Subject: (urth) Blue as Ushas - long

From: Don Doggett <harlekin at earthlink.net>
Date: Fri, 15 Nov 2002 07:26:36 +0000

Hello all,

This subject is probably the most important one to me regarding the Sun
Books.  It's the reason I found this site and the ultimate reason I decided
to join this list.  Let me give a little preface before I start in.  When I
read TBotNS I was literally blown away.  I picked it up and couldn't put it
down.  It was epic, and it was obvious to me that I was missing at least
ninety percent of what was going on and that I would have to read it again.
But first I decided to read TBotLS.  I have to say that it is the only book
I have read that forced me to love it.  By that I mean that even though I
was disappointed by its lack of epic scope, I couldn't and still can't get
the characters out of my head.  But I was disappointed.  What besides
Typhon, did this work have to do with Severian's universe?  It was a long
time before I picked up SS, and I did it mainly because of a need to finish
the story.  It is easily the most confusing of the three works (to me) but I
as I worked my way through it a feeling grew and grew on me that I was in a
familiar place.  By the end of it all, the only way I felt the books could
work was if the Whorl had somehow made it's way back to Urth.  To Ushas and
the New Sun.  But how could I discover if this was the case?  The internet,
of course.  I went to Google, typed in "Blue" and "Ushas" and here I am.
    In my opinion, Marc Aramini has made very compelling arguments as to why
Blue is indeed Ushas.  There's no need to reiterate them.  But there are
some holes in his theory - one big one - which I hope to be able to fill.
At the least I hope I can shrink them.  So here goes.
    I'll begin my argument thematically.  It hinges on two points and I'll
state them succinctly.  In the NS, Wolfe makes it clear that there are other
colonies of humans out in space.  He makes it equally clear that it is Urth
that is important to him thematically (see Father Inire's letter).  His work
is ultimately about us, on Urth (earth).  What does a Starcrosser travelling
to a random world in a universe full of human expats have to do with us?
Nothing.  It's just standard (boring) Sci Fi.  That was my original problem
with LS.   Second, what does SS have to do with Severian?  Why have Silk
astral project to Urth to speak with him?  It reeks of a cheap attempt to
tie the entire series  to the unrelated first volume.  Silk meets Severian.
Godzilla meets King Kong.  Dracula meets the Wolfman.  I don't like it and I
don't believe it.  In short, Blue as Ushas is stronger thematically as it
brings both later series back to us.  Of course, just because it makes me
happy doesn't make it true.
    Marc's theories, as far as they go, seem sound to me.  The theoretical
possibility of polyploidy in plant/animal hybrids (hybrids that are alluded
to in the very names of the Vironese - male/animal female/plant) lower
gravity on Green, even Silkhorn's time travel.  All of his points are
plausible but there are a few things which he hasn't been able to get
around.
    The first is Silkhorn's description of the red sun as a star in the
night sky of Blue.  This I think, is Wolfe's dirtiest trick and my solution
is simple.  Silk is wrong.  In both series he makes a cottage industry out
of being wrong.  For one thing he is never described as looking at the red
sun in Blue's sky.  He is inside when he is talking to Juganu and he says
"Standing on the tiles I will point and you will peer until at last you see
a certain dim red star."  He never says "I have seen this star." nor is he
or anyone else described as seeing this star.  It neither proves nor
disproves that Blue is not Ushas.
    The second is when Silkhorn says to Hide that the Neighbors are not made
from the same dust as they are - meaning that they are not from the same
planet.  But why would the author bother to say something like this when it
should be obvious.  Silkhorn is once again wrong (his most endearing trait,
I think) and this is a rhetorical device by the author (Wolfe) to make us
think about this supposedly obvious fact.
    The third (and last objection that I plan to deal with) is the biggest
and the hardest to surmount.  The Whorl left from Urth in the Age of the
Monarch and the only way it could end up in the time of Ushas is for it to
travel faster than light.  The argument is that there is not any good
evidence, circumstantial or otherwise, to claim that it did.  Not so.  I did
some very cursory study of faster than light travel and one of the
theoretical occurences when something goes ftl is that time stops.  This
happens on the first page (god, I love Wolfe) on Nightside of the Long Sun.
When Silk is enlightened, he is aware that time has stopped.  I know that
Mr. Wolfe has said in an interview that the enlightenment of Silk is purely
miraculous but this is a tricky statement.  Silk's miraculous enlightenment
is in his awareness, not in the stoppage of time.  This, coupled with
Maytera Marble's internal clock being off by 3000 years (an otherwise
pointless bit of trivia) is enough circumstantial evidence to at least drag
the argument into the realm of plausibility.
    Wow, you say.  That's a big bunch of nothin'.  Well I have one more
thing and believe it or not, it is extratextual evidence that Blue is likely
Ushas.  It is an entry in Mantis' very fine Lexicon Urthus regarding THE OLD
WOMAN WHOSE ROLLING PIN IS THE SUN.  Now I haven't read this story so all I
can comment on is the entry.  I'll quote the relevant parts for those who
don't have the book, and those who do can verify I'm not being misleading.

