# a (kind of) brief summary *The Urth list — 2 messages, 2 voices, 29 Dec 2002* > 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. --- ### maa32 *29 Dec 2002, 23:58* My theory in the past was argued against primarily based on the ideas that 1)Blue system couldn't be Urth system because the animals were "doubled". 2) Blue system couldn't be Urth system because there was no mechanism to explain how the narrator wound up in the past at Rigolio's home, while SOME time had passed since Rigolio left. This was the big killer that I struggled to overcome. 3)My argument was theme based - a man who doesn't know who he is attempts to go home, only to discover that he has changed so much that he is going to a home that was never his ... while ironically, he is on his home system but can't recognize it because both it, and humanity, have changed. Read the chapter in Sword of the Lictor with Typhon again. Here is the clincher - he knows that URTH WILL FLOOD. He TELLS Severian that water brings purification and renewal, and hints that the Urth will be flooded. He knows a lot more than anyone else, including Severian - he knows exactly who the conciliator is. Due to the importance of hybridization and plant genetics to the first chapter of The Book of the Short Sun, I posited a mechanism to explain the doubling of limbs which in fact WAS textually grounded - hybridization is a doubling, whether you believe it or not. And it explains why inhumi don't have to eat and can survive being buried, and perhaps why the narrator no longer requires normal sustenance and how the Green Man came to be. (Chloroplasts aren't just going to appear without some kind of endosymbiosis in an animal cell, right? Only this time the trees are the active consumers) I lacked the mechanism to explain how time travel occured, but I cited several examples of time/astral travel, including his observation of Nettle on the beach and his appearance in Salica's stories - things which don't make much "real" sense unless you buy into the time thing - then I quoted that "The song of the mother is a song of time" and that "the only return to the past is in dreams" and that the narrator considers his astral travel dreams. Then with this new interpolation of Urth as Green, I quickly grabbed onto the evidence in the text that supports it - the narrator thought of Green's jungles and his son Sinew, and Rigolio was thinking of his home, and SILK thought about how he wanted to show everyone how the world of blue could be corrupted. Also, a song was playing - a song of time. This is all in Chapter 20 and 21 of In Green's Jungles. It explains how we went back to a time right before the new "corruption" of Urth through Severian. Here is the final piece of evidence, in my mind, that Wolfe wanted to point me in the right direction. Several months ago he sent me a letter, which was written on the back of a manuscript page. I didn't realize it at the time, thinking it was a mistake, but the manuscript came from CHAPTER 20 of In Green's Jungles, right before where the narrator talks about thinking of Green. I think Wolfe likes me - and that he wanted to point me in the direction of Chapter 20 - and in his subtle way, he sent me a manuscript page to clue me in. He is very, very subtle - as we all know. I don't think he wants everyone to know about it, since it is very easy to deny, but I think he wrote the text with the idea that he could fool everyone into thinking that it was a different place - and that the whole text is an effort to misdirect the reader away from the real questions: Where is HORN? (Not where is Silk - too obvious) What is the secret of the vanished gods? (Not what is the secret of the inhumi - too obvious) What is the plan of the Mother? (Not what is the plan of Pas - which might be recolonization) Also, I believe that the blind man killed on Green who the narrator mistakes for Auk is an avatar of Hierax - remember that it is revealed that he is dead in Return to the Whorl - and the mistake was made because Auk was possessed by Hierax for so long. Also, I believe that Silk goes back to Green to free Chenille, and that she comes to Blue WITH THE SILVER RING and is fed upon by Jahlee in Dorp, but never meets up with Silk. She is drunk because she is sad that her children on Green have been killed. My answer to the three challenges: 1. The trees account for the doubling, APPLYING the secret of the inhumi to explain what happened to the vanished people, and what happened to Urth. And it explains the meaning of the chrasmological writings that make Silk cry at the end of the work - humanity, while dead, thrives on as flower - and it explains the eucharist scenes in the forest as well - the transmutation of grapes into blood. 2. The mechanism at the end of Chapter 20 explains how Silk wound up on Urth in the past - he was thinking of Green in the past, and he went to Green in the past, where Rigolio wanted to go. 3. The theme is the same - there is just one more level of misdirection- I think a level too many for anyone to ever "solve" the text. I have to strongly disagree about the claim that the books where shoddily constructed. I think they are the most carefully constructed works ever - works so careful that the veneer of misdirection is almost too good. Very few people can see past their first impression of the books because they don't want to admit that they MISSED SOMETHING BIG. And I think we all missed a lot of big things the first time through. Just read the books through again and pay attention to the trees, and you will be blown away. I swear it - really pay attention to them. And think of them as vanished gods who can create life - possibly the vanished gods who were awakened in the mine of Saltus by the Claw of the Conciliator to rise up and change the face of the world. We should still pay attention to Seawrack and the Mother's plans - Silk goes back in time to placate the mother and learn the location of Seawrack. She is a threat of some kind - just look at the conclusions description of her. I better go. Marc Aramini --- ### Roy C. Lackey *30 Dec 2002, 23:41 · follows maa32* >> Marc Aramini wrote: >> Read the chapter in Sword of the Lictor with Typhon again. Here is the >> clincher - he knows that URTH WILL FLOOD. He TELLS Severian that water >> brings purification and renewal, and hints that the Urth will be flooded. He knows a lot more than anyone else, including Severian - he knows exactly who the conciliator is.<< Typhon says _nothing_ about a flood. He knows _very little_ about the person known as the Conciliator. Look at the larger picture. Typhon had been dead for at least a thousand years before Sev's coming revived him. He died not long after his first and only meeting with Sev on his mountain. That meeting took place only a few days after Sev and Burgundofara were dropped off by Tzadkiel's tender in Urth's past, in the era of the Monarch. Sev was in that era for no more than a week. He healed a few people and word of it reached Typhon, who had his own health problems. Most of the legends that accrued to Sev/the Conciliator/the New Sun were born _after_ Sev disappeared and Typhon was dead. The _Whorl_ had departed before Sev ever appeared in Typhon's era and Typhon found himself besieged on the mountain. Sev's appearance in the era of the Monarch seems to have been the origin of the legend of the Conciliator. What is even more certain is that the legend of the New Sun _didn't exist_ before Typhon's era. The very concept was meaningless. The 'wounding' of the sun took place during Typhon's era. Because it wasn't broken before that, it didn't need fixing. Typhon had no belief in a supernatural 'fix', much less a supernatural fixer. Therefore he had no idea that the fix would cause the flooding and destruction of Urth. When he launched the _Whorl_, it was not done with an eye to preserving mankind by founding a colony on another world; mankind was already spread all over the galaxy. And he certainly didn't send the _Whorl_ out to mark time until Ushas was ready to be repopulated. New people were being deposited on Urth even as the flooding was taking place. The very idea of Urth-come-Ushas had no part in Typhon's plans because he had no knowledge that such a thing _could_ happen, much less would. -Roy ---