Subject: (urth) ExultantsComing2Urth

From: m.driussi <m.driussi at genie.geis.com>
Date: Fri, 01 May 1998 19:33:00 +0000

Seems to me, fwiw, etc. ad naseum, that the exultants are from
offworld, probably from outsystem.  They grow tall because of the
technobloodmagic they practice upon their khaibits (the khaibits stay
at their natural height of around 6 feet tall; the exultants, using
the royal jelly extracted from their khaibits, grow and grow, like
Baldanders [and along the same principles] but within tasteful
limits, lest they turn into undines).  They use a birth zodiac
including the constellation of the Swan, which is more than a little
impossible from our solar system, but incredibly easy from any other
star.  Severian says exultants are ancient; Jonas, who is more than
ancient, looks upon exultants with wonder and says they are quite
new.

Why would exultants leave Urth (if there were any true exultants on
Urth before they came along with Typhon--see Jonas's attitude above)?
Uh, umm, because it is a hellhole backwater toxic waste dump?  Lacking
low tech resources that have all been locked up in dead and buried
supercities, if not flown downstream into the ocean's trenches, in
those cases where they have not been blasted out into space with ships
and offworld colonies.  The main exports are slaves, furs, meat and
trinkets (appendix to CITADEL).  In the solar system sense, it is far
below "third world" status--it is more like equatorial Africa at the
height of the slave trade.  The nice places to live are Verthandi
and Lune.  Typhon moving his capital to Urth (from where ever it was
before) was a symbolic move that probably caused more trouble than it
was worth.

Re: cataclysms.  Well, there was a great deal of extinction, due to
pollution, over use of land, overpopulation, and/or whatever else.
The last animals that survived were the farm animals.  Then when Urth
was reseeded with creatures, they came from alien worlds.  (The alzabo
is a case in point.)

Re: Beunos Aires as Nessus.  Step one: draw your map of the
Commonwealth.  Step two: look at the map given in PLAN[E]T
ENGINEERING.  Repeat as necessary.

=mantis=

*More Wolfe info & archive of this list at http://www.urth.net/urth/

---

From: Mark Millman <mark_millman at hmco.com>
Date: Fri, 01 May 1998 17:22:54 +0000

Hey mantis--

While I personally agree that the exultants, whether they are
systematically (i.e., genetically) taller or individually (i.e.,
royally-jellied) taller, probably have returned from outsystem (and, by the
way, I don't believe they first left for the stars as exultants; I think
that must be a later development), who's to say that the Swan (the only
zodiacal sign mentioned in BotNS, no?) is the same one we see?  Just to
play devil's advocate:  how different will the constellations be after one
or two or fifty million years?  The Swan could well be a New Swan and not
our Cygnus.  The fact that Wolfe, as "translator", chooses to say "Swan"
rather than "Cygnus" may be significant.  And Severian doesn't seem to
think it odd that Thecla mentions the Swan rather than one of our canonical
signs.

A side issue in relation to this:  Severian refers to the exultants as
ancient families, while Jonas claims that they are the newest of families.
Does this imply that Jonas actually knows of older surviving families?  (A
side note to the side note:  While the time scales are of course totally
different, in Marion Zimmer Bradley's Darkover books, the Hasturs are an
old and powerful family.  It's known, however (at least to the
well-informed), that there are older families than those of the powerful
psis; these, we find out, are families surviving from several of the
original colonists who first landed on Darkover, and who were usurped by
the Hasturs and their allies.)  I'd argue yes; though Jonas almost
certainly has not been traveling in the haunts of power, he has undoubtedly
been much further, geographically, than we've been told.  Perhaps, like
Eata, he's visited the Xanthic Lands.  While we only get to see the
Commonwealth and a sliver of Ascian society, it appears that exultants may
be limited to the Autarch's dominions.  Certainly, if there had been Ascian
exultants, they at least have long since been subsumed, perhaps subverted,
by the Populace (could the blind mounts that Severian faced once have been
exultants?).  But there's no reason to suppose that they exist outside of
the Commonwealth.  They should at first have clustered around the seat of
power (I doubt, if they were Typhon's generals, for example, that he
trusted them out of his sight), and later may have remained where they were
through inertia or a desire to remain near their compatriots.  The book of
exultant lineages that Gurloes shows Severian doesn't seem to imply that
there are any extra-Commonwealth ones; there would surely have been some
intermarriage between nations if exultants were more widely distributed.
But wait!  In UotNS, Severian never mentions seeing any exultants (though I
grant that he doesn't mention an unusual lack of them, either), either in
Typhon's mountain city or in the pre-Citadel port.  These are the haunts of
power.  perhaps the exultant families aren't created, or don't arrive,
until the Commonwealth period has begun, and their "ancientness" is an
artifact of their power and visibility.  Valeria's family, which Severian
suggests is the oldest of which he personally knows, is certainly not an
exulted one.

Well, enough of that.  I'm really more interested in whether anyone has
read most or all of Shirley Jackson's works, and whether there are other
possible influences on Wolfe among them.

Mark Millman