{ "export": { "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/3684", "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": 3684, "subject": "apologies", "messages": 7, "voices": 7, "first": "2002-12-17T23:34:37+00:00", "last": "2002-12-29T21:25:24+00:00" }, "messages": [ { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "maa32", "address": "maa32 at dana.ucc.nau.edu" }, "date": "2002-12-17T23:34:37+00:00", "subject": "(urth) apologies", "in_reply_to": null, "reply_link": null, "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I really must apologize for my post yesterday. Wolfe only told me because, I \nam sure, some of my ideas were close and there was one big one that really \nbugged him - but I was doing a good job arguing it anyway, so he had to set me \nstraight.\nI didn't mean to offend anyone. I should have sat on the information until I \nhad Wolfe's permission to make it public, but I was very, very passionate \nabout the Urth is Blue theory, because I believed in it 99.9%. I suppose I \nwill go about procuring that permission and post his exact words as soon as I \nget it, but in the mean time I will respond to the speculation that has \nalready arisen, and I really think we should encourage more, because Wolfe \nhimself has said that there is nothing left to talk about when the author \ncomes out and says the final word:\n\nNutria, I am sure that the passage with the missionaries in the garden was of \nprime importance, I don't know how related it may be to the one \"fact\" I know \n- I can only speculate like everyone else, but I think that is important. As \nfar as I know, no dimensional inversion has gone on in Short Sun, but I could \nbe wrong.\n\nTami, I have already proposed a mechanism for the evolution of the green man: \nplant life hybridized with human life and produced an animal with chloroplasts \n(with access to the corridors of time, I think). I have proposed that he is \nthe descendant of the Vanished People - a haploid generation to their diploid \n(or more) one. I think people normally die when trees eat them, but that \nsomething special happened with Horn and maybe Silk that allowed them to \nsurvive, but added the ability to feed autotrophically in some small amount, a \ntrait which may be shared with other people in the near future of the text \nsince the neighbors made a deal with Horn to \"return\". While I can draw some \ninferences, Mr. Wolfe has neither denied nor confirmed this mechanism, and it \nremains my own idea, open to debate like any other concept flying around on \nthe list.\n\nJust remember that people bring in outside comments and interviews all the \ntime to defeat others ideas. I truly am sorry, but let me just say that there \nwas some reason that Mr. Wolfe set me straight. I wasn't trying to hoard \ninformation - I would never have posted to the list again in that case, and \nsmirked from around the corner. I was trying to comment on an idea that we \nhave argued a WHOLE LOT that had been nixed by the author of the work. \nIndeed, I have half a mind to say that perhaps we should all ignore it and \ntake a New Critical approach, saying that \"he changed his mind and it doesn't \naffect the work of art.\" The other half of me, of course, believes that the \nauthor always has authority ... but I would never, ever, ever have \nrelinquished the Blue is Urth theory without a word from Wolfe himself. I was \nreally devastated to be WRONG. I hope you can understand that - it was my \nbaby, just like the Horn in Babbie thing - which I am firmly convinced of from \nmy own reading. I think I was close - closer than he thought we would get so \nsoon - and that was enough for Wolfe to help me out a little.\nMarc Aramini" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "StoneOx17", "address": "stoneox17 at aol.com" }, "date": "2002-12-18T08:44:49+00:00", "subject": "Re: (urth) apologies", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "There's been a question that has, for some time, been circulating \namong mathematicians (and now I, like Jerry, have revealed my \nprofession). Suppose you could learn the proof of the Riemann \nhypothesis (it used to be Fermat's Last Theorem), but had to \nswear never to reveal it to anybody else the rest of your life. \nWould you agree? I suspect Marc now understands this \ndilemma quite well.\n\nAnd guys, we're being too hard on Marc. I don't think he meant \nto tantalize us and drive us crazy with frustration. I think that \nafter receiving the note, he was so excited he had to say \nsomething, and he didn't think very carefully about how it would\ngo over on this list. And Marc -- I hope you can get permission\nfrom Wolfe to tell us about it eventually (although it'll be really\ninteresting to see how close we can come if he asks you to \nkeep it quiet for some time first).\n\n-- Stone Ox" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Josh Geller", "address": "dclxvi at dclxvi.best.vwh.net" }, "date": "2002-12-18T09:07:11+00:00", "subject": "Re: (urth) apologies", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "On Wed, 18 Dec 2002 StoneOx17 at aol.com wrote:\nAnd guys, we're" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Who we, white man?" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": " being too hard on Marc." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "He's holding up admirably, and I would like to encourage him not to give\nin to peer pressure.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n." } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Andrew Bollen", "address": "abollen at internode.on.net" }, "date": "2002-12-18T12:44:53+00:00", "subject": "Re: (urth) apologies", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Stone Ox wrote:\nThere's been a question that has, for some time, been circulating\namong mathematicians (and now I, like Jerry, have revealed my\nprofession). Suppose you could learn the proof of the Riemann\nhypothesis (it used to be Fermat's Last Theorem), but had to\nswear never to reveal it to anybody else the rest of your life.\nWould you agree? I suspect Marc now understands this\ndilemma quite well." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I stopped being a logician soon after I finished my PhD, stuck in a\ndifferent but perhaps equally biting dilemma: Even if I did manage to prove\nFLT, would it actually make me care whether it was true or not? I guess I\njust wasn't cut out for the job. (A corollary concern: Even if I did manage\nto prove it, the prospect of this increasing my chances with attractive\nwomen seemed quite remote. Apologies for vulgarity.)\n\nAnyway, just to say \"Me too!