The Old Woman Whose Rolling Pin is the Sun - a short tale, told by a man to
his grand daughter Becca, explaining the nature of the cosmos: . . . The
story makes reference to "our longfather," a culture hero who went to the
stars. . .
Commentary:  Wolfe has a few stories that deal explicitly with the zodiac. .
. but this one seems tied to the Urth Cycle by a few points, the most
apparent being the name "Skuld" for the planet Venus, another being the
reference to Fauna, who appears in a story in the brown book.  The
"longfather" might be another avatar of the New Sun, or a later name for The
Sleeper god of Ushas.  The astronomy of the story shows that it is taking
place in the northern hemisphere, and  that the stars are in the same
positions that they are today, so the story is probably set in the Age of
Ushas.

I don't know about you, but that "longfather" sounds a lot to me like a
certain FATHER Silk, aka the LONG Sun, who is fast becoming a culture hero
of Blue, and who heads off to the stars at the end of Return to the Whorl.
And that my friends, is the most compelling argument I have.

Don

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From: James Wynn <crushtv at hotpop.com>
Date: Fri, 15 Nov 2002 16:19:02 +0000

Don posits:
The Whorl left from Urth in the Age of the
Monarch and the only way it could end up in the time of Ushas is for it to
travel faster than light.  The argument is that there is not any good
evidence, circumstantial or otherwise, to claim that it did.  Not so.  I did
some very cursory study of faster than light travel and one of the
theoretical occurences when something goes ftl is that time stops.  This
happens on the first page (god, I love Wolfe) on Nightside of the Long Sun.
When Silk is enlightened, he is aware that time has stopped.

Crush responds:
I'm really not qualified to say much about your other arguments (except that
I am intrigued by your "longfather" tie-in) but on *this* I'm have problem.

Silk is not only "aware" that Time has stopped. He says he was *outside*
Time. The speed in which Time is moving at the "time" of his enlightenment
is irrelevant to him since such differences only matters from the
perspective of persons *in* Time. So the Time stoppage for Silk doesn't tell
us anything either way.
-- Crush

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From: Roy C. Lackey <rclackey at stic.net>
Date: Sat, 16 Nov 2002 05:48:32 +0000

Don Doggett wrote:
>with LS.

Rather than argue the nuts-and-bolts, let me address the thematic
objections. As you acknowledge, the galaxy had been conquered long ago by
the First Empire. The effect of Urth being turned into Ushas was largely
symbolic; it wasn't going to wipe out the human race. It was much too late
for that. The wounding of Urth's sun, whether directly by Typhon's actions
or as retribution for them, had no galaxy-wide ripple effect. Agents of the
Increate, judging from Apheta's testimony, were constrained, somewhat, by
the laws of physics from punishment en masse.

