Ansible Interview

I have been browsing the Ansible interview, and I notice what seems to be a simple, incontrovertible error on Wolfe's part: 8. /How is Silk able to see these valleys filled with shadows [in the skylands at night, at the opening of chapter 4, book 1] if the Whorl is a cylinder with the long sun running approximately down the centre?/ -- This one throws me completely. Where is the difficulty, unless all the valleys run parallel to the Long Sun? Naturally they don't. [DRL: I see a Wolfean trap here. The groundlings' references to the 'shade' of night strongly suggest a literal revolving shade around the sun. But there are later indications that night involves some sort of dark stuff sent in pulses along the axis to mask a certain length of the Long Sun.] Thing is, the Whorl is the interior surface of a cylinder. Therefore, "up" is always toward the center. Since the LS runs along the center from end to end, you can treat the issue of shadows with only 2 dimensions. It won't matter whether the valleys run along the Sun or the other way. Only if they are tilted or overhanging will they cast shadows. Anyway, as Langford notes, there is a shade of some kind always blocking one side of the Sun. So we should not assume Wolfe to be perfect in his physics. ;)

Although, now that I think of it, the turning of the shade around the sun might, at certain times be aligned just enough to cast shadows over some areas, right?

well....... the sun turns. It may be a cylinder or a plane, but the point is that half of it is shaded. meaning, it's photon vectors are not omnidirectional. At some points the sun is a sliver. it widens & narrows through the day. and there IS a shade, that's why sunset is called Shadelow, I don't remember pulses of darkness and I just finished that book. So as this light plane, or half cylinder rotates, it would have shadows. And then there is ambient reflected light, and we're talking about Shadows in the skylands, where, conceivably, there would only be reflected light off of neighboring lands that aren't yet in darkness. Then the fact that the Shade is not opaque, since you can see the skylands in the first place, so there would be additional reflected light. I think all of that adds up to enough an uneven distribution of light, and thus shadows. /my two cents. ~witz

Witz said: "the fact that the Shade is not opaque, since you can see the skylands in the first place, so there would be additional reflected light." Shade not opaque? How do you figure that? Maybe I don't understand you completely. My understanding would be a big rotating strip that circles the beam of the sun so that when one half of the sun is completely covered, the other half is in full light. That way, the skylands are like seeing the other half of the Whorl, above you, in full sunlight, but so far away, that it doesn't completely reflect the light back to you making it day time. It's obvious that there is way more ambient light in the Whorl than in our normal earth during Nightside, but why do you say the shade is not opaque?

Some people seem to have a very different idea of what the long sun and its shade are than I do. To my mind, the questioner is correct to ask how there could be shadows in the skylands. There couldn't. And why should the shade need to be translucent in order to see skylands? Aren't folks just looking past the shade? What good is a translucent shade? If we're talking about diffuse light casting shadows, then I'm completely lost. Go stand directly under a long, tubular fluorescent bulb, or better, a column of them. Try casting a coherent shadow. It's real tough, huh? You're gonna need a whole shade.

Yeah, I can't see it as anything other than opaque. However, now picture a slowly revolving shade over that bulb. There are points where the shade isn't completely covering the bulb above you (for a short time). During that point, there might be some shadows as the shade passes over the bulb above your head. On Wed, Jan 21, 2009 at 2:55 PM, Matthew Groves <matthewalangroves at gmail.com

If someone asks "Penny for your thoughts" and you put in your 2 cents worth.... Who gets the extra penny??? Sent from my BlackBerry? smartphone with SprintSpeed -----Original Message----- From: "Son of Witz" <sonofwitz at butcherbaker.org> Date: Wed, 21 Jan 2009 22:31:59 To: The Urth Mailing List<urth at lists.urth.net> Subject: Re: (urth) Ansible Interview well....... the sun turns. It may be a cylinder or a plane, but the point is that half of it is shaded. meaning, it's photon vectors are not omnidirectional. At some points the sun is a sliver. it widens & narrows through the day. and there IS a shade, that's why sunset is called Shadelow, I don't remember pulses of darkness and I just finished that book. So as this light plane, or half cylinder rotates, it would have shadows. And then there is ambient reflected light, and we're talking about Shadows in the skylands, where, conceivably, there would only be reflected light off of neighboring lands that aren't yet in darkness. Then the fact that the Shade is not opaque, since you can see the skylands in the first place, so there would be additional reflected light. I think all of that adds up to enough an uneven distribution of light, and thus shadows. /my two cents. ~witz

The sled? Maybe it's a coin-operated toilet. Adam

whoops. that was stupid. I had two conflicting perceptions of the thing, and clarified in my mind as I wrote, but forgot to cut the translucent bit. It would have to be opaque.

I'm sitting under tubular flourescent bulbs (complete with shade unit) all day long, right now in fact. I guarantee there are shadows. they're sort of diffuse, but they are definitely shadows. ~witz

All this talk reminds me: I never can remember if the Whorl itself is actually cylindrical or if it's more oblong. As I recall, one of the inhumi calls it a "hollowed-out asteroid" at one point, and that made me try to remember if there were any descriptions of its exterior apart from the view from Blue/Green. If it is in fact an asteroid, I would imagine it would be more oblong. But if the entire thing was artificial, a more pure cylinder might be appropriate. I've always imagined the interior as looking like a pure cylinder, but the asteroid comment made me rethink that. (I'll try to find the inhumi quote when I get home...) To take this even further, if it's oblong, valley shadows might be more probable since the Long Sun wouldn't always be directly overhead, but at more of an angle. (Assuming, of course, that the interior curves along both axes...but I get the feeling that I'm starting to think too much.) Craig

I was confusing the issues. Point 1: In relation to the idea that the shade might be pulses of dark along the axis of the long sun: This would be insufficient to cast the shadow that is night in the Whorl. The shadow would diffuse. You need a whole shade. Point 2: It's always noon under the long sun. On the inner surface of the whorl you can create a shadow, but only directly beneath the opaque object, and hence shadows in the skylands would be invisible from the ground, hiding beneath the object casting them. You can see shadows in your office because the objects casting them are close to the surface they're casting on, and you are close enough to get your line of sight at an angle to the direction of the light. Silk could see the shadow of his hand on the ground beneath him, buy no skyland valleys full of shadow.

