{ "export": { "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/5741", "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": 5741, "subject": "The face of Pas", "messages": 78, "voices": 18, "first": "2010-09-11T05:33:09+00:00", "last": "2010-10-08T14:06:30+00:00" }, "messages": [ { "message_id": "<001d01cb5172$d6967fa0$9bd14a0c@rclackey>", "from": { "name": "Roy C. Lackey", "address": "rclackey at stic.net" }, "date": "2010-09-11T05:33:09+00:00", "subject": "(urth) The face of Pas", "in_reply_to": null, "reply_link": null, "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Typhon's maniacal obsession with his own face is a given, well established\nin the Urth Cycle. The head on the left side of Piaton's body had yellow\nhair, the head on the right side had black hair (SWORD, chap. XXIV). The\nhead on the left was Typhon's (URTH, chap. XXXIX, 274). Severian at first\nthought Piaton \"a species of idiot\" (SWORD, XXV) because he rolled his eyes\nand his lips moved but he was unable to speak. Piaton was unable to speak\nbecause \"He can't get his breath, poor fellow,\" as Typhon put it (ibid,\nXXVI).\n\nSilk had yellow hair, as is mentioned many times in LS.\n\nShortly after Mint and Remora and some others climbed out of the tunnels,\nRemora shot Sand and Pas made a theophany in the Sacred Window in the\nProlocutor's Palace. This is what Mint saw:\n------------------\nShe blinked and stared, then blinked again. Not one face but two crowded the\nWindow, one gaping and gasping, the other radiant with power and majesty,\njust--and more than just--pitiless and nurturing. \"My faithful people,\"\nintoned Twice-headed Pas, \"receive the blessing of your god.\" (EXODUS, 204)\n------------------\n\nThe \"gaping and gasping\" face was clearly Piaton's. Mint (and Remora) damn\nwell knew what Silk's face looked like. Had she recognized the other face in\nthe Window as Silk's, she would have been shocked silly and the course of\nthe story would have changed radically. Ergo, the other face was not Silk's.\n\nNature versus nurture issues aside, on the nature end a clone should look\nalmost identical to the original.\n\n-Roy" } ] }, { "message_id": "<4C8B2396.7080809@io.com>", "from": { "name": "Jeff Wilson", "address": "jwilson at io.com" }, "date": "2010-09-11T06:37:10+00:00", "subject": "(urth) The face of Pas", "in_reply_to": "<001d01cb5172$d6967fa0$9bd14a0c@rclackey>", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "On 9/11/2010 12:33 AM, Roy C. Lackey wrote:\nTyphon's maniacal obsession with his own face is a given, well established\nin the Urth Cycle. The head on the left side of Piaton's body had yellow\nhair, the head on the right side had black hair (SWORD, chap. XXIV). The\nhead on the left was Typhon's (URTH, chap. XXXIX, 274). Severian at first\nthought Piaton \"a species of idiot\" (SWORD, XXV) because he rolled his eyes\nand his lips moved but he was unable to speak. Piaton was unable to speak\nbecause \"He can't get his breath, poor fellow,\" as Typhon put it (ibid,\nXXVI).\n\nSilk had yellow hair, as is mentioned many times in LS.\n\nShortly after Mint and Remora and some others climbed out of the tunnels,\nRemora shot Sand and Pas made a theophany in the Sacred Window in the\nProlocutor's Palace. This is what Mint saw:\n------------------\nShe blinked and stared, then blinked again. Not one face but two crowded the\nWindow, one gaping and gasping, the other radiant with power and majesty,\njust--and more than just--pitiless and nurturing. \"My faithful people,\"\nintoned Twice-headed Pas, \"receive the blessing of your god.\" (EXODUS, 204)\n------------------\n\nThe \"gaping and gasping\" face was clearly Piaton's. Mint (and Remora) damn\nwell knew what Silk's face looked like. Had she recognized the other face in\nthe Window as Silk's, she would have been shocked silly and the course of\nthe story would have changed radically. Ergo, the other face was not Silk's.\n\nNature versus nurture issues aside, on the nature end a clone should look\nalmost identical to the original." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "But Typhon has probably been through a lot of nurture in his time. The \nauthor can also play tricks, like reversing the video side-to-side, so \nthat an asymmetrical face becomes merely a familial resemblance.\n\nFacial asymmetry has been noted in and associated with particularly \ngifted and driven people as well as those afflicted with harmful \nconditions like stroke and Bell's Palsy, and in particular cerebral \npalsy and muscular dystrophy is associated with people who are both \ngifted and afflicted, and have been for enough time to have been \ncirculated into the author's command of scientific concepts.\n\nOr perhaps the commonality of clones of various Typhonian family members \nprevents Silk's resemblance to Pas from being particularly remarkable, \nbecause lots of people on the Whorl have a similar degree of resemblance \nas a young adult clone would have to his octagenerian original.\n\nAnd the second, uncoordinated head has to be be one hell of a \ndistraction. One is left to wonder why Typhon doesn't have some other \narrangement, like an opaque or catoptric dome to hide Piaton's silent \ngibbering." }, { "kind": "sig", "depth": 0, "text": "Jeff Wilson - jwilson at io.com\nComputational Intelligence Laboratory - Texas A&M Texarkana\n< http://www.tamut.edu/CIL >" } ] }, { "message_id": "<005501cb522d$c01b1f40$21d04a0c@rclackey>", "from": { "name": "Roy C. Lackey", "address": "rclackey at stic.net" }, "date": "2010-09-12T03:51:08+00:00", "subject": "(urth) The face of Pas", "in_reply_to": "<4C8B2396.7080809@io.com>", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Jeff Wilson wrote:\n[snip]" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Or perhaps the commonality of clones of various Typhonian family members\nprevents Silk's resemblance to Pas from being particularly remarkable,\nbecause lots of people on the Whorl have a similar degree of resemblance\nas a young adult clone would have to his octagenerian original." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "There are no references to clones in LS or SS, but there are the khaibits of\nNS who do closely resemble their originals. Severian gives no indication\nthat the Typhon face/head he twice saw was that of an old man, which would\nhave been in stark contrast to the gladiator body it was attached to.\n\nWhen Silk was buried in that tunnel collapse and made his brief sojourn to\nMainframe heaven, he saw his biological parents. The male bio parent had\nblue eyes, like Silk. A clone necessarily comes from the same genetic\nlineage as the original. In other words, the bio parents of the clone are\nthe same as the bio parents of the original. Had Silk been a clone of\nTyphon, the bio parents he saw in Mainframe would have been Typhon's\nparents. Typhon supposedly wasn't native to Urth and claimed not to have\nbeen born at all in the usual sense. There is no logical reason for Typhon's\nparents to have been on the _Whorl_ or in Mainframe at all.\n\nIt is possible that Typhon and the bio female parent Silk saw in Mainframe\ncontributed the basic genetic material that went into the embryo that became\nSilk, but that would make them more-or-less conventional parents whose\ngenetic material had been modified to produce particular genetic\nimprovements, making Silk a \"designer baby\", but in that case he would not\nbe a clone of Typhon. Further, the bio parents should have been dead on the\n_Whorl_ in order to be in Mainframe heaven. Typhon, at least, died on Urth.\n\nWhen Silk tried to use the glass on the airship, Kypris appeared and tempted\nhim to go to Mainframe for a god-grade scan, so that he could become Pas and\nPas him. She, apparently meaning the bio woman who had been Typhon's\nmistress on Urth, claimed to have been scanned at Mainframe: \"As I was\nscanned, Silk, with him. He held my hand. . . .\" (EXODUS, chap. 15, 346) She\nthen showed him an image of \"a bronze-limbed man with rippling muscles and\ntwo heads\", one of which was Silk's.\n\nGranted, the image she showed him was probably photoshopped, but only one of\nthe heads looked like Silk. Which of Pas' two traditional heads did she\nreplace with Silk's? If she substituted Silk's head for Piaton's, then the\nTyphon head didn't look like Silk, even to Silk. If she substituted Silk's\nhead for Typhon's, then Silk's still didn't look like Typhon's, otherwise\nthere was no point in making the switch. If you want to say that she didn't\nmake a switch, that Typhon and Silk had always looked alike, then Mint and\nRemora should have seen that Silk looked just like Typhon during the earlier\nPas theophany at the Prolocutor's Palace.\n\n-Roy" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Dave Tallman", "address": "davetallman at msn.com" }, "date": "2010-09-12T06:41:16+00:00", "subject": "(urth) The face of Pas", "in_reply_to": "<005501cb522d$c01b1f40$21d04a0c@rclackey>", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Roy C. Lackey wrote:\n\nWhen Silk was buried in that tunnel collapse and made his brief\nsojourn to Mainframe heaven, he saw his biological parents. The male\nbio parent had blue eyes, like Silk. A clone necessarily comes from\nthe same genetic lineage as the original. In other words, the bio\nparents of the clone are the same as the bio parents of the original.\nHad Silk been a clone of Typhon, the bio parents he saw in Mainframe\nwould have been Typhon's parents. Typhon supposedly wasn't native to\nUrth and claimed not to have been born at all in the usual sense.\nThere is no logical reason for Typhon's parents to have been on the\n_Whorl_ or in Mainframe at all.\n\n\nDo we know for sure that the spirits he saw were manifested by the\nMainframe? One of them says, \"You must go back, Silk. He sends us to\ntell you.\" If \"He\" is the Outsider, there are no restrictions on who\ncould be manifested based on where they resided or died. They could be\nTyphon's parent's, if Silk is a clone. Or they could be Typhon and\nMamelta, if he's a biological son. (Hopefully not Typhon and Kypris,\nbecause that would be a bit incestuous -- Kypris' promise of \"We'd be\ntogether then\" doesn't sound entirely platonic. Indeed, in RttW,\nSilkhorn doubts that Silversilk in Pig would have bothered looking for\nthe ghost of Hyacinth as long as he had Kypris instead.)\n\nI don't find the argument of Mint's non-reaction totally convincing.\nThe commanding expression, the enhancement of godly images in a\ntheophany, and the many representations of Pas in art and sculpture\ncould have accustomed Mint to a face like Silk's without any\nconfusion. The image Kypris shows Silk of what it would be like to be\nan aspect of Pas is more convincing, as long as it wasn't Piaton's\nhead that was replaced. But I'm tempted to think it was Piaton's. The\nOutsider has taken over Pas. He wouldn't yield the driver's seat to\nSilk." } ] }, { "message_id": "<004401cb52e8$b222b360$54cf4a0c@rclackey>", "from": { "name": "Roy C. Lackey", "address": "rclackey at stic.net" }, "date": "2010-09-13T02:09:15+00:00", "subject": "(urth) The face of Pas", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Dave Tallman wrote:\nDo we know for sure that the spirits he saw were manifested by the\nMainframe? One of them says, \"You must go back, Silk. He sends us to\ntell you.