Subject: (urth) Shooting the moon

From: Roy C. Lackey <rclackey at stic.net>
Date: Tue, 28 Jun 2005 01:33:57 +0000

Crush wrote (of me):
>Fine. Split away. But I don't need nearly as fine a microscope to split
>this one:
>>I didn't call you a liar. All I said was "that's not quite what is said".
>>I stand by that.
>
>I don't need to be a major league centerfielder to catch the gist of your
>remark that I was subverting the text in some undeclared subtle or not
>so subtle way. Take out "undeclared" and that's all fair game, but
>when doing that you could have posted the full relevant text rather
>than pull a sentence from it and then summarize what the Rajan's
>take on it was -- and then"leave it to the readers" to look it up. It
>wasn't a long reference and you had no problem quoting other
>references. A nasty shot from the bushes IMO, and I'll stand by
>that.

Do you also stand by this (to Chris)?

>But I should say that while you did not consider the post as a retort or
intend
>it as dismissive, I consider "multiplying clones to absurdity" to be the
most
>difficult response to deal with, because....

[snip]

I ask, because you put that phrase in quotes, and went on to add:

>I hope I took it like a man and laughed about it in the sense that I
assumed
>it was intended. (If you don't like people taking pot-shots at the moon,
don't
>drop your pants.) But of all jokes, that one stings the most.

Neither Chris nor anyone else wrote it, at least not in this forum. I
checked. Chris did, however, write "postulate clones beyond necessity". But
that doesn't have quite the same connotation, does it? And "absurdity"
doesn't even come close to "necessity".

Moving on. On the same page and in the same conversation as the passage
we're disputing, Hoof asked (of Scylla), "Did she say Pas would kill her if
he could?" Silkhorn answered, "That is indeed what she said, but I am not
certain it's true and I'm not Pas."

This conversation takes place very near the end of Silkhorn's career on
Blue. He denies being Pas, which is certainly literally true. Then how is it
that this person "who arguably knows as much or more about Pas than anyone",
doesn't know Pas' intentions toward his renegade daughter?

If, as you would seem to have it, Silkhorn is somehow (never mind how it
came to be) the flesh-and-blood culmination of Pas' presumed plan to rule
the colonies by proxy, when was that plan made and by whom? Typhon or Pas?
None, I think, will argue that the two personalities are the same. Typhon,
by all accounts, was a very bad man. His scanned self, Pas, became, at least
for the _Whorl_, a more benign figure, a petty god. This evolution, from
tyrant to local deity, a deity who was evidently regarded as something of a
father figure by all except, perhaps, his rival deities in Mainframe, must
have taken place over the course of three centuries. Regardless of just how
the transformation came about, it happened.

If, per above, the person of Silkhorn was the fruition of Typhon's schemes,
then his plans went miserably awry. Any plans made by Typhon were
necessarily made on Urth before the departure of the _Whorl_. Neither
Silkhorn nor any of his component selves (to say nothing of a hypothetical
Neighbor component) are anything like the former Monarch of Urth. The Typhon
Severian met (both times) was a monomaniac. Any theoretical clones, clones
of sons, or enhanced embryos intended by Typhon to be host(s), eventually,
for the download of the evil personality that had originally been uploaded
to Mainframe, would have to have been provided for on Urth. Who (or what)
was carrying out Typhon's scheme on the ship, three hundred years later? Who
had charge of the embryos all that time? The black market??? Mainframe? And
Pas the Benevolent, chief daddy of Mainframe, didn't know, or do, anything
about it? Ah, you might say, of course Pas knew of Typhon's plans but had
subverted them to his own designs. Very well.

But that brings up another question. You assert that "Silk is a clone of the
son of Typhon and Kypris' original". Why on Urth would Typhon have had such
a hypothetical son cloned? Did Echidna know about it? More importantly, why
would Wolfe give such dubious gene donors to the star of his seven-volume
opus?

