic nature" of myth - that is, what was applicable before
is now applicable today. In the story of "A-man" and "Wo-man" a "cobra"
entices them to eat his fruit. Why (according to Q)?  Because "he wanted
them to climb his tree." But the story isn't finished yet according to Q:
"they still have not yet climbed down". Perhaps I'm cursed with too much
imagination but this sounds to me like the Plan of Pas. They "climbed the
tree" means they took to the stars. "They haven't climbed down" means they
have disembarked to Green - which apparently was also part of the plan. The
cobra is clearly Q (note his "hooded" glances).

Well if Q enticed A-man and Wo-man to climb his tree, must have been to Urth
to entice them to do it.

Did I cover everything?

Perhaps I need to be more clear. I never presumed Quetzal showed up at
Typhon's door with a bag of trinkets like a serpentine Santa Claus. I only
intended to posit that Typhon's super-technology, and, of course, the Whorl
itself was of Typhon's design.

--Crush

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From: James Wynn <crushtv at hotpop.com>
Date: Mon, 11 Nov 2002 20:04:54 +0000

Oops! I meant "was of Quetzal's design".

--Crush

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