{ "export": { "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/532", "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": 532, "subject": "Exultants leaving Urth", "messages": 2, "voices": 2, "first": "1998-05-01T13:27:53+00:00", "last": "1998-05-01T15:21:04+00:00" }, "messages": [ { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "sph1635", "address": "sph1635 at utsph.sph.uth.tmc.edu" }, "date": "1998-05-01T13:27:53+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Exultants leaving Urth", "in_reply_to": null, "reply_link": null, "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Prehaps, just for speculation, the exultants left because of the new \"Ice\nAge\" that has been hinted at in TBotNS. This could have been the cataclysm\nseperating one era from another.\n\tOn another point the navagator's funeral sounds a bit old fashioned from\nthe description, but then again Wolfe doesn't really describe any another\nfuneral (except in the Long Sun series, Orpine's rites and burial, which is\ndescribed in the same fashion). So who am I to say?\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tXury" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Mark Millman", "address": "mark_millman at hmco.com" }, "date": "1998-05-01T15:21:04+00:00", "subject": "Re: (urth) Exultants leaving Urth", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Personally, I've always favored the explanation that the exultant families\nwere genetically engineered as aristocrats and military leaders. They're\ntaller so that they will look more impressive to the common run of folk and\ncan be more easily seen in battle. Certain passages suggest this, as when\nthe youthful Severian, talking about the changes Vodalus would make, says\nthat unlike the exultants, armigers are afraid to fight and to hurt and to\ndie, and later (I think in Citadel, but I'm not sure), when it's mentioned,\npossibly by the old Autarch, that even the exultants don't care to exercise\ntheir power and will avoid it when possible, because they're aware that\nthey can't do it wisely or well. A related possibility is that the\nexultants were genetically engineered (or evolved over the course of time,\nthough this seems less likely) as residents of heavy-gravity worlds, and\nwere chosen as soldiers by invading forces, possibly Typhon, since they had\nthe advantage of being stronger than ordinary people. They'd have lost\ntheir strength on Urth, through not having been exposed to the full gravity\nof their homeworlds, but might well exchange it for greater size (from not\ngrowing up under the pressure of the greater gravity, assuming they were\ndesigned to reach average human height despite it). But this is all rank\nspeculation, though some details (such as Piaton's great strength and\nsize--remember, we don't know whether Typhon had been unusually tall before\nbeing grafted on to Piaton) might be adduced to support it.\n\nMark Millman\n\nP.S. I just read Shirley Jackson's _We Have Always Lived in the Castle_.\nDoes anyone else think that it strongly resembles _Peace_ in its\npreoccupation with history, its depiction of the Blackwoods' house as\nossified and devoted to the preservation of the past, the death-in-life of\nthe characters, especially through self-imposed limitations, and its\nrepeated focus on poison? There are more similarities in its details, but\nI don't care to go into them at the moment, so here I've just given a few\nof the grander themes the two books seem to me to share.\n\nM.M." } ] } ] }