We have established, at least to my satisfaction, that Pas is not Typhon.
What particular need, therefore, did Pas have for a clone, much less the
clone of a son, of Typhon? Well, the ship was nearing its destination, and
Pas had duly prepared for the arrival. If Pas wanted to rule the colonies in
the flesh, why not use what Typhon had given him? Mainframe, after all,
could not leave the ship to follow the colonists (which is what subsequently
caused his fellow Mainframe-bound deities to rebel in the first place; they
would lose their worshipers). He arranged for the Tussah clone to be thawed
out and born and raised to adulthood. Presumably he downloaded himself into
Tussah, or only intended to. Then, inexplicably, instead of proclaiming,
shipwide, that it was time for the Plan of Pas to be put in motion, Tussah
decided to go into local politics. Well, maybe Pas was just a victim of bad
timing and poor planning; he only had three centuries to get it right. Just
when he had the Tussah clone where he wanted him and was about to launch the
exodus, the rebellion blind-sided him. He only had time to stash bits of
himself around the _Whorl_ before his "death", which consisted largely of
being deleted from Mainframe.

Tussah, presumably possessed in whole or part (Tussah's motive has to come
from somewhere) by Pas, and cut off from contact with "dead" Pas in
Mainframe, scrambles first to save his own ass then to further Pas' plans.
Instead of sensibly lying low or even moving to another city, he becomes the
conspicuous, contentious leader of a city whose patron is his daemon
daughter. Brilliant! Now what?

After screwing around for a number of years (about seven?), Tussah decided
to have the clone of Typhon's love child (Why that choice? A shortage of
Typhon clones?) implanted in one of his mistresses, Silk's birth-mother. I
don't know where he got that particular clone or why he decided he needed
another one grown, but never mind; only Pas knows. Then he promptly got
himself killed. Then, years after he died, Tussah _somehow_ connived to have
a proper clone of Typhon implanted in yet another woman. That child turned
out to be Horn, eight years Silk's junior. My imagination fails me at this
point; I can't begin to account for these actions.

Wait! Maybe it was Quetzal who was behind all this cloning around. But, no,
where would he have obtained all the inside knowledge needed to have pulled
it off? And why would he have wanted to? He was a scout for the
blood-thirsty inhumi. Wolfe has denied that Typhon had foreknowledge of the
inhumi, and Pas had no reason to feed his colonists to them.

Where was I? Oh, yes. Pas eventually decided to pull himself together after
being "dead" for some thirty years. He started hunting down and "killing"
his rival familial gods and told the colonists to get off the ship. Exodus
Horn but not Silk. And we all know why Silk didn't leave. I don't see how it
can have been part of Pas' plan, but Silk got sidetracked with lust for that
whore, Hyacinth, who had been possessed at the time he fell in "love' by his
genetic mother, Kypris. Maybe that's why Pas put up with it for twenty
years; he and Kypris got their vicarious jollies that way. Anyway, Horn went
to Blue where he lived a fairly nondescript life for twenty years, then got
killed on Green. I, for one, never detected the least hint of Pas, much less
Typhon, in Horn. If he had been intended as a vessel for a god, he must
surely have been a disappointment.

Does that about cover it?

-Roy

---

From: Dan'l Danehy-Oakes <danldo at gmail.com>
Date: Tue, 28 Jun 2005 08:41:27 +0000

Nicely done, Roy. Just one point I would add...

On 6/28/05, Roy C. Lackey <rclackey at stic.net> wrote:
> [Typhon's] evolution, from

Very true, and this also provides aid and comfort to my point that
Scylla is not "the same" as Cilinia - that she most likely has grown,
or at least changed, over the three centuries of the _Whorl_'s
voyage.

--Dan'l

-- 
I do not fear Satan half so much as I fear those who fear him.
                        -- St Teresa of Avila
http://www.livejournal.com/users/sturgeonslawyer

---

From: James Wynn <thewynns at earthlink.net>
Date: Tue, 28 Jun 2005 16:36:23 +0000

>>I said:
>>A nasty shot from the bushes IMO, and I'll stand by
>>that.

>Roy said:

If you're offering a defense, it's a lame one. If it is an apology, it's
worse. Take your best shot, but stand in the open as you do.

I agree moving on is the best recourse, considering all.
The quicker the better. 

>On the same page and in the same conversation as the passage

a) I don't argue that Silk was intended to rule the colonies as an emperor. The
story takes place in Viron. The Vironese colonists are at issue. The Rajan
is not Silk. He more and he's less. 

b) I don't think one needs to be intimately knowledgeable about Pas to argue that
Scylla's fear that He intends to erase her were legitimate. He's been chasing her,
her sister, and her mother for 20 years. And Hieros is reportedly "dead".  I think
the Rajan's lack of conviction concerning Pas's lethal intentions toward Scylla
suggests more about HIS knowledge of Pas than Scylla's fear suggests HERS.
I suggests that Pas final action about Scylla is simply not knowable by anyone.

c) It is hardly necessary, even if I held that extreme view (see a) of Pas's
intentions toward Silk, for Silk to know everything about Pas's intentions or
potential intentions toward Scylla.

d) I agree that the Rajan is not Pas, although he and Pas contain much that is
the same. Silk was grafted to Pas so He could live, and Horn was grafted to
Silk afterward for the same reason. 

