{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/3557",
    "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": 3557,
    "subject": "Reasoning about Typhon and Pas",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "2002-11-11T06:33:34+00:00",
    "last": "2002-11-11T06:33:34+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0211-2076@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Dan Rabin",
        "address": "wolfe-lists at danrabin.com"
      },
      "date": "2002-11-11T06:33:34+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) Reasoning about Typhon and Pas",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "I'm not much bothered by the inconsistencies between the account of \nTyphon in _The Book of the New Sun_ and _The Urth of the New Sun_ as \nopposed to that of Pas in _The Book of the Long Sun_.  I just don't \nthink Wolfe is the sort of storyteller to be tightly constrained by a \nstory he told about the same character in a book ten years \npreviously.  It's Tyhpon's arrogance and megalomania that are \nimportant, not whether the back-story of the building of the _Whorl_ \nin  _Long Sun_ could be flawlessly fitted into the timeline of the \nstories in the earlier _Sun_ books.\n\nAs to why Typhon didn't build a chem body like Lemur and the other \ncouncilors, I can offer three explanations.  On the real-world plane, \nI could insist that the technologies in the two series are \ndifferently conceived, and that personality-scanning isn't a \npossibility in Wolfe's earlier books.  Or I could say that having an \norganic monster was important for effect in the earlier books, but \nevil men making themselves into machines was important in the later \nones.\n\nIf I wanted to play the game of concocting explanations within the \nsecondary world, I could suggest that the adaptation of the \npersonality-scanning technique to the construction of chem bodies \nthat impersonate the personality's former body is an actual \ninnovation of the Lesser Primate family in Viron; perhaps nobody had \nactually thought to merge together the technology of \npersonality-scanning with the technology of chem-building, or perhaps \nthe prejudice against chems as servants and cannon-fodder was too \nstrong for anyone to try.\n\nIt's not that I don't enjoy the game--it's just that I think that at \nsome point we have to admit that we're talking about works of art by \nan inhabitant of the same world we inhabit, and that that author may \nhave chosen to subordinate the consistency of his constructed world \nto his distinct visions of his distinct works.\n\nThat being said, I have to admit that, although I understand \nintellectually the assertion that Typhon in _New Sun_ is a cardboard \ncharacter, I personally have always found him fascinating, and have \nlong fantasized that Wolfe would write a _Book of Typhon_ (followed \nperhaps by a _Book of Piaton_).  Of course, these books would account \nfor their own existence in some wonderful and unforeseen way.  I \nguess we could always put these books on the shelves of the imaginary \nlibrary that has been previously discussed on this mailing list.\n\n   -- Dan Rabin"
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}