\" to Stone's comments re Marc. I hope that\nwhatever Marc has may shed some light on what to me are the Large Mysteries\nof the cycle. I don't include Blue/Ushas among these - that's a \"don't\nreally care\", FLT-type of question, unless it it intimately bound up with\nwith these.\n\nThere are several Large Mysteries, but for me the major one is the\nrelationship between Silk, SilkHorn and Severian. I cannot help but see a\nprogression, from Silk, to SilkHorn, to Severian. The raw Silk is something\nof a wet - unwilling or unable to really take the reins of leadership in a\ncrisis, rushing to his woman & leaving his people leaderless and adrift; a\nParis filling Moses' sandals Contrast this with SilkHorn - a veritable old\ntestament judge, time after time mending fractured communities, dealing out\nrobust justice.\n\nWolfe does this wonderfully, I think. We see Horn at that start of Short\nSun, judge of his little family, strong and courageous, but limited in his\npotential. He dies on Green, when circumstances overwhelm those limits.\nMelded with Silk, his strengths live on, but now as the strengths of a Hero,\nrather than an constrained within the confines of an ordinary mortal. All\nthrough Blue, I was thinking: Surely this yearning for Silk is an error; I\ncannot imagine Silk being of any use at all in this gritty, down-and-dirty\nworld. I loved the way this view was both validated & transcended, in the\ndevelopment.\n\nSilkHorn becomes a wonderful combination of Odin/Mercury, Heracles (not\nleast in the yearning everybody has for his aid, in his supposed absence -\nso reminiscent of the Argonauts' yearning for the absent Heracles in the\nArgonautika; I would be amazed to find Wolfe did not intend this parallel),\nand Moses.\n\nAnd this combination owes much to Horn. I cannot imagine Silk inspiring the\nkind of fear & awe that SilkHorn does, were he to lack the stern qualtiies\nof Horn.\n\nBeyond Horn-qualities, there is an aspect to SilkHorn whose origin I do not\nquite understand. This is the magician aspect, which is exactly correct for\na character who is part Hermes, part Moses (who was clearly a magician).\nThis does not come from Horn, and I cannot see any evidence of it coming\nfrom Silk. From the text, it must be a gift in some way from the Vanished\nPeople, and of course there is a passage where a gift is explicitly granted.\nBut the whole extended cycle is very intimately bound up with the idea of\npersonalities and qualities layering on to each other, either by\ntransmission or by recycling through time. It would be much more fitting for\nsuch a layering to be involved with this aspect also. Is there any evidence\nof SilkHorn melding with a Vanished Person?\n\nNow to Severian. I think it is completely natural to see a progression from\nthe Moses/judge figure SilkHorn to the sort-of/kind-of Christ figure\nSeverian (no doubt there are theological problems with this, but I don't\nthink that Wolfe worries about them, so we need not). We are led to\nunderstand that the raw Severian was refined into this role through\nrecycling in time. My \"gut feel\" is that part of the process must have\ninvolved a melding with SilkHorn, somehow or other.\n\nPerhaps this is wrong; the only concrete evidence I have for this is Wolfe's\ncomment somewhere to the effect that Silk is a member of Severian's Order,\nfor whatever that is worth. But surely there is a connection between the\ntwo, not just a matter of some circumstantial genetic argy-bargy as has been\nproposed, but with a deaper meaning. Otherwise, why have the characters\ninhabit the same fictional space at all? The apex of the whole cycle is\nSeverian's role in the redemption of humanity. Anything not part of that\nstory surely does not warrant two further multi-volume narratives. So I\nthink that Long Sun/Short Sun must be seen as a \"precursor\", convoluted &\ntwisted in time, of course, but not in theme.\n\nGiven that Long Sun and Short Sun are so much the story of the development\nand deeds of the Hero SilkHorn, the only theme I can see linking the whole\ncycle is the further development of that Hero into the quasi-Christ\nSeverian.\n\nAnnoyingly, Wolfe has left out a precise map of the details, but he's like\nthat :)" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Michael Straight", "address": "straight at email.unc.edu" }, "date": "2002-12-18T14:35:49+00:00", "subject": "Re: (urth) apologies", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "On Tue, 17 Dec 2002, maa32 wrote:\nIndeed, I have half a mind to say that perhaps we should all ignore it and\ntake a New Critical approach, saying that \"he changed his mind and it doesn't\naffect the work of art.\" The other half of me, of course, believes that the\nauthor always has authority ..." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I always look at it like this: If you're having a discussion about what\nthe author intended, then a remark from the author can bring about a\nconclusion to the argument.\n\nYou can always then turn to an argument about what the author *ought* to\nhave meant (i.e. that a different interpretation is better, more coherent,\netc.), but some people aren't interested in that type of discussion.\n\nNeither interest nor lack of interest in whether a given interpretation\nmight be better than the author's intention should be labled as Right or\nWrong, unless you've discovered an objective aesthetic standard. In which\ncase, please contact me right away.\n\n-- Rostrum" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "James Wynn", "address": "crushtv at hotpop.com" }, "date": "2002-12-18T16:12:31+00:00", "subject": "RE: (urth) apologies", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "As my head began to clear (with the help of friends) I realized I should\nhave handled this entirely off-list. The way I handled this was not right\nethically, and it was strategically ham-fisted.\n\nI do not believe Wolfe would have told Marc anything if he were not\ncomfortable with it being publicized, but Marc doesn't want to be\npresumptuous, and that is an admirable attitude.\n\nI wish I had not said anything on list, and if anyone cares a whit for my\nfeelings in this regard, they will let this thread die.\n\n Crush" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Malco", "address": "nastler at yahoo.dk" }, "date": "2002-12-29T21:25:24+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Apologies", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Computers are not something I like to think about.\nI hope this is better now\nnastler\n\nHar du problemer med din hjemmecomputer? Få hjælp med Yahoo!s PC-support på http://dk.shopping.yahoo.com/pcsupport/index.html" } ] } ] }