Actually... A person staring at "the skylands" will never be looking at the part directly opposite him/herself; the LS and/or the Shade will be in the way. So s/he will be looking at the ground at a greater or lesser oblique angle, and the shadow of an object may be visible. Nonetheless, a valley won't be full of shadow because, as you note, in that valley the LS is directly overhead, or it's night.

I don't know if it had been revealed previously, but a Neighbor confirms that the Whorl is a "hollowed-out asteroid," (In Green's Jungles 381).

I think it would look more or less cylindrical from the inside; the various bumps and protrusions on the outside of the asteroid might be hollowed out as well, but they might house parts of the Whorl's "plumbing" - the reservoirs mentioned in the text, clone storage, etc. You could also use some irregularities in the hollowed Whorl to create valleys and lakes I suppose. -Matt

It's true that ambient/reflected light would cast weak shadows---not so much "shadows," really. The bottoms of valleys would catch less of that light, since much of it comes from the sides. Of course (1) this could not happen at all at "noon." I haven't read the book recently: does the shade have zones, so that daytime would feature something other than noon all day? I recall that the shade snaps up in the morning, so we know it is at least relatively swift. And (2) the shade would prevent daylight from directly overhead from illuminating at night, so this would be a nighttime phenomenon. However (1) when day recedes or approaches, there surely would be light reflected from adjacent lands, so there would be an after- and a foreglow. How long, I don't know, but I bet you'd see RELATIVELY brighter mountains and darker valleys at some point in the process. Perhaps this is what Wolfe/the text referred to. At least, this is ARTISTICALLY acceptable/plausible. (2) It would have been so easy to introduce dawn and dusk, if Typhon's people had wanted to. Just create 2x 50% shades wider than 12 hours, and stagger/offset them. You'd have a transitional period: 1x 50%-dim hour on each side if you made each shade 1 hour wider. But it seems they didn't.

Of course, those are distinct multiple light sources, right? Here, we'd have a smooth curve of an infinite number of light sources. But the light sources would be close---closer than the SUN---so perhaps there would in fact be a significant shadow effect. I don't pretend to know, I just think we know enough to bring the observation into the realm of the artistically possible. Which still doesn't explain Wolfe's flat rejection of it. I forgot the other possibility that you alluded to. If the LS is in fact not a narrow cylinder but 2 narrow, thin panels set back to back, then there would be some lessening of light output near dawn and dusk, at the very edges. This would lead to some dimming, but not to more shadows. Just stronger ones, perhaps---the overwhelming effect of permanent noon would be reduced. And dawn would still seem to snap up like a windowshade. I suppose it would be risky to make your sun a single huge fluorescent tube. Where would you get a replacement if it broke? ;)

Spin gravity would require all the local upward directions to point inward to the same axis where the long sun is to be found, preventing shadows of any appreciable size to be cast across valleys during the unshaded day. However, during the shaded night, those valleys would be lit from off-vertical overhead angles by their skylands, with lighter colors structures or ripened crops being brighter, and the closer (and therefore least vertical) longitudes being brighter as well. This would allow a valley at Longitude 0? to be lit by 40 acres of flax at Long 45? of the same latitude as if by a rising moon, with lots of shadows to conceal skullduggery, but still enough ambient light to facilitate it.

And yet ... the Whorl is "made" of "shipstone," I thought. That's what we are told early on in LS. Could the ambiguity of this term hide "asteroid matter," as well as perhaps "concrete made from asteroid dust"? I suppose it could. And if so, that means the hollowing was done much as we would blast and bulldoze a mountaintop, or with plasma energies. It also was probably done by robots, since we know Typhon had them. In that case, there may be room for fundamental irregularity in the base or foundation layer---so how would you ensure that all the mountains/hills point precisely "up"? By sighting on the LS, which presumably would have been installed ASAP? Or were the mountain ranges simply the remains of blasting? In that case, they would be irregular from the get-go. It would be extra work to grind the floor smooth only to introduce nice, neat perpendicular mountains again. Is Larry Niven available for a consult? ------------------------------ Message: 4 Date: Wed, 21 Jan 2009 18:37:37 -0600 From: Matthew Groves <matthewalangroves at gmail.com> Subject: Re: (urth) Shape of the Whorl To: The Urth Mailing List <urth at lists.urth.net> Message-ID: <39ed084f0901211637i62491c1br9459689411004710 at mail.gmail.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 I don't know if it had been revealed previously, but a Neighbor confirms that the Whorl is a "hollowed-out asteroid," (In Green's Jungles 381). On Wed, Jan 21, 2009