>None, I think, will argue that the two personalities are the same. 

a) Oh waitaminute. I see part of the confusion here.
I don't say "Silkhorn", the Rajan, was "the flesh-and-blood culmination" 
of any plan of Pas. There's no way Pas could have planned on the Rajan for
many many reasons...some of which you will not even agree with.
I do say that SILK and TUSSAH and were part of the Plan of Pas with
respect to Viron. But it was not necessary for Typhon to plan it from
Urth. Tussah's implantation could be argued to be timed with the Whorl's
arrival to Blue, but Silk's was done by Tussah after Pas's erasure.
 
b) I agree that Pas and Tussah are not the same personality.

c) Pas's plan was to have the colonists disembark the Whorl. 
Quetzal's Plan, for different reasons, was the same. 
Tussah, I argue, was part of both plans (unknowingly in Quetzal's case) 
and, it seems to me, he personally cared enough about Pas's plan to
install Silk as a back-up in case he was murdered (as, the text
suggests to me, he anticipated). 

I don't know his reasons, they would probably have been multiple. But he
considered it vital that he be succeeded by a souped-up embryo...if he himself
were such an embryo, that certainly explains that decision.

But he didn't have to have "a son". He could have identified Silk in any way.
Why this fatherly affection for a boy he never seems to have met?
Did calling Silk his "son" help establish his right to the Caldeship? Nope.
Maybe Tussah had Silk's career mapped out and that gave him a sense
of investment in Silk? Uh uh.
There's NO reason to believe Tussah anticipated that Silk would join the
Chapter. It obviously didn't matter a whit as far as his plan for the "son not
of his body". (But it worked for Quetzal in that he could manipulate his
career.) 

So why call Silk his "son". Because it was a simple fact. That is all.

>[At this point, Roy really warms to his task. He describes his
understanding of my theory which is, unfortunately, wrong for the
most part.]

You've blown my assertion that Tussah was a clone of Typhon way beyond any
speculation I've made. Part of it is due to your misunderstanding about what
I'm saying about the Rajan, and the rest is...just not what I'm saying. Certainly
not what I've intended to convey. *I* have never intentionally claimed that it is
MY belief that Typhon or Pas intended to have a personality downloaded into
a clone. Maybe he did. The text doesn't' say so AFAIK. But the Rajan says
that Pas would not have found that necessary. 

And I have another reason to doubt it:
If Scylla is any guide, no god-entity WOULD EVER WANT TO PERMANENTLY LEAVE
THE MAINFRAME. Any sub-deity that possessed a mortal being would die when that being
died. That's why the gods never possessed a being permanently. Even Kypris left Chenille
when she was still needed to search for Silk. The prospect of possessing a human and
going to Blue would be UNTHINKABLE. Scylla only did it because she thought Pas must
have created connections to the Mainframe on Blue. She didn't find any, that was a
big mistake on her part and she knew it.

>You assert that "Silk is a clone of the son of Typhon and Kypris' original". 

Ah! Good! Finally. Yes, that is what I assert.

>Why on Urth would Typhon have had such a hypothetical son cloned?
>Did Echidna know about it?

I don't know. Did she know about Kypris? Could she do anything about
it if she did know? (Maybe she tried...)

>More importantly, why would Wolfe give such dubious gene donors
>to the star of his seven-volume opus?

Why not? Dubious in what way? 

a) Do you mean they aren't "worthy" of being Silk's parents? I'm not
sure what sort of parents he ought to have had instead. I'd say centering
on a character who is, in a sense, an illegitimate son of Typhon and has a
backstory that without his knowledge *destines* him to be a savior is a
pretty interesting start for this story, is quite Wolfean, and fits in the mood
created by "The Book of the New Sun".

b) Do you mean that their parentage is not self-evident? 
Do you think Wolfe imagined, while writing "The Book of the New Sun",
that anyone would read the story close enough to figure
out that Dorcas was Severian's grandmother? By the time he started 
"The Long Sun", he knew the story would be sifted with fine combs. So he
hid the clues with more determination. Too much determination IMO.
So much so that while, I believe that Tussah is a clone of Typhon, I don't
think it can be deduced from the text to the exclusion of all other theories.
But once you make that intuitive leap, a whole heck of a lot falls into place.

