Subject: (urth) Seawrack/ mother plot / + three whorls

From: Son of Witz <sonofwitz at butcherbaker.org>
Date: Wed, 18 Mar 2009 23:47:14 +0000

Somewhere I read a suggestion about Seawrack and the Mother having a hidden scheme in Short Sun.  What is it?  Where is it?

I REALLY don't get final bit about The Mother and the brides of Abia unless Urth is Blue.  I appreciate all the arguments against that idea, and i'm not convinced, but this aquatic mother, and buried walls under the sea just really seem to scream out that Urth or Ushas is Blue.  Or are we to suppose that a Sea Mother Goddess is inherent on watery worlds?    It just seems so much more tidy if there are only 3 whorls and not 5. And Horn/Silk keeps saying "I've drawn the three whorls again"  Why would there be two additional whorls.
Jordon pointed out to me that if Ushas is Blue, then the projection of Horn and Co to the Red Sun Whorl is not in simultaneous timeline to Horn's, which is maybe problematic, though maybe not. we've scene time travel, and astral projection, why not both at once?

~witz

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From: Jordon Flato <jordonflato at gmail.com>
Date: Thu, 19 Mar 2009 00:02:55 +0000

There are some possibilities.  Maybe Blue is where Abia's 'race' is from?
I've always assumed Abia came to Urth at some point.  Must have come from
somewhere, no?

And I am against the theory of Ushas as Blue, you know from our
discussions.  However, there are so many resonances between the two worlds
(some of which you point out), that I think we are being directed to the
idea that what happened on Urth/Ushas happened on Blue as well.  Perhaps
there was a "severian" equivelant on Blue.  One of the Neighbors.  And we
have the Abia analogue, just like Urth.  There is more to this, which until
I finish on this read through of SS I don't want to lay out, but I think the
multi-limbed beings and what not are a clue to this.

And I can't get with the idea that Horn is a Neighbor.  Doesn't make a lick
of sense to me, thematically or contextually.

On Wed, Mar 18, 2009 at 4:47 PM, Son of Witz <sonofwitz at butcherbaker.org>wrote:

> Somewhere I read a suggestion about Seawrack and the Mother having a hidden
> scheme in Short Sun.  What is it?  Where is it?
>
> I REALLY don't get final bit about The Mother and the brides of Abia unless
> Urth is Blue.  I appreciate all the arguments against that idea, and i'm not
> convinced, but this aquatic mother, and buried walls under the sea just
> really seem to scream out that Urth or Ushas is Blue.  Or are we to suppose
> that a Sea Mother Goddess is inherent on watery worlds?    It just seems so
> much more tidy if there are only 3 whorls and not 5. And Horn/Silk keeps
> saying "I've drawn the three whorls again"  Why would there be two
> additional whorls.
> Jordon pointed out to me that if Ushas is Blue, then the projection of Horn
> and Co to the Red Sun Whorl is not in simultaneous timeline to Horn's, which
> is maybe problematic, though maybe not. we've scene time travel, and astral
> projection, why not both at once?
>
> ~witz
>
>
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> Urth Mailing List
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> Subscription/information: http://www.urth.net
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From: James Wynn <crushtv at gmail.com>
Date: Thu, 19 Mar 2009 00:43:00 +0000

> Witz: I REALLY don't get final bit about The Mother and the brides of Abia 
> unless Urth is Blue.
>I appreciate all the arguments against that idea, and i'm not convinced, 
>but this aquatic
>mother, and buried walls under the sea just really seem to scream out that 
>Urth or Ushas is Blue.

I was an enthusiastic proponent of Marc's Blue Earth theory, because it was 
an attempt to resolve some open puzzles originally rather than must shrug 
your shoulders, and because it made several comments by Horn make a lot of 
sense. But, guess what? When I realized that Horn was Typhon and the Raja 
was a Neighbor, those comments made comprehensive sense and Blue Earth 
ceased to have any value I'm afraid. Also, a puckish comment by Wolfe to 
Marc caused him to flip and declare that Urth was Green instead. Actually, 
there is thematic value to having Blue or Green be Verthandi. But I simply 
don't believe it is. Just as I don't believe Blue and Green are St. Anne and 
St. Croix.

> Jordon pointed out to me that if Ushas is Blue, then the projection
>of Horn and Co to the Red Sun Whorl is not in simultaneous timeline
>to Horn's, which is maybe problematic, though maybe not. we've scene
>time travel, and astral projection, why not both at once?

Dream-travel self-evidently involves or enables Time-travel. This is so 
obvious from the Long Sun and the Short Sun stories that I'm a little 
impatient with those that don't casually accept it. So I'd best not get into 
it again.

But I don't believe that the Short Sun is Sol.  It is a pointless flourish 
on a narrative that is already troubling enough.