It's hard to get "Rendevous with Rama" out of my head as I try to picture the Whorl.. Hey, I'm getting ready to tackle the Short Sun series agan, just finished the Borski book...can someone please point me in the direction of an article I read here once...about corn-silk genes and the theory about the plants on green...well you know, don't want to spoil it for witz where do?I search for that article??? thanks ~S~ ???? Mobile — (415) 786-3624 ???? Skype? stuart.hamm myspace.com/stuhamm ? ??? stuarthamm.net --- On Thu, 1/22/09, David Stockhoff <dstockhoff at verizon.net> wrote: From: David Stockhoff <dstockhoff at verizon.net> Subject: Re: (urth) Shape of the Whorl To: urth at lists.urth.net Date: Thursday, January 22, 2009, 6:54 AM And yet ... the Whorl is "made" of "shipstone," I thought. That's what we are told early on in LS. Could the ambiguity of this term hide "asteroid matter," as well as perhaps "concrete made from asteroid dust"? I suppose it could. And if so, that means the hollowing was done much as we would blast and bulldoze a mountaintop, or with plasma energies. It also was probably done by robots, since we know Typhon had them. In that case, there may be room for fundamental irregularity in the base or foundation layer---so how would you ensure that all the mountains/hills point precisely "up"? By sighting on the LS, which presumably would have been installed ASAP? Or were the mountain ranges simply the remains of blasting? In that case, they would be irregular from the get-go. It would be extra work to grind the floor smooth only to introduce nice, neat perpendicular mountains again. Is Larry Niven available for a consult? ------------------------------ Message: 4 Date: Wed, 21 Jan 2009 18:37:37 -0600 From: Matthew Groves <matthewalangroves at gmail.com> Subject: Re: (urth) Shape of the Whorl To:

I think that must be Marc Arimini's essay: http://www.urth.org/whorlmap/chras-writers/marc-aramini1.htm Much to ponder there. No peeking, Witz. Also, I have compiled as many translations of the names in Short Sun as I could find on the WolfeWiki site: http://www.wolfewiki.com/pmwiki/pmwiki.php?n=TheBookOfTheShortSun.Names

Shucks. you guys are the best. thanks for watching out for me. ~witz

Fish Heads? ------Original Message------ From: Son of Witz Sender: urth-bounces at lists.urth.net To: The Urth Mailing List ReplyTo: The Urth Mailing List

Shucks. you guys are the best. thanks for watching out for me. ~witz

Thanks for pointing to this! I can't believe I've never read it before -- I've looked at Wynn's site a number of times and always overlooked that link. But the potential that Green is Urth starts to address an issue that's been bothering me: Where are the Hiero-folk (or Yesod in general) in Long/Short Sun? We had this huge cosmic conspiracy in New Sun that turned out to be the "real" story behind the surface narrative. But that "real" story apparently even disappears in the subtext of the sequel series. However...given that the whole point of Yesod/Hiero-folk is to further human evolution for their own purposes, perhaps we actually are seeing evolution happen in what occurs with the Neighbor/inhumi/human evolution interactions on Blue/Green. I haven't worked out the details yet, but this idea at least ties the series together more tightly than I've felt that they were in the past. I still wonder, however, if the Outsider is the same "God" that the Hiero-folk call the Increate. I know all the general signs would suggest that they are (one true creator god, etc.), but I've always had a sneaking suspicion that the Hiero's "God" wasn't the real deal. ----- Original Message ---- From: Matthew Groves <matthewalangroves at gmail.com> To: hammstu at sbcglobal.net; The Urth Mailing List <urth at lists.urth.net> Sent: Thursday, January 22, 2009 10:44:59 AM Subject: Re: (urth) Shape of the Whorl I think that must be Marc Arimini's essay: http://www.urth.org/whorlmap/chras-writers/marc-aramini1.htm Much to ponder there. No peeking, Witz. Also, I have compiled as many translations of the names in Short Sun as I could find on the WolfeWiki site: http://www.wolfewiki.com/pmwiki/pmwiki.php?n=TheBookOfTheShortSun.Names

I think the Whorl has to be close to perfect cylinder. — If not, it would wobble as it spins. Best wishes, Jack --- On Wed, 1/21/09, Craig Brewer <cnbrewer at yahoo.com> wrote: From: Craig Brewer <cnbrewer at yahoo.com> Subject: (urth) Shape of the Whorl To: "The Urth Mailing List" <urth at lists.urth.net> Date: Wednesday, January 21, 2009, 7:03 PM All this talk reminds me: I never can remember if the Whorl itself is actually cylindrical or if it's more oblong. As I recall, one of the inhumi calls it a "hollowed-out asteroid" at one point, and that made me try to remember if there were any descriptions of its exterior apart from the view from Blue/Green. If it is in fact an asteroid, I would imagine it would be more oblong. But if the entire thing was artificial, a more pure cylinder might be appropriate. I've always imagined the interior as looking like a pure cylinder, but the asteroid comment made me rethink that. (I'll try to find the inhumi quote when I get home...) To take this even further, if it's oblong, valley shadows might be more probable since the Long Sun wouldn't always be directly overhead, but at more of an angle. (Assuming, of course, that the interior curves along both axes...but I get the feeling that I'm starting to think too much.) Craig

Only if the asteroid were of uniform density on all sides which is unlikely. The engineering permutations to cause an asteroid of undefined dimensions and mass to spin uniformly are infinite. J

Relativity dictates any asymmetry will eventually lead to tumbling, so it needs to be pretty close to avoid instability over ages of travel.

Perhaps there is some unmentioned mechanism to simulate moonlight on the Whorl... Just a thought. Aaron

I don't understand the controversy here.

