{ "export": { "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/4160", "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": 4160, "subject": "STL interstellar empires", "messages": 2, "voices": 2, "first": "2003-08-14T23:58:52+00:00", "last": "2003-08-16T01:37:11+00:00" }, "messages": [ { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Michael Andre-Driussi", "address": "mantis at siriusfiction.com" }, "date": "2003-08-14T23:58:52+00:00", "subject": "(urth) STL interstellar empires", "in_reply_to": null, "reply_link": null, "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Andrew Bollen wrote:\nThe universes of New Sun and Short Sun really don't fit together very\nsnugly. IMO, if you took them as standalones, you'd say that Short Sun is in\nthe future, while New Sun is in the *deep* future. A few hundred years\nversus a geological age or two. I think that GW did a lot of back-filling to\ntie them together. (Not that I really mind - myths are generlly cobbled\ntogether from pieces which don't fit very well, in a logical sense.)\n\nObvious examples:\n\n- Typhon in New Sun at least desires to rule an inter-stellar empire, and\noffers Sev the job of satrap of Earth. How does this make any sense without\nsuperluminal travel? If Typhon can travel faster than light, why build the\nWhorl? If he can't, is he really going to feel good about a clunky\nslower-than-light hollow asteroid crawling through space while the immense\nshp/s of the Hiero-whatsits leap/s over dimesnional boundaries?" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Le Guin's main sf work has been set in a common STL interstellar culture.\nOne of the things that is suggested if not stated outright is that it is\nonly possible because they use an instantaneous communication device -- the\nfamed \"ansible\" (notoriously an anagram of \"lesbian,\" for whatever one can\nmake of that factoid). One of the other devices to knit the metaculture\ntogether is \"mindspeech,\" a sort of telepathy which can be learned (iirc).\n\nGene Wolfe certainly read THE LEFT HAND OF DARKNESS and THE DISPOSSESSED,\nand it seems highly probable that he read the other novels, too (PLANET OF\nEXILE and ROCANNON'S WORLD and CITY OF ILLUSIONS) as well as the short\nstories set in that background.\n\nIn TBOTNS, at the Vancean resurrection of the Stone Town, the Cumaean uses\na device to contact an entity 22 light years away for a real-time\nconversation. This is rather a lot like an ansible. So the technology is\nat least possible in the universe of Briah. Typhon just wants to rule a Le\nGuin style interstellar grouping.\n\nTyphon does not seem to have kept all eggs in one basket -- he hedges his\nbets. The library, according to the story, was a hedge he set up:\noriginally he was going to burn all the books that had been collected. But\nat the last minute he came up with the hedge, just in case the empire thing\ndidn't work out.\n\nSo why the Whorl? Another hedge, I say. While all the other stuff is\nconquer and control, this other project will be \"pure\" colonization." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "- The universe of New Sun has a bunch of human-settled planets in some kind\nof contact with each other, if only via port-calls by Tzadkiel's ship. Why\nwould Typhon think it was a cool thing to send out a slow boat to found a\ncrappy little colony when these old, established ones already exist, and he\npresumably intends to conquer them?" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "See above." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "- The literary survivals from our age in the Chras Writings are *really*\nimplausible for a deep future setting.\n- At some point in Exodus Silk talks of French and Latin as extant languages\n(at least literary languages). Ditto." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "\n\n" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "- Why none of the bio-engineered animals from New Sun on the Whorl? No\ndestriers, no smilodons ..." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "It could be that he thought they were decadent, non-natural, time-safari\ncaptures, and/or extrasolarian in origin." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "- Why no chems on Urth, apart from throwbacks like Jonah? Maybe there are\nsome around at the time of Sev vs Typhon in UOTNS; we don't meet them,\nAFAIK. But surely Typhon's army would have been predominantly chems?" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Hard to get parts in such a low-tech backwater. Look at Jonas, for\nexample: repaired with biological material, for goodness sake! Urth is far\nmore resource poor than the Whorl, and look at how the chems are running\ndown on the Whorl, after only a few hundred years of isolation.\n\nOf course you are free to your own opinion.\n\n=mantis=" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Andrew Bollen", "address": "abollen at internode.on.net" }, "date": "2003-08-16T01:37:11+00:00", "subject": "Re: (urth) STL interstellar empires", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "mantis writes:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "In TBOTNS, at the Vancean resurrection of the Stone Town, the Cumaean uses\na device to contact an entity 22 light years away for a real-time\nconversation. This is rather a lot like an ansible. So the technology is\nat least possible in the universe of Briah. Typhon just wants to rule a\nLe\nGuin style interstellar grouping." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Sure, all this cool stuff is available to non-Urthians, and quite likely to\nNew Sun Typhon, but there's no hint that it's anywhere on the Whorl. I\nsuppose you could say it's there, but unused, given Typhon's premature\ndemise.\n\nBut I don't think New Sun Typhon would be satisfied with a STL empire.\nDoesn't he say somewhere that he and his followers returned from the stars?\nIf I've got that right, did they come back frozen in a slow-boat? Does this\nstory of his return really square very well with Roger's description of\nTyphopn's rise in IGJ? In Claw (?) Typhon talks of delaying his decision to\nleave Urth too long - was he planning to freeze himself on a slow-boat? is\nhis digital presence on the Whorl a kind of poor-man's alternative?\n\nObviously, all of these things which look like mis-matches to me can be\nglued together, but I think it needs some fairly sticky chewing gum to do\nit." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "So why the Whorl? Another hedge, I say. While all the other stuff is\nconquer and control, this other project will be \"pure\" colonization." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "But at some point the :\"real\" Typhon is going to want to take control -\nwhat's the point of having even an empire if you don't get to rule it? Will\nhe have to assert his authority over his digital avatar via ansible? Of\ncourse, you can postulate some kind of built-in thingy giving real Typhon\nauthority over digital Pas, but I don't find it very convincing." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "- The literary survivals from our age in the Chras Writings are *really*\nimplausible for a deep future setting.\n- At some point in Exodus Silk talks of French and Latin as extant\nlanguages\n(at least literary languages). Ditto." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "\n\n" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I think in New Sun it's made clear that Latin is used as to translate some\nunknown archaic language. Maybe the terms \"Latin\" and \"French\" are used\nsimilarly in Short Sun, but I don't think so. The texts in the Chras writing\nare from our broad era; I assume that the languages are also." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "- Why no chems on Urth, apart from throwbacks like Jonah? Maybe there are\nsome around at the time of Sev vs Typhon in UOTNS; we don't meet them,\nAFAIK. But surely Typhon's army would have been predominantly chems?" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Hard to get parts in such a low-tech backwater. Look at Jonas, for\nexample: repaired with biological material, for goodness sake! Urth is\nfar\nmore resource poor than the Whorl, and look at how the chems are running\ndown on the Whorl, after only a few hundred years of isolation." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I don't understand this point. If Typhon can stock the Whorl with many\nthousands of chem soldiers, why does he not use them on Urth? Perhaps they\nwere intended just for the Whorl, but again I find this quite dubious. Why\nshould it be so?" } ] } ] }