\" If \"He\" is the Outsider, there are no restrictions on who\ncould be manifested based on where they resided or died." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I agree. And Silk did think it was the Outsider who had brought him back.\n\"You returned me to life, Outsider,\" (Calde, chap. 9, 331). The thing is,\nthis clone stuff in LS/SS is something I have been fighting against for\nyears, in long and ugly battles that gained notoriety here as the Clone\nWars. Even the particulars of who said what in that scene has been disputed\nin furtherance of certain viewpoints. I don't want to re-hash all that, but\nit has been argued that Silk's vision was of Mainframe heaven, and the text\ndoes say that he saw the Aureate Path and lighted upon it just before he saw\nthe four people. Of course he found the Aureate Path to be underwhelming,\nbut he had been conditioned all his life to think of the afterlife in those\nterms.\n\nIn other words, this topic has deep roots that I have to contend with that\nunderlie my arguments." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "They could be\nTyphon's parent's, if Silk is a clone. Or they could be Typhon and\nMamelta, if he's a biological son." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Mamelta? I don't think Mamelta was Typhon's mistress back on Urth, the\nanalogue woman who became the digital Kypris, so to speak, if that's what\nyou mean. Anyway, Silk had seen Mamelta in the flesh and should have\nrecognized her in his vision of his biological mother; I can't see that he\ndid." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "(Hopefully not Typhon and Kypris,\nbecause that would be a bit incestuous -- Kypris' promise of \"We'd be\ntogether then\" doesn't sound entirely platonic. Indeed, in RttW,\nSilkhorn doubts that Silversilk in Pig would have bothered looking for\nthe ghost of Hyacinth as long as he had Kypris instead.)" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I'm glad you said that. " }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "I don't find the argument of Mint's non-reaction totally convincing.\nThe commanding expression, the enhancement of godly images in a\ntheophany, and the many representations of Pas in art and sculpture\ncould have accustomed Mint to a face like Silk's without any\nconfusion." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Could be. But I think it a little odd that no one in seven books ever\nsuggests that Silk, even at the age of forty-three, looks anything like the\nPas of art or theophany, and Mint saw him at that age. In the case of\nSeverian, an innkeeper pointed out to him how much he looked like an older\nOuen." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "The image Kypris shows Silk of what it would be like to be\nan aspect of Pas is more convincing, as long as it wasn't Piaton's\nhead that was replaced. But I'm tempted to think it was Piaton's." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I also think it was probably Piaton's head she had replaced with Silk's.\nEven so, since Kypris was trying to connect Silk with Pas, if she showed him\ntheir two heads and he recognized only one of them as his own, it is easier\nfor me to believe that was because the Pas head didn't really look like\nSilk. Typhon's obsession with his own face suggests that his Pas image\nwould have been the same as it had been when scanned, as the fact that\nPiaton's idiot head remained part of the digitized image of Pas reinforces." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "The\nOutsider has taken over Pas. He wouldn't yield the driver's seat to\nSilk." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I agree that the Outsider wanted the Plan of Pas to be executed. But I don't\nthink he was pulling Pas' strings.\n\n-Roy" } ] }, { "message_id": "<4C8E5FF5.1060109@gmail.com>", "from": { "name": "James Wynn", "address": "crushtv at gmail.com" }, "date": "2010-09-13T17:31:33+00:00", "subject": "(urth) The face of Pas", "in_reply_to": "<001d01cb5172$d6967fa0$9bd14a0c@rclackey>", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Roy C. Lackey wrote-\nTyphon's maniacal obsession with his own face is a given, well established\nin the Urth Cycle.[snip]Nature versus nurture issues aside, on the nature end a clone should look almost identical to the original." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I hate to get picky about the text but there is absolutely no emphatic \nreason to believe that Typhon would be singularly identifiable from \neither his Pas-avatar or the iconography associated with him. There are \nlots of people today who \"look like Jesus\" because they are thin and \nhave longish hair and a beard.\n\nI imagine any tall blonde-haired, clean shaven man on the Whorl would \nlook like Typhon's head. Does one really suppose that any of the other \ngods could have been recognized by their original face? Anyway, how old \nwas Typhon when he was scanned? Imagine one could view a photograph of \nthe model for Michaelangelo's painting of God taken as a young man. \nWould anyone looking at it think \"Say! He looks like God!\"\n\nOkay. So there's that.\n\nBut the idea that Typhon was egotistically--let alone \n\"manically\"--obsessed with his face is simply not true based on his \ndiscussion with Severian in Sword of the Lictor. Keeping his original \nhead, in the original case, was a practical issue:\n\n\"My physicians, of whom I naturally had the best of many worlds,\ntold me it might be possible for me to take a new body, their first thought\nbeing to enclose my brain in the skull previously occupied by another. \nYou see\nthe flaw in that?\"[snip] The face would be lost, and it is the face that \nmen are\naccustomed to obey!