Absolutely not true. The premise here seems to be that all the land in the Whorl is "flat" (relative to the LS), and the mountains all point perpendicular to the LS. Very simplistic idea, and difficult to acheive for an environment that is a hollowed out asteroid. Anything built using a plumb would be perpendicular to the LS. All else would not unless it was coincidentally tilting parallel with the LS. When it is Nightside, the sky consists of the lighted lands and people overhead. J

Cerainly "up" is always toward the axis of the spin, regardless of whether anything is tilted. Presumably the long sun is aligned along that axis, no? But the point regarding shadows is that it's always noon under the long sun, and so there wouldn't be any "valleys filled with shadow."

Unless they are always filled with shadow, right? I'm just north of the 30th parallel. If it were noon on the summer solstice right now, I would cast a shadow. J

You're outside of a planet, not inside a spinning asteroid.

So? Same difference. If the ground slopes non-perpendicular to the central light, object perpendicular to the ground will cast shadows. If a mountain is not perpendicular to the central light (remember that these mountains were not shaped by rain and geology) it could constantly overshadow an adjacent valley. J

That would require some Dali-esque topology, with mountains hovering overhead between the solar tube and the valley floor.

Well, the Whorl's topography is Dali-esque. And we know that it has mountains. That's how the Cargo is prevented from reaching the other portions of the ship. J

What holds the mountains up?

Me:

Jeff:

[sigh] Look. There's mountains in the Whorl are just like any other mountains. But the axis of mountains are not perpendicular to the Long Sun. Imagine a mountain and a deep valley on a flat surface with a single light source directly overhead. No shadows. Now tip the base toward the valley. Suddenly the mountain does not point toward the light source anymore and the valley falls into shadow. This does not take a CAD program to imagine. J

How not? The pseudogravity gradient caused by the Whorl's rotation is perpendicular to the Long Sun at all points.

That would require tipping the base at a greater than complimentary angle with the slope of the mountain, that is, a degree for every degree short of a sheer, vertical cliff, and then more according to how much shadow you want. Unless you begin with a cartoonishly steep mountain, your valley floor ends up tilted as much as a conventional mountain slope on earth, making it very unvalley-like. And you still have to answer, what's holding this mountain up?

I think he means that, for example, a symmetrical, conical mountain need not point straight up toward the solar tube.

They are big hunks of things, not piles of gravel. This seems to be what he is getting at. I don't have an opinion as to what is correct. What passage of the text talks about shadows? .

And why does that require that mountains which were not formed by natural forces (such as rain and wind) to be perpendicular to the Long Sun as well? Why assume that when much of the Whorl's topography was built, the Whorl had even been started spinning? The mountains point generally "up". Since there are valleys in shadow, clearly no care was expended to ensure that they pointed precisely up...at least not in all cases. Large tracts of the Whorl --containing mountains, valleys, lakes, and cities-- were evened out, but not made "flat" relative to the curvature of the Whorl's spin or to other tracts in the Whorl. It would greatly increase the difficulty of the hollowing out process to make that a priority in the construction, and it would provide zero value-add. J

Why don't we see more hunks overhead then?

Are you privy to the particular "hollowing-out" process used? There are several, even now.

But it must. If it doesn't point straight up, it can't be fully symmetrical, as one side will be longer than the other.

There's no evidence that it would be any harder, and it would add a lot of value: the landscape wouldn't turn to rubble when spin was applied. Mountains made of rock can't exist at arbitrary angles to gravity. Even if you were using some building material stronger than rock, you'd probably still prefer an Earth-like rather than Dali-esque landscape (or at least we'd be told if the latter were the case), and you wouldn't want whole valleys that would never see daylight. (Anything that's ever in shadow will always be in shadow.)

Remember that I am only trying to explain that Wolfe has not defied physics in having Silk see shadows in some valleys. I think I've got everyone to admit that it is possible so long one abandon's preconceptions about the way the Whorl looks. Jeff:

I imagine mountains that look like the peaks of the Alps. Perhaps the Alps are cartoonishly steep, but the mountains approaching the ships deck are intended to make passage difficult. On the other hand, you could have a mountain that is positively sheer only on one side that over-looks a valley. That would accomplish the same thing. Or a deep valley with steep sides as well. Jeff:

Are you? I would guess it did not involve a circular cutting drill like they use to make subways. I presume they used lots of explosives and then smoothed things out as necessay with bull-dozing equipment. Various tracts would be assigned a project number and date for completion. Tim:

Is there something in the text that states the mountains are symetrical? On Earth, at the peaks of mountains it is not uncommon for onside to be sheer and the other side to slope. J

Make that an exposed section of a right circular cone, to be analytically and geometrically precise.

Are you thinking that the valleys are past the end of the solar tube, so that the tube is not over head but to one side only?

Yes; in addition to being a lifelong buff of space research, I'm also engaged as a fact checker and peer reviewer for a series of books including realistic space habitat construction.

such peaks however typically make up a rather small portion of the mtn's bulk, and the overall slope of the mountain from tip to base has to be overcome in order to cast a shadow onto a valley floor under vertical sunlight.

Not me...

Neither of these would put the valley into shadow. The sun is always directly overhead, and only an impossible, cartoonish overhang can block it from a significant portion of the surface.

I doubt it. I was just responding to Jeff's remark.

And I should add that even in this unlikely scenario you wouldn't see the shadow from Nightside, you'd see the topside of the overhang.

Jeff:

Only that the valley's plane tilts, say, 15 degrees (perpendicular to the LS axis) into the idealized curve of the Whorl. Also that the valley be somewhat deep and sides be somewhat sheer. It would not shade entire valley but it would put shade into it. To overshadow and entire valley you would need an adjacent mountain that looks like the peaks of the Alps.

