Subject: (urth) What does Horn look like?

From: James Wynn <thewynns at earthlink.net>
Date: Sat, 02 Oct 2004 17:43:16 +0000

I got the idea while reading "The Book of the Short Sun" that Horn was 
(originally) balding. Is this accurate?

The cover of "On Blue's Waters" shows a Horn looking quite young, with lots 
of hair and a beard. He looks like Richard Chamberlain in "Shogun".

The cover of "In Green's Jungles" shows a Horn walking with a the Neighbor 
after he lands on Green. He has long white hair and is balding. This was my 
understanding of the way Horn looked.

The cover of "Return to the Whorl" shows the exact same character on the 
Whorl talking to the godling. Of course, this character *should* have looked 
like Silk.

So what's going on here. The covers of these books are unimpressive enough 
that they could have at least been *accurate* to the story.

So... what does Horn actually look like? What does Silk look like?

~ Crush

---

From: Christopher Culver <christopher_culver at yahoo.com>
Date: Sun, 03 Oct 2004 11:36:40 +0000

> So... what does Horn actually look like? What does Silk look like?

Horn was only 35 years old or so at the beginning of OBW. While life
was hard on the frontier planet of Blue, resulting in Horn having the
tone of a crotchety old man, I don't think that by 35-40ish he could
have had white hair. Instead, the picture of him as balding is more
probable. Silk could have had white, long hair (in tBotLS we're told
his hair is fairly long), but even he would have been pretty young, so
life must have been really tough on the Whorl to make him look so
ancient before the age of 50.

Christopher Culver

---

From: James Wynn <thewynns at earthlink.net>
Date: Sun, 03 Oct 2004 17:45:32 +0000

>ancient before the age of 50.

Well, life was no picnic on Blue, either. I remember reading "Angela's 
Ashes" as the author described his parents sitting by the fire clacking 
their false teeth, and I realized that at that point in the story they were 
in their late 20s or very early 30s. Yet I had already come to think of them 
well into middle age. They were worn out well before their time. So it is 
not inconceivable that Horn looked like a  middle-age man by his 
mid-thirties.  But the covers to IGJ and RttW describe very specific events 
in the story in which there is no real question whose body we are looking 
at. Yet it seems that one of them is a mistake. OTTH the character in the 
cover art is not the sort to make books fly off the shelves, so I'm thinking 
the design was not pure marketing trumping the author and story. Which makes 
me think Wolfe was involved.

I was hoping someone here would know definitively if the cover art were a 
mistake that was unapproved by Wolfe.  Or......do Horn and Silk look 
verrrrry similar? Either way, I have always considered it an important 
narrative point that Horn was balding so how he looked...whether it was he 
or Silk that was balding is kind of important (to me).

~ Crush

---

From: Don Doggett <harlekin at earthlink.net>
Date: Sun, 03 Oct 2004 20:26:24 +0000

On Sunday, October 3, 2004, at 05:43 PM, James Wynn wrote:

>
> I was hoping someone here would know definitively if the cover art 
> were a mistake that was unapproved by Wolfe.  Or......do Horn and Silk 
> look verrrrry similar? Either way, I have always considered it an 
> important narrative point that Horn was balding so how he 
> looked...whether it was he or Silk that was balding is kind of 
> important (to me).
>

Don replies:

I highly doubt the cover art was approved by Wolfe.   The cover for 
RttW (besides being hideous) is the result of a misreading of the 
passage where Silkhorn is picked up by the godling.  It describes the 
godling's thumb as looking like a head with a curved hat (thumbnail).  
So I  wouldn't look to the cover art for any insight.

---

From: Gregg <gwbest328 at rcn.com>
Date: Mon, 04 Oct 2004 16:00:27 +0000

Regarding the comments about the misleading cover art, it occurs to me that
Jim Burns might have been working from an earlier draft of the Short Sun
books. Or, maybe he took the job without having the text at all. Some cover
artists want to read the books before they will do the cover, others don't.

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://listserver.dreamhost.com/pipermail/urth-urth.net/attachments/20041004/4eb3956e/attachment.htm

---

From: James Wynn <thewynns at earthlink.net>
Date: Mon, 04 Oct 2004 16:28:14 +0000

Well, it seems from the pictures that he must have read something of it or was given specifics on what to paint.

It seems to me that there must be a story there regarding these covers for neither Wolfe nor his editor to be involved in the decision process.
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Gregg 
  To: urth at urth.net 
  Sent: Monday, October 04, 2004 6:00 PM
  Subject: Re: (urth) What does Horn look like?

  Regarding the comments about the misleading cover art, it occurs to me that Jim Burns might have been working from an earlier draft of the Short Sun books. Or, maybe he took the job without having the text at all. Some cover artists want to read the books before they will do the cover, others don't.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

  _______________________________________________
  Urth Mailing List
  To post, write urth at urth.net
  Subscription/information: http://www.urth.net
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://listserver.dreamhost.com/pipermail/urth-urth.net/attachments/20041004/366ac7f3/attachment.htm

---

From: Roy C. Lackey <rclackey at stic.net>
Date: Wed, 06 Oct 2004 22:42:10 +0000

>(originally) balding. Is this accurate?

Yes. Ignore the book covers. I don't remember Horn's hair color, but it
isn't white. This is what Horn looked like when he began his quest (It is,
of course, Silkhorn who wrote):

"They had brought food, tents, and trunks full of clothing, expecting to
spend a week or more on Lizard; but in my books Silk was an account that had
never been closed, one so large that it dwarfed all others. At fifteen, I
had thought him the greatest of great men. At thirty-five, only a little
taller, thick-bodied and nearly bald, I thought him a great man still."
(OBW, p.65)

This is what Silk(Horn)'s body looked like, right after he left Gaon. He's
then in his early forties.

"Saw my own reflection standing in the water holding up my spear, wild white
hair and empty socket, lined and worried old face." (OBW, p.381)

-Roy