Subject: (urth) apologies

From: maa32 <maa32 at dana.ucc.nau.edu>
Date: Tue, 17 Dec 2002 23:34:37 +0000

I really must apologize for my post yesterday.  Wolfe only told me because, I 
am sure, some of my ideas were close and there was one big one that really 
bugged him - but I was doing a good job arguing it anyway, so he had to set me 
straight.
I didn't mean to offend anyone.  I should have sat on the information until I 
had Wolfe's permission to make it public, but I was very, very passionate 
about the Urth is Blue theory, because I believed in it 99.9%.  I suppose I 
will go about procuring that permission and post his exact words as soon as I 
get it, but in the mean time I will respond to the speculation that has 
already arisen, and I really think we should encourage more, because Wolfe 
himself has said that there is nothing left to talk about when the author 
comes out and says the final word:

Nutria, I am sure that the passage with the missionaries in the garden was of 
prime importance, I don't know how related it may be to the one "fact" I know 
- I can only speculate like everyone else, but I think that is important.  As 
far as I know, no dimensional inversion has gone on in Short Sun, but I could 
be wrong.

Tami, I have already proposed a mechanism for the evolution of the green man: 
plant life hybridized with human life and produced an animal with chloroplasts 
(with access to the corridors of time, I think).  I have proposed that he is 
the descendant of the Vanished People - a haploid generation to their diploid 
(or more) one. I think people normally die when trees eat them, but that 
something special happened with Horn and maybe Silk that allowed them to 
survive, but added the ability to feed autotrophically in some small amount, a 
trait which may be shared with other people in the near future of the text 
since the neighbors made a deal with Horn to "return".  While I can draw some 
inferences, Mr. Wolfe has neither denied nor confirmed this mechanism, and it 
remains my own idea, open to debate like any other concept flying around on 
the list.

Just remember that people bring in outside comments and interviews all the 
time to defeat others ideas.  I truly am sorry, but let me just say that there 
was some reason that Mr. Wolfe set me straight.  I wasn't trying to hoard 
information - I would never have posted to the list again in that case, and 
smirked from around the corner.  I was trying to comment on an idea that we 
have argued a WHOLE LOT that had been nixed by the author of the work.  
Indeed, I have half a mind to say that perhaps we should all ignore it and 
take a New Critical approach, saying that "he changed his mind and it doesn't 
affect the work of art." The other half of me, of course, believes that the 
author always has authority ... but I would never, ever, ever have 
relinquished the Blue is Urth theory without a word from Wolfe himself.  I was 
really devastated to be WRONG.  I hope you can understand that - it was my 
baby, just like the Horn in Babbie thing - which I am firmly convinced of from 
my own reading.  I think I was close - closer than he thought we would get so 
soon - and that was enough for Wolfe to help me out a little.
Marc Aramini

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From: StoneOx17 <stoneox17 at aol.com>
Date: Wed, 18 Dec 2002 08:44:49 +0000

There's been a question that has, for some time, been circulating 
among mathematicians (and now I, like Jerry, have revealed my 
profession).  Suppose you could learn the proof of the Riemann 
hypothesis (it used to be Fermat's Last Theorem), but had to 
swear never to reveal it to anybody else the rest of  your life.  
Would you agree?   I suspect Marc now understands this 
dilemma quite well.

And guys, we're being too hard on Marc.  I don't think he meant 
to tantalize us and drive us crazy with frustration.  I think that 
after receiving the note, he was so excited he had to say 
something, and he didn't think very carefully about how it would
go over on this list.  And Marc -- I hope you can get permission
from Wolfe to tell us about it eventually (although it'll be really
interesting to see how close we can come if he asks you to 
keep it quiet for some time first).

-- Stone Ox

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From: Josh Geller <dclxvi at dclxvi.best.vwh.net>
Date: Wed, 18 Dec 2002 09:07:11 +0000

On Wed, 18 Dec 2002 StoneOx17 at aol.com wrote:

> And guys, we're

Who we, white man?

>                 being too hard on Marc.

He's holding up admirably, and I would like to encourage him not to give
in to peer pressure.

.

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From: Andrew Bollen <abollen at internode.on.net>
Date: Wed, 18 Dec 2002 12:44:53 +0000

> Would you agree?   I suspect Marc now understands this
I stopped being a logician soon after I finished my PhD, stuck in a
different but perhaps equally biting dilemma: Even if I did manage to prove
FLT,  would it actually make me care whether it was true or not? I guess I
just wasn't cut out for the job. (A corollary concern: Even if I did manage
to prove it, the prospect of this increasing my chances with attractive
women seemed quite remote. Apologies for vulgarity.)

Anyway, just to say "Me too!" to Stone's comments re Marc. I hope that
whatever Marc has may shed some light on what to me are the Large Mysteries
of the cycle. I don't include Blue/Ushas among these - that's a "don't
really care", FLT-type of question, unless it it intimately bound up with
with these.

