Subject: (urth) One Ship

From: Ashley Crill <ashley.crill at student.oc.edu>
Date: Wed, 13 Aug 2003 04:07:07 +0000

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From: James Wynn <crushtv at hotpop.com>
Date: Wed, 13 Aug 2003 15:04:00 +0000

Ash quoted:
"There is only one ship, the captain says. All the ships we hail between the
galaxies or the suns are this ship."

Crush responds:
Nice attempt.  The bit about "only one ship" is a good arguement, but IMO
there is at least an equally compelling arguement against it: The Whorl is
breaking down.

Silk mentions the breaking shiprock that was supposed to last until the end
of the Whorl. Well the Whorl was in orbit around Blue and Green for some 30
years before the colonists started to leave, and since the shiprock is
deteriorating, and since the Whorl stayed in orbit for another 30? years
after the colonists began to depart, it suggests that the Whorl was intended
for a one way trip.

Also, the Whorl was built by Typhon. Could Severian's ship have been?

Your theory does, however, make me wonder about what the Whorl technicians
thought what was to ultimately to become of them.

Ash says:
...it contains Chems very similar in construction and role to those found in
the Whorl. Jonas himself seems to be a chem, and is a sailor as well. Jonas
does not seem to be his original name, but the name of the sailor whos body
he made use of, much as he took on the name Miles at a later point.

Crush responds:
Well, Jonas is a different kind of chem than Marble. All the chems are very
heavy (Sand is "five-hundred weight" and Marble is too heavy for Silk to
lift) but when Severian picked up Jonas he was surprised to discover how
light he was. While the story reiterates two or three times how light
Hyacinth is and I think there's something to *that*, it is clear that Jonas
is a different kind of chem from the standard chems of the Whorl. Mind, I
believe Jonas' light weight does work into the Long Sun plot.

Nevertheless, IIRC it was Miles who was the human body that Jonas took on -- 
a whole-body-prosthesis for a robot, just as the Ayuntamiento took chems as
whole-body prosthesises. Jonas was all artificial, and Jonas is not a
mineral (I don't think).

Ash argues:
...the name 'Sideros' means 'iron', which fulfills the need for a mineral
name. Ossipago himself is a machine...Sideros notes that beings like himself
were originally created as protective suits against the vacuum of space, but
later took on specific roles within the ship...Severian sees 'several beings
of polished metal', and Sideros is one of those. If Chems were created on
board the ship as Sideros claims, then for them to be present on the
Starcrosser the two ships would have to be one and the same.

Crush responds:
Once again, while Sideros uses the same naming convention as the Whorl, his
origin is more like that of a talos than a chem. And I don't think there is
any mention of names.

Kypis notes that she was familiar with "robots" on Urth; further evidence
that the origin of the chems is Urth-born not shipborn.

Finally, Ossipago and her comrades are not named after minerals, but after
gods.

The only way I can think to salvage this theory is to say that Severian's
ship was *first* the Whorl, retrofitted over time to eventually become
Severian's ship. In that case, the time-line problems disappear and all the
problems in technology can be explained by the passage of time. This is a
less elegant solution than you were looking for since it doesn't explain
"the cargo". But IMO it resolves some nasty snarls.

-- Crush

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From: Ashley Crill <ashley.crill at student.oc.edu>
Date: Wed, 13 Aug 2003 22:46:08 +0000

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From: Roy C. Lackey <rclackey at stic.net>
Date: Thu, 14 Aug 2003 03:51:01 +0000

Ashley Crill wrote:
[amid much snippage]
>>I'm of the opinion that the Starcrosser we see in The Book of the Long Sun
is the same ship as the one upon which Severian sailed to Yesod.<<

Nah. Silk and others from the airship saw the _Whorl_ and the Short Sun of
the Blue-Green system from outside the ship when they visited Mainframe in
EXODUS. The colonists saw the ship as well, from the landers. The _Whorl_
was visible to the naked eye in orbit from Blue, therefore could not have
been contained within another vessel. Tzadkiel's ship, at a comparable
distance, would have blotted out the stars in a big chunk of night sky.

>>Second, it contains Chems very similar in construction and role to those
found in the Whorl. Jonas himself seems to be a chem, and is a sailor as
well.<<

Sidero and his kind were glorified spacesuits with an attitude. They were
hollow, meant to be worn by men, so they were relatively light of weight.
Sev put on Sidero. Jonas was also lightweight (as Sev noted when he picked
him up in the Antechamber), but was not large enough for a man to climb
inside. Chems are an entirely different kind of machine. They have an access
plate in their torsos, but are not hollow. They are also very, very heavy
(particularly the males), as Crane noted in chapter 12 of LAKE: "Lemur there
weighs four times as much as you and me together."

-Roy

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