[emphasis mine]

Oh. Okay. So that's why Typhon made you a consultant in constructing the Whorl.

One. more. time. These are not natural formations. They are essentially statues. "Ship-rock" is the asteroid material. That's why it was said that it would "last until the end of the Whorl". They are not composite piles of rock pushed up by geological pressures. They were blasted and carved into shape. Also, the gravitation pressure near their peaks is considerably less. Probably they will come down eventually, but it's only been 300 years.

Which shade would be invisible from almost anywhere in the Whorl, even if shiprock is strong enough to enable such cliffs.

<snip>

This premise is only true for areas directly on the other side of the Long Sun. In the cases of areas just on the edge of Nightside (from Silk's perspective, deep in Nightside) the shaded areas would be perfectly visible. If you use a compass and ruler you will see that everything I say is so. J

You're assuming that he's at the same "latitude", and that the overhang is pointed directly at him. And even in that case he won't be able to see much of the latter scenario (a valley with two steep sides and no overhanging mountain). The real problem, even if you're right, is that your theory involves Wolfe making a much bigger aesthetic mistake than getting the geometry wrong. "Hmmm... lessee... by default, nothing in the Whorl will cast a shadow. Maybe I could use that as a subtle part of the description, to enhance the atmosphere of being in a artificial world different from the earth. Nah... there's a really convoluted way in which it's theoretically possible for shadows to exist. I'll just write as if I'd forgotten the whole thing, and let people construct the epicycles to rationalize it."

You are assuming he thought it all strange that the Whorl would cast shadows. If he made a rough model of his Whorl, he would have seen shadows and just recorded what he saw. J

P.S. Trust me. There are far more important plot elements in The Book of the Long Sun that are far, far more subtly presented.

You're assuming that Wolfe thought of the Whorl as a goofy cartoon landscape, and didn't bother to mention it in the text. With Earth-style mountains and valleys, there would be no shadows, so yes, it would be strange if it did, and no, he wouldn't have seen them.

Of course. It's precisely because they're important that they can be subtly presented. That way the reader has both motivation and reward for figuring them out, and when he does, things snap into place instead of becoming more mysterious and needlessly complex. Who knows, maybe the shadows are caused by demons that sit on Silk's retinas with the Whorl equivalent of a GPS unit and make complicated hand shadows based on where he's standing and the direction he's looking. That has as much textual support as overhanging mountains and inverted-slope cliffs, i.e., none that I'm aware of. (I'm assuming that if there's direct textual evidence of such features you would have reminded me of it by now--it's been a while since I read the books.)

Why don't you use a compass and a rule to draw this situation, and upload a scan of your drawing so we can literally see what you mean?

I mean, I have reviewed the same body of work on spin-gravity space stations available to the author when he wrote the books. Typhon's bits of anti-gravity technology left over from wherever would allow some very useful shortcuts in the process, but the fact that he had to make it a spin-gravity, STL habitat mean that certain constraints on the final configuration still apply.

Granted, but by writing about their peaks, you imply they at least grossly resemble earthly mountains in overall shape, and there's only so much that can geometrically happen with that class of shapes. And that's true regardless of how the mountainous pile of material came to be.

Tim:

Jeff

Mostly because I don't think it will matter. I've essentially re-stated (former engineer) Wolfe's answer to this question half-a-dozen ways and the only response I'm getting is that "it's impossible because spin-gravitational forces wouldn't allow it" or "mountain shapes wouldn't allow that" -- even though no one here knows what materials made the mountains or engineering principles were employed to carve/build them or what the shape was of the mountains and valley's in question. It's crazy. I got into this thread with the misguided assumption that I was dealing with people who were willing to be persuaded. If you truly don't think its possible for a body to cast a shadow in a carved out hollow shape with a centrally located light source then you are not bothering to use your brain. It can. And, in The Book of the Long Sun, Silk saw it happen. Deal with it. J

The text in question is: "Beyond the black streak of the shade, the skylands had been as bright as Silk [...] had ever seen them[...]. Here were nameless mountains filling inviolate valleys to the rim with their vast, black shadows." Here's how it would have to happen. Imagine a big bowl. Imagine a long sun extending to the east and west above it. To fill that bowl with shadow, you've got to tilt the whole thing so that it faces north or south. (Everything spills out of your bowl, but never mind that.) Tilt it to the east or west and there's still long sunlight shining into it from the further eastern or western segment of the long sun. So tilt it to the north or south and you can get shadow. If the bowl is located north of "up" from Silk's perspective, and the bowl is tilted to face north, then Silk can see the shadow in the bowl. Likewise if the bowl is located south of "up" and the bowl is tilted to face south. The trouble comes with imagining this bowl as a valley with vegetation and habitats and people living in it. Problems with gravity and lack of sunlight would prevent this, which is why these would truly be "inviolate" valleys.

I'm willing to be persuaded, but not by repeated assertion. If you can imagine a scenario where a valley inside a spinning, hollow asteroid can have a line of sight to an observer elsewhere on the inner surface, but not to the central axis, you ought to be able to construct a diagram of it, like one would in high school physics or geometry. It doesn't have to be fancy or artistic, just demonstrative. I am also willing to do one, if you like.

In this scenario, does "to the rim" mean the valleys are each filled to their respective rim, or does it refer to some larger container, like the Whorl itself perhaps?