To credit the two-headed madman Sev met on the mountain in the Age of the
Monarch with building and launching the _Whorl_ with the intent of having it
return, a thousand years in the future, to restock the planet with the flora
and fauna and, especially, the people of old Urth, presupposes that Typhon
knew the future. More specifically, that Typhon knew that the Conciliator
would come, that the New Sun would supplant him, that all his works,
including his monumental carved mountain, would be drowned with little or no
trace remaining to show that he had ever existed. That is not the
megalomaniac I read about in NS. Typhon was a bad guy, not a savior. Typhon
was emblematic of the problem, not the solution.

Unless you are suggesting that Typhon launched the _Whorl_ for his own
reasons that had nothing to do with a planned return to either Urth or
Ushas--that if it did return to the planet from which it was launched, it
did so by accident or third-party design--then I don't see how Blue can be
Ushas.

>  Second, what does SS have to do with Severian?  Why have Silk

Remember that David Hartwell apparently thought that the original four
volumes of the NS needed some sort of coda, which led Wolfe to write URTH. I
don't know, but I suspect, that Wolfe felt some obligation to tie the LS and
SS series to NS. Wolfe corresponds with various members of this list, has
answered questions submitted by list members about the LS books, and was
probably aware before he wrote it that many of his most faithful readers
*wanted* Sev to make an appearance in SS. I feel almost certain that the
business about Sev's "sister" in SS was a direct bow in this general
direction.

>travel faster than light.

I don't think you need to resort to FTL travel. At near-but-sub-light
speeds, the _Whorl_ could have experienced 1/3 the subjective time-passage
of the millenium that elapsed on Urth. Just have the ship travel in a big
circle.

Or are you suggesting that the Blue of Horn's day was in the far future of
the Ushas that Sev saw? That a new civilization (Neighbors) had risen from
the mud of Urth-come-Ushas, that the new civilization had fallen to ruin,
both on Ushas and Lune, and abandoned both worlds for greener pastures
around another star?

-Roy

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From: Don Doggett <harlekin at earthlink.net>
Date: Sat, 16 Nov 2002 06:06:35 +0000

Hi Roy! You wrote:

"Unless you are suggesting that Typhon launched the _Whorl_ for his own
reasons that had nothing to do with a planned return to either Urth or
Ushas--that if it did return to the planet from which it was launched, it
did so by accident or third-party design--then I don't see how Blue can be
Ushas."

Bingo!  That's precisely my argument.  Typhon is the biggest jerk in the
universe.  I think that's the reason the Whorl leaves at the end of SS.  Pas
realizes he's been had; that all he's done is taken one big walk around the
block. Heh heh heh.

You also say:

"Remember that David Hartwell apparently thought that the original four
direction."

I like to think that Wolfe wouldn't pander to the crowd (forgive the harsh
phrasing but it seems the most apt) and as I said before I don't believe it,
but of course it's possible.

and last:

"Or are you suggesting that the Blue of Horn's day was in the far future of
the Ushas that Sev saw? That a new civilization (Neighbors) had risen from
the mud of Urth-come-Ushas, that the new civilization had fallen to ruin,
both on Ushas and Lune, and abandoned both worlds for greener pastures
around another star?"

Bullseye once again.  Though I'm honestly not sure where the Neighbors have
gone.

Don

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From: Chris <rasputin_ at hotmail.com>
Date: Sat, 16 Nov 2002 07:58:43 +0000

And another lurker emerges from the shadows...

Greets all, I have been reading the list for a month or four now. I'm very 
impressed with the quality of discussion here, and the archives have helped 
me on numerous occasions so far. I finally signed up for the list to post 
something, but the topic you were on at the time has passed and there's no 
use dragging that out. But now that I'm here I might as well post, eh?

I've been following this argument, and while as far as the integrity of the 
works are concerned I don't think Blue being (or not being) Ushas makes any 
difference, nonetheless I think that the FTL angle is a red herring.