\"\n\nSo Typhon believed that if he had a new face, his subjects would treat \nhim as an heir rather than the rule to whom they had already accespted. \nBut in dealing with memory-wiped Cargo this was not important at all.** \nPas's appearance was limited only by Typhon's sense of humor. The whole \nthing was intended as a joke. A parody. Otherwise, why give Piaton any \nrole at all.\n\n**That the waking Cargo was memory-wiped in the same fashion as as the \nSleepers were seems the obvious implication. There is simply no way \npeople would come to _believe in_ the Whorl Gods and forget their true \nnatures in the few centuries since the Whorl left Urth. In fact, it is \nhard for me to see how any real observant religion could have ever been \nmore than something for kooky cults.\n\nHow the Ayuntamiento were aware of the secret history of Typhon is \nprobably an interesting story. But there are any number of ways they \ncould have rediscovered that knowledge. It was likely no great secret to \nthe non-Cargo who did not worship the gods as far as I can tell." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Roy (to Jeff Wilson) -\nThere are no references to clones in LS or SS, but there are the khaibits of\nNS who do closely resemble their originals. Severian gives no indication\nthat the Typhon face/head he twice saw was that of an old man, which would\nhave been in stark contrast to the gladiator body it was attached to.\nSilk had yellow hair, as is mentioned many times in LS." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "A lack of positive indication is usually pretty weak evidence. In a \nWolfe novel, sometimes it is evidence of the opposite. But even if \nTyphon were a middle-aged man, the baby-fat of his teen-age years \nstripped away, it would be enough difference that people would never \nremark \"You look like Pas\". Give it 15 or 20 years and people might \nrefer to him as \"That patera who even looks like Pas.\" But it wouldn't \nblow anyone away any more than having a guy play Santa Clause who also \nhappens to have cherubic cheeks, a white beard, and a some extra meat \naround the middle." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "When Silk was buried in that tunnel collapse and made his brief sojourn to\nMainframe heaven, he saw his biological parents. The male bio parent had\nblue eyes, like Silk. A clone necessarily comes from the same genetic\nlineage as the original. In other words, the bio parents of the clone are\nthe same as the bio parents of the original. Had Silk been a clone of\nTyphon, the bio parents he saw in Mainframe would have been Typhon's\nparents." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I don't know how to respond to this. This so totally ignores the elastic \ndefinitions Wolfe deliberately employs throughout the LS/SS novels for \n\"father\", \"son\", \"sister\", \"daughter\", even \"mother\". To try to nail \ndown an emphatic definition of these terms is to totally miss the spirit \nof the novel. Why not insist that the team of scientists who extracted \nthe embryos meet Silk in Mainframe? Tussah insists that the next Calde \nwill be his \"son\"-- although he openly admits \"he is not the son of my \nbody\". The Rajan calls three inhumans his sons and daughters (and, as \nfor Jahlee, sometimes his \"sister\"). Magnesia/Marble calls Mucor her \ngrand-daughter. In the case of one or two of the inhumans, there is \nindisputably more to those designations than random familiarity. I \nbelieve it is true in the other cases as well.\n\nYeah, Silk says the Outsider brought him back. I don't doubt that, just \nas it could be said for anyone with a near-death experience. But there \nis a genuine implication that Quetzal was a partial agent in \naccomplishing his return." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Typhon supposedly wasn't native to Urth and claimed not to have\nbeen born at all in the usual sense. There is no logical reason for Typhon's\nparents to have been on the_Whorl_ or in Mainframe at all." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "There is also no reason for a random embryo loaded on the Whorl before \nleaving Urth to have parents in Mainframe either. The idea of a being \nsuch as Silk having multiple souls who feel for him as \"parents\" is \npeculiar. Yeah, his birth-mother, sure. But Tussah? Really? And for the \nreason you give here, it's hard to imagine who the other set of parents \nwould be if they are not Typhon and \"Kypris\".\n\nThe meeting of Silk with his \"parents\" is weird. I find it unlikely that \nthe scene means what we think it does or the motivations are as we \nsuppose. If Silk is in Heaven, why would his parents care about \naccomplishing the Plan of Pas. Surely they are beyond such worries. If \nhe is in the Mainframe, how does his uploaded psyche return to his body?" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Dave Tallman -\nThe\n Outsider has taken over Pas. He wouldn't yield the driver's seat to\n Silk.\n\nRoy -\nI agree that the Outsider wanted the Plan of Pas to be executed. But I don't\nthink he was pulling Pas' strings." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I don't think this quite gets at what the Outsider is saying. He says \nthat a demon who imitates a god, eventually becomes a god. He doesn't \nsay the god possesses the demon.\n\nIn other words, because Kypris is the most like the Outsider, her \nbehavior and plans have the most quickly begun to parallel those of the \nOutsider. There are analogies to this throught the novel. Quetzel \npretends to be a Good Shepherd and ends up taking the risks and even \ndying in the tunnels while leading his flock safely to the landers. \nAlso, General Mint says that she doesn't care that Spider has \ninfiltrated her ranks with spies because in order to be good spies they \nwill have to be exceptionally good soldiers. In other words, but \npretending to be loyal soldiers, their actions become those of loyal \nsoldiers.