>We have established, at least to my satisfaction, that Pas is not Typhon.

Okay. I agree. He's a facsimile, like "Silver Silk" is to Silk I suppose.
Like Mr Million was to his original. Maybe less than that even: Maybe more
like Krait was to Sinew. Who knows?

>[Here Roy makes an argument based on a belief that I'm arguing Pas
>wanted to rule the colonies as a clone. But, of course, I've only said
that Pas intended the colonies to be supplimented, united, and aided by
the embryos...Tussah among them. But the overarching theme is 
>embodied in "What particular need, therefore, did Pas have for a clone,
>much less the clone of a son, of Typhon?"]

I agree with everything you say regarding the fact that Pas did not need
a clone of Typhon to rule the colonies and I go further in that I seriously
doubt he wanted to rule the colonies personally at all.

***
I'm going to address your questions at this point only to show that
the Tussah=Typhon theory works for the sort of postulating you've
done. I'm only going to make the sort of ruminations you are making. 
I'm not claiming they are individually supported in the text:
****

1) Why did Tussah wait 7 years to implant an embryo? Perhaps he
thought he could bring Pas back himself and found it wasn't so easy.
The only knowledge required for Tussah to have is that HE himself
was a clone and that he know what what relation Silk's embryo 
had to himself. This implies that the clones Tussah had access to
had not yet been stolen from those refrigerators. I'm imagining
little labels on each embryo unless the gods were telling him. 
[You asked why Tussah didn't use a Typhon clone? Perhaps the
Typhon embryo in that refrigerator had already been used to make
Tussah.]

I am surprised that while it is perfectly clear to you that Typhon and
Pas were different personalities, it is so befuddling to you that Tussah,
even as a clone of Typhon, would act independently even if
he was in concurrence with Pas's overall plan. I'm surprised
it isn't obvious to you that Tussah would have experienced the same
sort of holy manipulation that Silk experienced from Kypris. Tussah
was implanted as the Whorl approached -- maybe it was at Pas's
instigation (things do not seem to have yet gone completely out of
hand) or maybe it was just, "well, here's one of those clones,
so he's the best  candidate to use." But it is not beyond reason that
Tussah knew that Pas had a plan to disembark, *or* EVEN that after
Pas's murder, Kypris didn't tell him...yet even if he didn't know what
the plan was, he MIGHT have known that Pas HAD a plan, and
felt a religious devotion to see it come off. None of that undermines
the reasonableness of Tussah being a clone of Typhon. 

But a preset plan designed by Typhon on Urth to have this particular
guy to do such and such is simply not necessary.

2) Why would Pas (and the rest of the pantheon) prefer to use those
embryos (who happen to be clones) to announce their plans as
opposed to anybody else? Well, the pantheon ARE NOT people.
They are avatars representing computer modules of the Mainframe.
This is stated, I forget where. They actually have functions within the
Mainframe...which might explain why the Rajan had some doubt that
Pas would completely eliminate Scylla. Since they are computer
modules they are governed by certain rules that do not require them
to _think_ "I must do this because my plan will work best if I do."
They lead the Cargo and announce their plans to the Cargo through
those embryos because they are programmed to do so...and they are
programed to do so because, with the hyped-up genes, they were
considered by the planners to be the best suited to lead and the best
able to convince the Cargo to do as the Mainframe tells them. 

Tussah *may* have been possessed in part, but no possessing deity
would think of going to Blue in a person and staying there permanently,
as I said above.

>After screwing around for a number of years (about seven?), Tussah
>decided to have the clone of Typhon's love child (Why that choice?
>A shortage of Typhon clones?)

Perhaps. We aren't told. We're only told that it would be a "the son
not of his body". Why do you suppose only a clone
of Typhon would do? Why do you suppose I think Tussah thought
only the a clone of the *son* of Typhon and Kypris would do? I don't.
He said "the son not of my body will be Calde after me" because it 
WAS such a person that he had implanted and hidden away...I 
presume it was done in conjunction with Kypris.

>Then, years after he died, Tussah _somehow_ connived to have
>a proper clone of Typhon implanted in yet another woman.