No, each valley -- each bowl would be filled with shadow. The topography of the inner surface of the Whorl would have to be much more eccentric than I had ever pictured it.

Are one of you going to pony up with some drawings or are we going to have to arrange for a duel? Myself, I'd much rather see some drawings. I'm having a devil of a time seeing anything but High noon all over the Whorl. On Mon, Jan 26, 2009 at 7:41 AM, Matthew Groves <matthewalangroves at gmail.com

I can make a drawing, but I'm afraid I don't have the means to create and post a digital image. (I'm posting this email using some rocks and coke bottle I found.) If there's genuine interest, I'll be happy to post an image in a day or so. But someone will probably have to tell me how and where best to do that. (Seriously, I'm not good at computers.) Hang on, let me go draw something and then see if I can describe it... First, you have to give up the idea that the topography of the inner surface of the whorl is all relatively flat in relation to the spin Whorl's spin gravity, with habitat and cities everywhere. Imagine that it's as eccentrically craggy and pitted as the exterior of a small asteroid. Imagine a roughly circular cross-section of the whorl, with the long sun as a point light source in the center. Put a little stick-figure Silk down at 6:00. Draw a cross-section of a bowl resting on with its bottom on the surface of the Whorl at, say, 1:00. Sunlight shines into the valley at all times except shadelow. Now, draw another bowl at 2:00, but tilt the bowl counterclockwise until the rim begins to eclipse the sun. Now you've got shadow in your bowl. If you draw an arrow indicating Silk's line of sight, you should find that he can see the shadow in the bowl. Now, if you can picture that, you're probably thinking, "Well, that's fine for bowls, and maybe for the exterior surface some very fracked-up asteroid, but no such geological formation would stand up under gravity. Pas did some stupid shit when he built the Whorl, but surely he didn't build useless geographical features out of magical shiprock." And I have no answer for you on that point.

Lol! That last bit about what I was thinking is pretty much exactly what I was thinking! When I picture that (and I was able to with your fine description) the thing that first popped into my head was "no way would I call something like that, if I saw it above me, a valley! I'd have to come up with some other frakked up word, because it wouldn't look like any valley I could imagine!

Hello! On 27 stycznia 2009, Jordon Flato wrote: Are one of you going to pony up with some drawings or are we going to have to arrange for a duel? Myself, I'd much rather see some drawings. I'm having a devil of a time seeing anything but High noon all over the Whorl. On Mon, Jan 26, 2009 at 7:41 AM, Matthew Groves <matthewalangroves at gmail.com> wrote: No, each valley -- each bowl would be filled with shadow. The topography of the inner surface of the Whorl would have to be much more eccentric than I had ever pictured it.

I've heard that shade-as-pulse along the Sun theory before, but had written it off, because I'd assumed it meant that an entire chunk of the Whorl (in cross section) would be in darkness at the same time (i.e. an entire section of the length of the Long Sun would be in darkness while farther west/east a portion would be in sunlight), and the fact that the brightness of the skylands overhead is mentioned repeatedly meant this could not be the case. The area above viron is in bright sunlight (albiet very very far away) when it's night for Viron. However, the idea of the shade being a spiral sent along the length could resolve that. It would have to be a revolving spiral though, because of all of the talk about the crack of sun left from the shade rising or setting (occluding) the shade. So, we could have a sort of spinning spiral of shad constantly being sent down the pole of the sun, like a barbers pole? Certainly though the shade is not sent out in discreet chunks which cover the entirety of a section of the suns length at any time. If that were the case, you would see nothing above you at all but the lights from distant cities, not rivers, valley's mountains and whatnot....

I'm having trouble seeing how the excerpts quoted indicate that the shade is a spiral, and trouble envisioning how a spiral shade would ever provide night anywhere in the Whorl, since there would always be sunlight coming from the east or west. The last excerpt, for example ("...the first thin thread of the long sun cutting the skylands in two") seems to me to indicate that the shade moves from north to south over the width of the long sun, not east to west along its length. Same with "the sun has already begun to narrow." And when Silk is looking at the skylands and seeing valleys, it's late at night, and they're "as clear and bright as Silk...had ever seen them." So it's full light, i.e. noon, in the skylands. The light is coming straight down on the skylands, not obliquely from the east or west. Yet Silk sees valleys filled with shadow. Can you point to anywhere in the text that refers to sunlight coming from the east or west but not from overhead?

That is still pretty much how I see it too. I could imagine the spiral if it was a reaaaaaaaaly long spiral so that for any siginficant portion of the Whirl, it seemed much like the lampshade paradigm that seems supported very often by the text (these thin strips of sun appearing, etc.) I don't think there can be any doubt, from the evidence, that the shade rotates (or the Whorl rotates round it!!!) north south. But if the East/West spiral was long enough, you might get the lampshade effect but still have some distant 'time zone' effect.

Always the best time for a duel!

Anyone can snail mail a drawing to me at Jeff Wilson 21 Big Oak Ln Texarkana TX 75503 and I'll be happy to scan it, upload the image to my website, and post the URL here.

Hello!