\n\nHmmm...there is another parallel to Fifth Head of Cerberus in that.\n\nu+16b9" } ] }, { "message_id": "<391421.83147.qm@web84104.mail.mud.yahoo.com>", "from": { "name": "DAVID STOCKHOFF", "address": "dstockhoff at verizon.net" }, "date": "2010-09-13T19:39:29+00:00", "subject": "(urth) The face of Pas", "in_reply_to": "<4C8E5FF5.1060109@gmail.com>", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I emphatically agree with the following:\n--- On?Mon, 9/13/10, James Wynn??wrote:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "From: James Wynn \nSubject: Re: (urth) The face of Pas\nTo: \"The Urth Mailing List\" \nDate: Monday, September 13, 2010, 1:31 PM\nRoy C. Lackey wrote-\nTyphon's maniacal obsession with his own face is a given, well established\nin the Urth Cycle......" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "But the idea that Typhon was egotistically--let alone \"manically\"--obsessed with his face is simply not true based on his discussion with Severian in Sword of the Lictor. Keeping his original head, in the original case, was a practical issue.....\nu+16b9\nHowever, there must be some flexibility here:\n\"That the waking Cargo was memory-wiped in the same fashion as as the Sleepers were seems the obvious implication. There is simply no way people would come to _believe in_ the Whorl Gods and forget their true natures in the few centuries since the Whorl left Urth. In fact, it is hard for me to see how any real observant religion could have ever been more than something for kooky cults.\"\nWhile this is reasonable, we have to allow room for the author to carry out his plans. The ease with which humans forget, or lose their faith or regain it or find it in something else, might be a starting point as well as it might be an end point for Wolfe." } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Dave Tallman", "address": "davetallman at msn.com" }, "date": "2010-09-14T02:46:04+00:00", "subject": "(urth) The face of Pas", "in_reply_to": "<391421.83147.qm@web84104.mail.mud.yahoo.com>", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Roy C. Lackey wrote:\nCould be. But I think it a little odd that no one in seven books ever\nsuggests that Silk, even at the age of forty-three, looks anything like the\nPas of art or theophany, and Mint saw him at that age. In the case of\nSeverian, an innkeeper pointed out to him how much he looked like an older\nOuen.\n\n\nWe ought to look at resemblances people really notice in the books and see\nwhat explanations are possible." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "1) Silk mistakes his astral-travelling older self for Patera Pike. This was\nin bad light and just a glimpse of the lower part of his face.\n2) Severian mistakes the astral-travelling Silk for Master Malrubius. This\nis more troubling because Sev got a longer look and he has a\nnear-photographic memory.\n\nThe Severian that Silk meets is probably an early iteration, maybe even\nSev1. He keeps his dog longer, and he has a relationship with Merryn and\nprobably not with Thecla. It seems like he draws inspiration from the\ngoodness of Silk, and maybe that \"ghost\" incident drove him out of the Guild\nand to the north to become Autarch for the first time. The aquastor who\nhelps him in later iterations is probably drawn more from Silk than from the\nold Malrubius.\n\nBut why does Silk look so much like Malrubius to Sev?" } ] }, { "message_id": "<003101cb53c3$556e2100$b5cf4a0c@rclackey>", "from": { "name": "Roy C. Lackey", "address": "rclackey at stic.net" }, "date": "2010-09-14T04:14:22+00:00", "subject": "(urth) The face of Pas", "in_reply_to": "<4C8E5FF5.1060109@gmail.com>", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "James Wynn wrote:\n[snip]" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "But the idea that Typhon was egotistically--let alone\n\"manically\"--obsessed with his face is simply not true based on his\ndiscussion with Severian in Sword of the Lictor. Keeping his original\nhead, in the original case, was a practical issue:" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Having one's head cut off to preserve the face is very radical, particularly\nif there were other options available, such as clones and chem bodies that\ncould be made to look human, as was the demonstrated case with Potto and\nLemur. One for Siyuf was whipped out in about two-day's time." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "\"My physicians, of whom I naturally had the best of many worlds,\ntold me it might be possible for me to take a new body, their first\nthought\nbeing to enclose my brain in the skull previously occupied by another.\nYou see\nthe flaw in that?\"[snip] The face would be lost, and it is the face that\nmen are\naccustomed to obey!\"\n\nSo Typhon believed that if he had a new face, his subjects would treat\nhim as an heir rather than the rule to whom they had already accespted.\nBut in dealing with memory-wiped Cargo this was not important at all.**\nPas's appearance was limited only by Typhon's sense of humor. The whole\nthing was intended as a joke. A parody. Otherwise, why give Piaton any\nrole at all.\n\n**That the waking Cargo was memory-wiped in the same fashion as as the\nSleepers were seems the obvious implication." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Neither the waking Cargo nor the Sleepers were memory-wiped, but in the case\nof the Sleepers, at least, their brains were tinkered with. \"You talked\nabout Mucor. The monarch's doctors tinkered with the minds of the men and\nwomen he put into the whorl as Blood's surgeon did with hers. But more\nskillfully, erasing as much as they dared of their patients' personal\nlives.\" (LAKE, chap. 12, 299)" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "There is simply no way\npeople would come to _believe in_ the Whorl Gods and forget their true\nnatures in the few centuries since the Whorl left Urth. In fact, it is\nhard for me to see how any real observant religion could have ever been\nmore than something for kooky cults." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "This is what the text has to say about it:\n\n\"There you have it. The surgeons found, however, that their patients'\nmemories of their ruler, his family, and some of his officials were too\ndeeply entrenched to be eliminated altogether. To obscure the record, they\nrenamed them. Their ruler, the man who called himself the monarch, became\nPas, the shrew he had married Echidna, and so on. She had borne him seven\nchildren. We call them Scylla, Molpe, Tartaros, Hierax, Thelxiepeia, Phaea,\nand Sphigx.\" (ibid)\n\nWhat did Typhon's wife and young children have to do with anything? Why were\nthe memories of Typhon's family so deeply entrenched in the minds of the\npeople put aboard the _Whorl_ that not even a surgeon's knife could\neliminate them? For an answer, look to what Lemur next had to say: \"The\nmonarch had wanted a son to succeed him. Scylla was as strong-willed as the\nmonarch himself, but female. It is a law of nature, as concerns our race,\nthat females are subject to males. Her father allowed her to found our city,\nhowever, and many others. She founded your Chapter as well, a parody of the\nstate religion of her own whorl. She was hardly more than a child, you\nunderstand, and the rest younger even than she.\" (ibid)\n\nThere is your \"parody\". Typhon and his family were entrenched in the minds\nof the people of Urth because they had been forced upon the people of Urth,\npossibly in the form of the state religion. The initial waking Cargo were a\ncaptive congregation with even less choice in the matter than when they were\non Urth, regardless of the \"true natures\" of Typhon's screwed-up kids.\nWhether or not worship of Typhon and his family was the state religion on\nUrth, the fact remains that his family was entrenched in the minds of people\nput aboard the _Whorl_, and the only solution found to what was apparently\nsome sort of problem associated with that fact was to rename them. Renamed,\nthey became gods in Mainframe. For the religion of Viron to be a parody of\nthe state religion on Urth, the state religion on Urth must have been\npolytheistic, otherwise the solution would have generated more problems than\nthe solution was intended to remedy.\n\n-Roy" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Lee Berman", "address": "severiansola at hotmail.com" }, "date": "2010-09-14T13:42:45+00:00", "subject": "(urth) The face of Pas", "in_reply_to": "<003101cb53c3$556e2100$b5cf4a0c@rclackey>", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Lemur: \"The monarch had wanted a son to succeed him. Scylla was as strong-willed as the\nmonarch himself, but female. It is a law of nature, as concerns our race, that females are \nsubject to males. Her father allowed her to found our city, however, and many others. She \nfounded your Chapter as well, a parody of *the state religion of her own whorl*. She was hardly \nmore than a child, you understand, and the rest younger even than she.\"" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Roy C. Lackey: For the religion of Viron to be a parody of the state religion on Urth, the state \nreligion on Urth must have been polytheistic." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": " \nTyphon ruled a multi-planet empire. To me the above passage suggests that Typhon installed Scylla \nas the ruler of another planet and it is that place which has the polytheistic religion Viron's was \nbased upon. The Empire had much interstellar travel and trade so I don't see that everything on The \nWhorl needed to come from Urth.\n \n \nI have to wonder about Lemur's \"law of nature, as concerns our race\". He is more than slightly aware\nof Trivigaunte. Does he consider Trivigaunte a violation of the laws of nature? Or is there perhaps\nsome question about which race of beings he is talking about? \t\t \t \t\t " } ] }, { "message_id": "<169BAFC1964D4F89B8C1417235AE5A4C@jill>", "from": { "name": "Gerry Quinn", "address": "gerryq at indigo.ie" }, "date": "2010-09-14T14:57:28+00:00", "subject": "(urth) The face of Pas", "in_reply_to": "<004401cb52e8$b222b360$54cf4a0c@rclackey>", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "From: \"Roy C. Lackey\" \nI also think it was probably Piaton's head she had replaced with Silk's.\nEven so, since Kypris was trying to connect Silk with Pas, if she showed \nhim\ntheir two heads and he recognized only one of them as his own, it is \neasier\nfor me to believe that was because the Pas head didn't really look like\nSilk. Typhon's obsession with his own face suggests that his Pas image\nwould have been the same as it had been when scanned, as the fact that\nPiaton's idiot head remained part of the digitized image of Pas \nreinforces." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "It's worth noting that the *significance* of the two heads may be different \nin the case of digitised Pas, compared to biological Typhon.\n\nGranted, in one vision we see Piaton struggling for breath. But elsewhere \nSilk thinks of two heads as being a sign of wisdom, universality, or some \nsuch - he thinks of the Outsider as having two or more voices. Now Kypris \nis not Silk, but she could have been suggesting some such idea.