Hmmm...On being asked to suppose who implanted Horn, I fingered Quetzal
as a likely candidate. I don't think I ever supposed it was Tussah.

>Wait! Maybe it was Quetzal who was behind all this cloning around.

Ah! Your imagination seems to have led you in the same direction as me.

>But, no, where would [Quetzal] have obtained all the inside knowledge
needed to have pulled it off? 

Quetzal? Are you serious? Much of it, no doubt from Tussah himself.
But probably not exclusively.

>And why would he have wanted to? He was a scout for the
>blood-thirsty inhumi.

A scout? I don't see any reason to suppose that. But he wanted what all
the inhumi wanted: a thriving colony on Green. For his own reasons,
he wanted the Plan of Pas to succeed.

There is no need for Tussah or Kypris or Pas or anyone else to know
about the inhumi for them all to share the same desire.

Do any of my answers incline you to retell the story differently?

~ James Wynn

---

From: Roy C. Lackey <rclackey at stic.net>
Date: Wed, 29 Jun 2005 00:33:50 +0000

>worse. Take your best shot, but stand in the open as you do.

No, it wasn't a defense; I don't need one. I was demonstrating your
propensity for reading things into the written word that simply aren't
there. I in no way misrepresented the text I quoted, neither did I subvert
its meaning. I gave the correct references to the text and invited readers
to read it all for themselves, that they might judge. I didn't type out two
pages of text because I didn't feel the need to and I'm not a typist. I
guess it's easy to copy and paste text from Amazon as you seem to be doing,
but I don't do that.

And it certainly wasn't an apology; I had nothing to apologize for. You
misquoted Chris, and that's a fact. Since you weren't quoting what he
actually wrote, the words you misquoted had to have come from the memory of
your perception of what he did write. That demonstrates, I think, the
assertion I made above. Just seven days ago you wrote:

>If Roy Lackey and Blattid are correct in their posts that Silk is a clone
>of Typhon [...]

I only started posting again to correct that misreading of my posts; I had
made no such claim. This is becoming tedious.

-Roy

---

From: James Wynn <thewynns at earthlink.net>
Date: Wed, 29 Jun 2005 06:54:23 +0000

>there. 

Oooooooooh! Now I *understand*. I went back and read your post and
I must admit I wonder why I didn't see it before:
http://listserver.dreamhost.com/pipermail/urth-urth.net/2005-June/001206.html

You had an unstated agenda to forward -- a *bias* to confirm! 
That's why you chose to make a delineation regarding 
page 361 of RTTW when there was *barely* any discernable difference...
and that's is why (I couldn't figure this out but it is all too clear now)
although you typed out other references verbatim to attempt to prove
your point, you didn't post the reference AT ISSUE.
You did that because then it would have been patently clear that your
differences were slight at best...trivial at worst. You wanted to leave
the impression that you were building a federal case! 

Of course you *could* have posted the text said "No, that is not the
only reading. The Rajan does not absolutely DENY that Pas EVER
had ANY intention of ruling the Whorl in person." But *merely* 
disagreeing and proving an alternate reading would not forward your
*actual* agenda of proving that I have *propensity of 
"reading things...that simply aren't there". 

And simply SAYING that that was your intent in the original
post was too up front. You wanted to say it and not say it.

Got it. Well, I repeat, "Take your best shot but stand in the open
as you do it." I'm not hiding. I've made myself available for
potshots. I don't think you should avail yourself of the privilege
and hide at the same time.

>Just seven days ago you wrote:
>"If Roy Lackey and Blattid are correct in their posts that Silk is a clone
>of Typhon [...]"
>made no such claim.

Oh gosh! I'm terribly sorry about that, Roy. The post Chris referenced
*seemed* to suggest you and Dan'l were discussing in earnest the
merits of the Silk=Typhon's Clone theory. I hadn't read your Creed on
Wolfe's works so I didn't know where you stood. How terrible for you to
see your name bandied about in passing like that. I hope my post didn't
force you to get out your sphygmomanometer. I hope the family didn't
gather 'round to see you one last time. Please accept my apology for that.

~ James Wynn

"She possessed Oreb, as I told you, because she knew he would soon be
brought [to Blue]. She felt sure--she told me this one night--that Pas would
would not have peopled Blue unless he had some way to go there himself
to rule them. 'Lord it' was the phrase she used. She was wrong, as I could
have told her." [361 RTTW]