Here is a quote from "Calde of the Long Sun" "Thank you," Silk repeated. "Thank you very much indeed, Doctor." He grasped the operator's shoulder. "You said we were getting a vector. Exactly what does that mean?" "It's a message you get if you float too fast, My Cald?, either north or south. You're supposed to slow down. The monitor's supposed to make you if you don't, but that doesn't work any more on this floater." "I see." Silk nodded, encouragingly he hoped. "Why are you supposed to slow down?" Oosik put in, "Going too fast north makes you feel as if someone were shoveling sand on you. It is not good for you, and makes everyone in the floater slow to react. Going south too fast makes you giddy. It feels like swimming." As can be easily seen, the Whorl rotates from south to north. If you stand at the Mainframe - the East Pole - and look West, the Whorl - and you- turn towards your right hand, that is north. And now look again at those quotes from the Exodus: ... The airship had revolved, whether from the torque of its engines or the pressure of some passing breeze, until Mainframe stood upright as a wall, its black slabs of colossal mechanism jutting toward them and its Pylon an endless bridge that dwarfed the airship and vanished into night. Horn gestured. "See, Cald? We don't have to sit on the edge, but we can go over there if you want to. Way, way down you can see the Mountains That Look At Mountains, I guess. It's kind of blue at first, then so bright you can't be sure." Nettle emerged from the hatch. "I still don't understand what Mainframe is, Cald?. Just all those things with the lights running over them? And why do they have roofs here if it can't rain? How would they get the rain to come down?" "This is Mainframe," Silk told her. "You are seeing it." "The big square things?" "With what underlies its meadows and lawns; Mainframe is dispersed among them all. Imagine millions of millions of tiny circuits like those in a card billions of billions, actually. The warmth of each is less than the twinkle of a firefly; but there are so many that if they were packed together their own heat would destroy them. They would become a second sun. As things are it is always summer here, thanks to those circuits." .... Nettle said, "Cald?, you never did answer my question about the roofs. And I wanted to know why the shade's so close here, and we can't see the sun." "The Pylon makes it," Horn declared, "or anyhow it shoots it into the sky. Isn't that right, Cald? Then the sun burns it but instead of smoke it turns into air. If the Pylon didn't shoot out more, the shade would burn up and there'd be daylight all the time. Only Mainframe would fry, because it's so close. The sun starts at the top of the Pylon and goes all the way to the West Pole." And another quote from the "Nightside" "So it is with the gods, Auk. They speak to us all the time, exactly as the sun shines all the time. When the dark cloud that we call the shade gets between us and the sun, we say it's night, or nightside, a term I never heard until I came to Sun Street." Pylon is vertical, that is, it grows from the Mainframe towards the Long Sun. It produces the Shade so that it permanently shadows the Mainframe. Notice that Mainframe is flat, not concave, and it certainly doesn't go around the Long Sun - it is only on one side of it. If the shade was a fixed construction parallel to the Long Sun, it could not at the same time keep the mainframe in the permanent shade. But it is not fixed - it is, in fact, a cloud. The most easy way to keep the shade in place would be to have it not rotate. (If the shade rotated it would have to be fixed to the Sun or it would be driven into the inner surface of the Whorl by the centrifugal force). Since the Pylon, which produces it, rotates around the Long Sun, and the shade is created always above Mainframe, as the result you would get a coil moving along the Long Sun. Interestingly, the shade must be produced at uneven speed - shot out in pulses. Otherwise it would shade always the same places. As regards the first quote from the Nightside, you give only a part of it: "It had been late already when they had left the city. Beyond the black streak of the shade, the skylands had been as clear and as bright as Silk (who normally retired early and rose at shadeup) had ever seen them; he stared at them as he rode, his thoughts drowned in wonder. Here were nameless mountains filling inviolate valleys to the rim with their vast, black shadows. Here were savannah and steppe, and a coastal plain ringing a lake that he judged must certainly be larger than Lake Limna all these doming the gloomy sky of night while they themselves were bathed in sunlight." The skylands are rather far; my suggestion is that their different parts are in different time-zones, so those that are near shadeup (morning) or shadelow (evening) would have shadows. Note that in one quote from the "Calde of the Long Sun" there are mentioned shadowy skylands visible during night. There are fairly low south. "So briefly that she was not sure she had really seen it, something flashed from the monstrous dark flying bulk, a minute pinprick of light, as though someone in the shadowy skylands behind it had squeezed an igniter. "

Why, the names East and West themselves. Why does the Whorl have East and West poles - a bit unusual convention? Because the light starts in the East. Also the names shadeup-morning and shadelow -evening. Shadeup means the shade rises up in the East showing the first thin line of the sun; shadelow means the shade cames down in the West obscuring the last light of the sun. But since the shade is a helix, not a round band moving along the sun, the long sun appears first as a thin line and then grows wider.

I didin't receive anything posted on the list since noon until just now. I sent Jordan some pictures that are apparently in line with the Whorl as Matthew envisioned it. But now I see that (I think) he has at last conceded that shaded areas are possible in the Whorl and that they are widely viewable. As for Stanislaw's description, I'm not sure I understand how Silk's conversation with Auk fits with it (as I understand it): "Does the sun ever go out, Auk? Does it ever wink out as you or I might snuff out a lamp?" <snip> "I guess it don't. You couldn't see them skylands up there nightside, if it did." This exchange seems to suggest that during Nightside, Auk sees darkness looking East and West, but only sees the skylands lit. J

Yes, under the circumstances I laid out. The trouble is, a bowl isn't really the same thing as a valley. It's more like a crater. Wolfe says in the interview, "Where is the difficulty, unless all the valleys run parallel to the Long Sun?" He doesn't seem to be thinking about bowls or craters, much less craters in a plane at an extravagant angle to spin gravity. In Wolfe's vision, it seems to be the case that valleys running at an angle to the long sun can somehow, at least sometimes, be filled with "vast black shadows" during the day. That is, if the long dimension of the valley, where the river would be, runs north-south, then it can be dark in the valley. I have to admit I'm still having trouble seeing how that is possible.