There are several Large Mysteries, but for me the major one is the
relationship between Silk, SilkHorn and Severian. I cannot help but see a
progression, from Silk, to SilkHorn, to Severian. The raw Silk is something
of a wet - unwilling or unable to really take the reins of leadership in a
crisis, rushing to his woman & leaving his people leaderless and adrift; a
Paris filling Moses' sandals Contrast this with SilkHorn - a veritable old
testament judge, time after time mending fractured communities, dealing out
robust justice.

Wolfe does this wonderfully, I think. We see Horn at that start of Short
Sun, judge of his little family, strong and courageous, but limited in his
potential. He dies on Green, when circumstances overwhelm those limits.
Melded with Silk, his strengths live on, but now as the strengths of a Hero,
rather than an constrained within the confines of an ordinary mortal. All
through Blue, I was thinking: Surely this yearning for Silk is an error; I
cannot imagine Silk being of any use at all in this gritty, down-and-dirty
world.  I loved the way this view was both validated & transcended, in the
development.

SilkHorn becomes a wonderful combination of Odin/Mercury, Heracles (not
least in the yearning everybody has for his aid, in his supposed absence -
so reminiscent of the Argonauts' yearning for the absent Heracles in the
Argonautika; I would be amazed to find Wolfe did not intend this parallel),
and Moses.

And this combination owes much to Horn. I cannot imagine Silk inspiring the
kind of fear & awe that SilkHorn does, were he to lack the stern qualtiies
of Horn.

Beyond Horn-qualities, there is an aspect to SilkHorn  whose origin I do not
quite understand. This is the magician aspect, which is exactly correct for
a character who is part Hermes, part Moses (who was clearly a magician).
This does not come from Horn, and I cannot see any evidence of it coming
from Silk. From the text, it must be a gift in some way from the Vanished
People, and of course there is a passage where a gift is explicitly granted.
But the whole extended cycle is very intimately bound up with the idea of
personalities and qualities layering on to each other, either by
transmission or by recycling through time. It would be much more fitting for
such a layering to be involved with this aspect also. Is there any evidence
of SilkHorn melding with a Vanished Person?

Now to Severian. I think it is completely natural to see a progression from
the Moses/judge figure SilkHorn to the sort-of/kind-of Christ figure
Severian (no doubt there are theological problems with this, but I don't
think that Wolfe worries about them, so we need not).  We are led to
understand that the raw Severian was refined into this role through
recycling in time. My "gut feel" is that part of the process must have
involved a melding with SilkHorn, somehow or other.

Perhaps this is wrong; the only concrete evidence I have for this is Wolfe's
comment somewhere to the effect that Silk is a member of Severian's Order,
for whatever that is worth. But surely there is a connection between the
two, not just a matter of some circumstantial genetic argy-bargy as has been
proposed, but with a deaper meaning. Otherwise, why have the characters
inhabit the same fictional space at all? The apex of the whole cycle is
Severian's role in the redemption of humanity. Anything not part of that
story surely does not warrant two further multi-volume narratives. So I
think that Long Sun/Short Sun must be seen as a "precursor", convoluted &
twisted in time, of course, but not in theme.

Given that Long Sun and Short Sun are so much the story of the development
and deeds of the Hero SilkHorn, the only theme I can see linking the whole
cycle is the further development of that Hero into the quasi-Christ
Severian.

Annoyingly, Wolfe has left out a precise map of the details, but he's like
that :)

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From: Michael Straight <straight at email.unc.edu>
Date: Wed, 18 Dec 2002 14:35:49 +0000

On Tue, 17 Dec 2002, maa32 wrote:

> author always has authority ...

I always look at it like this: If you're having a discussion about what
the author intended, then a remark from the author can bring about a
conclusion to the argument.

You can always then turn to an argument about what the author *ought* to
have meant (i.e. that a different interpretation is better, more coherent,
etc.), but some people aren't interested in that type of discussion.

Neither interest nor lack of interest in whether a given interpretation
might be better than the author's intention should be labled as Right or
Wrong, unless you've discovered an objective aesthetic standard.  In which
case, please contact me right away.

-- Rostrum

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From: James Wynn <crushtv at hotpop.com>
Date: Wed, 18 Dec 2002 16:12:31 +0000

As my head began to clear (with the help of friends) I realized I should
have handled this entirely off-list. The way I handled this was not right
ethically, and it was strategically ham-fisted.

I do not believe Wolfe would have told Marc anything if he were not
comfortable with it being publicized, but Marc doesn't want to be
presumptuous, and that is an admirable attitude.

I wish I had not said anything on list, and if anyone cares a whit for my
feelings in this regard, they will let this thread die.

<Mr. Mountebank Ethicist> Crush

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From: Malco <nastler at yahoo.dk>
Date: Sun, 29 Dec 2002 21:25:24 +0000

Computers are not something I like to think about.
I hope this is better now
nastler

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