It stands to reason that the ship itself wasn't made for FTL travel, 
otherwise it wouldn't have been made a generation ship. The ship could be 
accelerated to light speed by a miracle, of course, but generally speaking 
the Outsider doesn't work that way. Yes, God does work in mysterious ways, 
but there's a certain perversity involved in manifesting divine power to 
change the course of a starship and violate the laws of physics, and yet 
working so indirectly (through Silk) on affairs inside the starship. As far 
as the time stoppage, if this were a product of the ship's velocity then 
everyone would have experienced it, not just Silk - not to mention there are 
some other effects of such phenomena that would have been rather disruptive 
to the Whorl.

Well, hopefully this post hasn't been too lengthy or wasteful. For my own 
selfish reasons, I'll extend it one more paragraph though. I'm currently 
reading _Soldier of Arete_ for the first time, and have not read Herodotus, 
though I would like to - I'm getting a copy this weekend, in fact, and I 
wondered if anyone here had a translation they would particularly recommend 
above all others. Also related to _Soldier_, I was rather struck by the 
similarity between Latro's depression and the despair experienced by Silk 
toward the end of LS, I was wondering if anyone had commented on that 
before. Not that I think the two are related, but I think they are so 
similar that it makes me suspect that the circumstances behind both may have 
a lot in common.

Peace,
Chris

>Bullseye once again.  Though I'm honestly not sure where the Neighbors have

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From: Joe Cilluffo <cilluff1 at optonline.net>
Date: Sat, 16 Nov 2002 14:33:56 +0000

Don wrote:

<<

"Or are you suggesting that the Blue of Horn's day was in the far future
of
the Ushas that Sev saw? That a new civilization (Neighbors) had risen
from
the mud of Urth-come-Ushas, that the new civilization had fallen to
ruin,
both on Ushas and Lune, and abandoned both worlds for greener pastures
around another star?"

Bullseye once again.  Though I'm honestly not sure where the Neighbors
have
gone. >>

Hello, Don.  

I always thought that LS and SS took place chronologically in Severian's
past -- when he was an apprentice and found/revived Triskele, met
Thecla, etc., all took place in the future relative to Typhon.  He met
Typhon in Urth of the New Sun in Severian's past, and thus the LS/SS
series cannot be Ushas because it only took about 250 years for the
Whorl to reach Blue.  I know that with GW time travel is always a
possibility, but the Whorl, as has been commented, didn't seem to be
constructed for FTL travel.  

It's an intriguing thought, though, this Blue as Ushas vein, and I have
always felt that Blue seemed like Ushas despite not understanding how it
could be so - the ruins of the Vanished People's world are the most
obvious tie, and Green of course is reminiscent of Urth's green moon.
But there was one other textual hint that tantalized me.  I am looking
at p. 203 of the new Tor version.  When Horn is trapped in the pit that
Krait rescues him from, "Once, as I lay there at the bottom of the pit,
it seemed to me that a man with a long nose (a tall man or an immense
spider) stood over me.  I did not move or even open my eyes, knowing
that if I did he would be gone.  He touched my forehead with something
he held, and the pit vanished."  To me this sounds like Sev with the
Claw -- the immense spider look is a result of his fuligin cloak, and he
typically went about reanimating people by placing the Claw on their
foreheads.  Horn proceeds to have an hallucination about Nettle cooking
for him, which is not unexpected -- all of the others Sev reanimates are
dazed for some time thereafter but, because NS is written from Sev's
perspective, we do not know if they are basically in a fog or whether
they hallucinate as Horn did.  But to me this seemed like Severian
bringing Horn back from the dead, which makes you think that perhaps
Blue indeed is Ushas.  

I should say though that I have about thirty pages of Blue left and
haven't read Green or RTTW yet, although I have read NS and LS, so I
could be missing something or repeating the obvious, for which I
apologize! : )

- Joe

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From: Don Doggett <harlekin at earthlink.net>
Date: Sat, 16 Nov 2002 21:00:31 +0000

> bringing Horn back from the dead, which makes you think that perhaps

Don enthusiastically replies:

Yes, yes, yes indeed!  I have always felt that that was Severian with the
claw.  I think Severian is also the creature who climbs in the boat during
the storm. Possibly the eldest Severian in his time line, one who has
evolved with the rest of Ushas.  There are others but I won't mention them
as they are in the later books and you haven't read them.  I think Wolfe
sets up all of these obvious clues that Blue is Ushas and then periodically
tries to kill them with things like Silk's claims of bilocation (he is wrong
and that is obvious by the Grandmother's story set in Grandecitta)  and his
claim that he will show Juganu the red star in Blue's sky (which he never
does, because it's not there).