\n\nIt seems probable to me that Pas has failed to fully ressurect, and Silk is \nneeded to replace some significant part of him.\n\n- Gerry Quinn\n\n\n " } ] }, { "message_id": "<4C8F94B6.4070106@gmail.com>", "from": { "name": "James Wynn", "address": "crushtv at gmail.com" }, "date": "2010-09-14T15:28:54+00:00", "subject": "(urth) The face of Pas", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": " Roy - Could be. But I think it a little odd that no one in seven books ever\n suggests that Silk, even at the age of forty-three, looks anything like the\n Pas of art or theophany, and Mint saw him at that age. In the case of\n Severian, an innkeeper pointed out to him how much he looked like an older\n Ouen." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Even people strongly disinclined to \"clone-theories\" have recognized \nstrong associations between Silk and Typhon/Pas. I suspect Wolfe --who \nleft far more subtle narrative details inexplicit-- considered such a \nreference to be too \"on the nose\"." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "D. Tallman- We ought to look at resemblances people really notice in \nthe books and see what explanations are possible. 1) Silk mistakes his \nastral-travelling older self for Patera Pike. This was in bad light \nand just a glimpse of the lower part of his face." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I now believe that the real Patera Pike could not have been the \nastral-traveling Rajan. Too many references to Pike as a young man. \nSince I consider the \"mistaken identity\" explanation unacceptable in a \nWolfe novel, clones are the only explanation I can think of. If anyone \ncan think of another reason Silk would mistake the Rajan for Pike, I'm \nopen for business." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "2) Severian mistakes the astral-travelling Silk for Master Malrubius. \nThis is more troubling because Sev got a longer look and he has a \nnear-photographic memory." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Don Doggett had a very wide-ranging clone theory that involved even \nSeverian himself being a clone of one of the sons of Typhon. Obviously, \nwith Time travel on the table in the Book and Urth of the New Sun, there \nare other explanations available. But clones should not be dispensed in \nthis case for merely philosophical preferences.\n\nSev _does_ make blatant errors in memory where he should not. But I \ndoubt that is the issue here." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "The Severian that Silk meets is probably an early iteration, maybe \neven Sev1. He keeps his dog longer, and he has a relationship with \nMerryn and probably not with Thecla. It seems like he draws \ninspiration from the goodness of Silk, and maybe that \"ghost\" incident \ndrove him out of the Guild and to the north to become Autarch for the \nfirst time. The aquastor who helps him in later iterations is probably \ndrawn more from Silk than from the old Malrubius." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Minor errors in timelines are notorious as errors authors make in \nsequels. I would prefer that-- since otherwise divining what is going on \nbecomes even more daunting.\n\nu+16b9" } ] }, { "message_id": "<4C8FA25B.5040409@gmail.com>", "from": { "name": "James Wynn", "address": "crushtv at gmail.com" }, "date": "2010-09-14T16:27:07+00:00", "subject": "(urth) The face of Pas", "in_reply_to": "<003101cb53c3$556e2100$b5cf4a0c@rclackey>", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "Me - But the idea that Typhon was egotistically--let alone\n\"manically\"--obsessed with his face is simply not true based on his\ndiscussion with Severian in Sword of the Lictor. Keeping his original\nhead, in the original case, was a practical issue:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Roy = Having one's head cut off to preserve the face is very radical, particularly\nif there were other options available, such as clones and chem bodies that\ncould be made to look human, as was the demonstrated case with Potto and\nLemur. One for Siyuf was whipped out in about two-day's time." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "There are downsides to chem bodies as the Ayuntamiento discovered. Being \ndownloaded into a chem body might reasonably give Typhon no more actual \nlegal status than uploading his personality into a computer. There is no \nevidence of fast-grown clones being an available option in any of the \nnovels. The point remains that Typhon said he used the method he did for \npractical reasons. Not egotistical ones." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "Me - **That the waking Cargo was memory-wiped in the same fashion as as the\nSleepers were seems the obvious implication." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Roy - Neither the waking Cargo nor the Sleepers were memory-wiped, but in the case\nof the Sleepers, at least, their brains were tinkered with." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Yes, The memories of the waking cargo were strategically wiped and added \nto. That's what I was getting at -- as described in quotes you offered. \nThey didn't forget that they had left Urth. They probably knew initially \nwhat the purpose of their cards was (although the significance of their \nvalue might have unintentionally been softened). But they did not \nremember Typhon as normal human dictator. The augurs and sybils and the \ncongregants thought of their religion as one practiced throughout their \nlives.