J

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From: Matthew Groves <matthewalangroves at gmail.com>
Date: Thu, 19 Mar 2009 01:46:21 +0000

The best argument that Urth is Blue (or Green), to my mind, is the
thematic argument, which Marc made long ago, that The Book of the
Short Sun is all about returning.  I can't seem to dig up Marc's old
post...  Together with the corn genetics symbol and the hyacinth
symbol at the end, I'm afraid Marc has me convinced that the Whorl has
returned whence it came.  (But Blue/Green still isn't St. Anne/St.
Croix.)  I'm much more convinced of this than I am that resurrected
Horn is a Neighbor--a proposition I've never been able to find much
textual support for.  But I'll be reading SS later this year with both
ideas in mind.

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From: James Wynn <crushtv at gmail.com>
Date: Thu, 19 Mar 2009 01:56:36 +0000

> post...  

It's here:
http://www.urth.org/whorlmap/chras-writers/default.htm

See http://www.urth.org/whorlmap/ for the whole site.

J.

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From: Matthew Groves <matthewalangroves at gmail.com>
Date: Thu, 19 Mar 2009 02:06:07 +0000

Yeah, but i seem to remember a much more succinct post on the old list
about the thematic argument, without so much of the hard-sf defense of
the idea, which does less to convince me than just the idea of return
being important.

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From: Son of Witz <sonofwitz at butcherbaker.org>
Date: Thu, 19 Mar 2009 06:09:58 +0000

On Mar 18, 2009, at 5:02 PM, Jordon Flato wrote:

> There are some possibilities.  Maybe Blue is where Abia's 'race' is  
> from?  I've always assumed Abia came to Urth at some point.  Must  
> have come from somewhere, no?

Dang. I didn't think of that.

On Mar 18, 2009, at 5:43 PM, James Wynn wrote:

> Dream-travel self-evidently involves or enables Time-travel. This is  
> so obvious from the Long Sun and the Short Sun stories that I'm a  
> little impatient with those that don't casually accept it. So I'd  
> best not get into it again.
>
> But I don't believe that the Short Sun is Sol.  It is a pointless  
> flourish on a narrative that is already troubling enough.

I'm cool with the dream/time travel trip. I threw it out there to see  
if there were strong objections to that idea.

I don't think SS=Sol would be a pointless flourish.
"I've drawn the three whorls again"
"Return to the Whorl"
Hoof sees Green in the sky.  He's looked at Green his whole life. If  
it wasn't Green, wouldn't he make some sort of comment about a change.
I think that if I just "traveled to another whorl, and looked up and  
saw a moon that was different than my home planet's Lune, I wouldn't  
call it Lune.

I'm not convinced, I just think the Three Whorls, and the Return make  
A LOT of thematic sense.  So much, in fact, that I'd consider two more  
Whorls in a book constantly talking about Three Whorls a pointless  
flourish.

The real problem, aside from hard SF moon distance/size tidal issues  
stuff people bring up against the idea, is that Blue has a lot of  
ruins of an ancient race, and very strange flora and fauna.  Is it at  
all possible that The Whorl jumped sequential creations? don't know.
I don't have a problem with the idea that The Whorl might have been  
out there thousands of Urth years before returning. You can't count on  
any of the cargo's timeframe ideas, can you?

but if Neighbors can be trees (I haven't really grokked Aramini's  
argument) couldn't that be descendant from the Green Man?

And every time I read about the Neighbors' anatomy, I was reminded of  
Plato's Androgyns. What were they called? they're like Two people in  
one. Some are are hetero/some homo pair ups.   Anyway, a huge theme in  
New Sun seems to be this Androgyne quality in the epitome. Much was  
made of the Old Autarch's androgyny, and of course the true Epitome  
was Severian/Thecla/+++++.   I think there is really something to this  
idea that a better humanity is truly androgynous.
Perhaps somewhere in Usha's future, these physical androgyns evolved,  
immigrated, or were engineered?  Who knows.
And, hell, if that were a "fact" in the future, it might resonate all  
the way back to create Plato's Myth about them.  :-D

~Witz

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From: Roy C. Lackey <rclackey at stic.net>
Date: Thu, 19 Mar 2009 07:36:29 +0000

> if there were strong objections to that idea.

Oh, there were. But I'm not going to get into it again, either. Just don't
take everything thrown out here as accepted wisdom. Far, far from it.

-Roy

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From: James Wynn <crushtv at gmail.com>
Date: Thu, 19 Mar 2009 11:18:40 +0000

> take everything thrown out here as accepted wisdom. Far, far from it.

Roy,

Do you have a link to an actual refutation of where the second Oreb came 
from in Silk's room, and how the Raja showed up in the Grandma's story? Part 
of my...well, let's just say it... hostility to the positions of the other 
side (when I discussed it) is that they seemed to just wave their hands and 
say "Well, the Long Sun/Short Sun isn't a Time-travel kind of story." I 
don't care to re-hash it, but if this was actually dealt with I would mind 
reading it.

J