When has anyone not agreed that, given miracle shiprock capable of assuming any shape without structural penalty, shaded areas would be possible?

The quote says "[b]eyond the black streak of the shade," which is exactly where such a shadow would be least visible. Nor would it "fill[ an] inviolate valley[] to the rim," unless you call something near-perpendicular to the ground a "valley." But ultimately our difference is not geometrical. It is epistemic, and possibly aesthetic. I find the handwaving (as I see it) required to save the shadow quote less plausible in terms of author intention, and more of an artistic failure, than making a mistake about shadows. You don't, which is fine. But I wish you'd address, or at least acknowledge, my actual argument instead of claiming that I'm not using my brain.

Wolfe said: "Where is the difficulty, unless all the valleys run parallel to the Long Sun? Naturally they don't. "

It never occurred to me to read this as a river valley, probably because it would make no sense that way. Any depression near a steep precipice would look like a valley from the other side of Whorl. I have always understood "run parallel" to mean "on a plane that is in congruence with the line Long Sun" such that it was perpendicular to the light coming from the Long Sun...which is the only way there could be shadows. But there definitely could be shadows, and my experience with the imperfections human constructions in extreme topography tells me there would be: for the same reason that there are few straightaways in highways through mountains. J

Maybe we do have a geometric disagreement after all, because this makes no sense to me. As crooked as the valleys/highways may be, areas where the sun is invisible when directly overhead are rare and small (barring tunnels, of course).

I agree that this is the only way there could be shadows, but I think it's pretty clear that when Wolfe talks about "valleys [that] run parallel to the long sun," he's imagining a valley whose long dimension aligns with the east-west axis of the whorl, implying that he believes that a valley whose long dimension runs at an angle to the east-west axis would somehow be in shadow. I don't see how that's possible without Stanis?aw somehow being right about light coming from the east or west but not overhead, but I think that's contradicted by the text at several points, though I admit I don't fully understand Horn's and Silk's conversation about the Pylon and how it generates the shade. All of this is admittedly of very little importance, but there's snow and bitter cold here in the Midwest, and nothing to do but sit inside and think about the geometry of the Whorl. What I wouldn't give for even a long sun on a day like today!

I suppose that counts as "beyond the shade" in that the bowls are farther away than the shade is, though the direction is off about 30 degrees.

It's possible that the Silk is opposite from the middle of a long day section, so it is high noon as well as in the middle of the day overhead, but that the valleys are in the dawn or dusk far to the east or west, suggesting that the Whorl is several "days" long.

Planes and lines can't be congruent, by the definition of congruence.

Here are James pictures, which give an idea of what he is getting at. http://img144.imageshack.us/img144/9717/longsunix8.jpg http://img187.imageshack.us/img187/7344/longsunpittedfb3.jpg http://img206.imageshack.us/img206/5654/longsunzoombh4.jpg

They wouldn't open for me...anyone else have this problem or is it...shudder...me??? ???? Mobile — (415) 786-3624 ???? Skype? stuart.hamm myspace.com/stuhamm ? ??? stuarthamm.net --- On Wed, 1/28/09, Jordon Flato <jordonflato at gmail.com> wrote: From: Jordon Flato <jordonflato at gmail.com> Subject: Re: (urth) Ansible Interview To: "The Urth Mailing List" <urth at lists.urth.net> Date: Wednesday, January 28, 2009, 9:53 AM Here are James pictures, which give an idea of what he is getting at. #yiv348268152 <!-- #yiv348268152 p.MsoNormal, #yiv348268152 li.MsoNormal, #yiv348268152 div.MsoNormal {margin:0in;margin-bottom:.0001pt;font-size:12.0pt;} #yiv348268152 a:link, #yiv348268152 span.MsoHyperlink {color:blue;text-decoration:underline;} #yiv348268152 a:visited, #yiv348268152 span.MsoHyperlinkFollowed {color:purple;text-decoration:underline;} _filtered #yiv348268152 {margin:1.0in 1.25in 1.0in 1.25in;} #yiv348268152 div.Section1 {} #yiv348268152 http://img144.imageshack.us/img144/9717/longsunix8.jpg http://img187.imageshack.us/img187/7344/longsunpittedfb3.jpg http://img206.imageshack.us/img206/5654/longsunzoombh4.jpg On Wed, Jan 28, 2009 at 7:46 AM, Jeff Wilson <jwilson at io.com> wrote: James Wynn wrote: It never occurred to me to read this as a river valley, probably because it would make no sense that way. Any depression near a steep precipice would look like a valley from the other side of Whorl. I have always understood "run parallel" to mean "on a plane that is in congruence with the line Long Sun" such that it was perpendicular to the light coming from the Long Sun...which is the only way there could be shadows. Planes and lines can't be congruent, by the definition of congruence.

They opened fine for me. Some of them took a little time.

I guess that means it's just you Stuart. My Anti-Hamm blocker appears to be functioning.

Try using Mozilla Firefox instead of Internet Explorer. I don't know why but sometimes that makes a difference for graphics. J

Oh no! Pointy-headed pedantry! can't....stay..awaaaaake....<clunk>

Firefox didn't work for me, but Safari did. Your drawings exactly match my visualization of shadow-generating topography, so we are not in disagreement about geometry.

Outsider forbid we use technically accurate geometric terms when discussing geometry. Lest I seem too much of a grinch, I want to thank everyone who provided visual aids for their efforts. I sincerely respect your willingness to engage the issue in earnest, if not your conclusions.