Don

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From: Don Doggett <harlekin at earthlink.net>
Date: Sat, 16 Nov 2002 21:12:29 +0000

As far
> some other effects of such phenomena that would have been rather
disruptive

I would argue that Silk's awareness of the time stoppage is an anomalous
result
of his being out of time, by way of his enlightenment.  I think it more
likely that no one would notice a change in the velocity of a body the size
of the Whorl.  It is, after all, the size of a small planet.  As for
disruptions, the Whorl is already quite disrupted before Silk's
enlightenment, and it grows quickly worse as the narrative progresses.  Of
course, I know very little of ftl travel.

Don

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From: Roy C. Lackey <rclackey at stic.net>
Date: Sun, 17 Nov 2002 09:11:05 +0000

Welcome, Chris
>some other effects of such phenomena that would have been rather disruptive

I agree that FTL travel for the _Whorl_ is very doubtful. Anyway, the usual
take on FTL ships is that they travel *backwards* in time. Therefore the
arrival of the ship in Ushas' far future is even less likely.

-Roy

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From: Don Doggett <harlekin at earthlink.net>
Date: Mon, 18 Nov 2002 06:17:11 +0000

> arrival of the ship in Ushas' far future is even less likely.

Please explain.  Is this the usual SF take on FTL or is there a physics
explanation that makes backward time travel the most likely?  I'm pretty
ignorant on this.

Don

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From: Dan'l Danehy-Oakes <ddanehy at siebel.com>
Date: Mon, 18 Nov 2002 18:02:15 +0000

Scribble, scribble, scribble ... another great thick post,
eh Mr. Lackey?

> The wounding of Urth's sun, whether directly by Typhon's 
> actions or as retribution for them, had no galaxy-wide ripple 
> effect. 

This puzzles me. I have wondered for some time just why many
of the participants on this list assume that the wounding of
the Old Sun took place during the reign of Typhon. In reading
the Typhon-era passages of UotNS, I received the distinct 
impression that Typhon reigned under a wounded Old Sun. Can 
anyone give some specifics?

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From: cilluff1 at optonline.net <cilluff1 at optonline.net>
Date: Mon, 18 Nov 2002 18:58:27 +0000

Blattid wrote:
<This puzzles me. I have wondered for some time just why many

--Blattid>>>

This is just from recollection, I don't have the book on hand, but I seem
to recall that Typhon sent people off Urth on the spaceships because the
sun was dying and meant to go himself but the rebels prevented him.

- Joe

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From: Dan'l Danehy-Oakes <ddanehy at siebel.com>
Date: Mon, 18 Nov 2002 19:29:15 +0000

Joe wrote:

> This is just from recollection, I don't have the book on 
> hand, but I seem to recall that Typhon sent people off Urth 
> on the spaceships because the sun was dying and meant to go 
> himself but the rebels prevented him.

Yes, I recall that also ... but this does not automatically 
imply that the Old Sun has just started to die in his time.
As I said, I had the impression it had been going on rather
longer than that.

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From: Andy Robertson <andywrobertson at clara.co.uk>
Date: Mon, 18 Nov 2002 19:51:20 +0000

See Typhon's discourse to Severian . .

I don't have it to hand but it includes something along the lines of "the
scientists were wrong - solar radiation declined two parts in a  thousand,
then stabilised . . . "

The implication being not merely that the Sun had been wounded in Typhon's
time, but that he had had a part in it.

    hartshorn

----- Original Message -----
From: "Dan'l Danehy-Oakes" <ddanehy at siebel.com>
To: <urth at urth.net>
Sent: Monday, November 18, 2002 7:29 PM
Subject: RE: (urth) Blue as Ushas - long

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