\n\nThe *idea* of Typhon and his family could not be expunged. It is \nunlikely that any people on Urth thought of him as a two-headed being. \nHe could not have been in that form long before he died.\n\nAnd if there had been a religion centered around Typhon --one that could \nnot be expunged from the memory of the Cargo-- then it would not have \ndissipated with his death as easily as his government did (dividing \nallegiance between the competing alien powers)." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Roy - What did Typhon's wife and young children have to do with anything? Why were\nthe memories of Typhon's family so deeply entrenched in the minds of the\npeople put aboard the _Whorl_ that not even a surgeon's knife could\neliminate them? For an answer, look to what Lemur next had to say: \"The\nmonarch had wanted a son to succeed him. Scylla was as strong-willed as the\nmonarch himself, but female. It is a law of nature, as concerns our race,\nthat females are subject to males. Her father allowed her to found our city,\nhowever, and many others. She founded your Chapter as well, a parody of the\nstate religion of her own whorl. She was hardly more than a child, you\nunderstand, and the rest younger even than she.\" (ibid)\n\nThere is your \"parody\". Typhon and his family were entrenched in the minds\nof the people of Urth because they had been forced upon the people of Urth,\npossibly in the form of the state religion." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "No. I do not see how this can be at all. The text you are providing does \nnot map to your conclusion. Not at all.\n\nThe child Cilinia could not have designed all the traditions of the \nChapter. No way. Typhon's committees did that on an ad hoc basis-- the \nsame way they put together the Writings. When Lemur say she \"founded\" \nthe Chapter and Viron and other cities, he is talking about a titular \nrole--with little more input than a suggestion here and there. That's \nwhy Lemur stipulates that she was little more than a child.\n\nThe state religion on Urth was real one- an established one analogous to \nthe Catholic Church...thus the similarities. Your explanation of the \nparody leaves little room for parody. Nor does it explain how religions \nof other cultures are also parodies of known world religions. For \nexample, the parody of Islam among the Trivigaunte does not require a \nmale god for ultimate devotion--everything is reversed from Islamic \nculture regarding male-female relations.\n\nThe reason Typhon and family are so ingrained in the minds of the \nUrthlings is obvious from looking at the personality cults established \nby lesser tyrants like Stalin and Saddam, and the obsession people have \nwith their royal families (ala the U.K.)" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Whether or not worship of Typhon and his family was the state religion on\nUrth, the fact remains that his family was entrenched in the minds of people\nput aboard the _Whorl_, and the only solution found to what was apparently\nsome sort of problem associated with that fact was to rename them. Renamed,\nthey became gods in Mainframe. For the religion of Viron to be a parody of\nthe state religion on Urth, the state religion on Urth must have been\npolytheistic, otherwise the solution would have generated more problems than\nthe solution was intended to remedy." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Urth's state religion was not centered around the worship of Typhon and \nhis family. There's no evidence of a surviving cult of worship around \nTyphon in Severian's day. There is no hint that the people the \nConciliator encountered viewed him that way.\n\nI don't think Wolfe the author was so constrained that the state \nreligion the Chapter parodied had to be polytheistic. Typhon only needed \nto have the personalities of his family to be redrawn in caricature. The \nTyphonic family was an issue, but the various religions (as I said, \nthose of other cities were vastly different) he didn't care about at \nall. He played with them freely.\n\nIf I were to carry what you are arguing to its logical end, then Typhon \nwas undermining his plan by having Echidna with snake hair and Scylla \nwith tentacles. And little Hierax as the god of death? Really?\n\nu+16b9" } ] }, { "message_id": "<4C8FA571.3060106@gmail.com>", "from": { "name": "James Wynn", "address": "crushtv at gmail.com" }, "date": "2010-09-14T16:40:17+00:00", "subject": "(urth) The face of Pas", "in_reply_to": "<169BAFC1964D4F89B8C1417235AE5A4C@jill>", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Gerry Quinn--It seems probable to me that Pas has failed to fully \nressurect, and Silk is needed to replace some significant part of him. " }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "That seems to be the implication based on the analogous situation with \nScylla. Pas was wiped from the Mainframe. Fragments of him survived in \nPatera Jerboa, and IMO Oreb and Sand. But these were not sufficient for \nhim to perform his required operations in Mainframe. That Silk was seen \nas an important viable supplement to Pas is one of the bigger hints that \nhe is a clone of Typhon.\n\nWhat the technicians could not have anticipated was that their clone \nwould have been enlightened by the Outsider. Thus, in a sense, the \nOutsider has become Pas.\n\nu+16b9" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Jack Smith", "address": "jack.smith.1946 at gmail.com" }, "date": "2010-09-14T16:41:29+00:00", "subject": "(urth) The face of Pas", "in_reply_to": "<4C8FA25B.5040409@gmail.com>", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "\"I don't think Wolfe the author was so constrained that the state religion\nthe Chapter parodied had to be polytheistic. \"\n\nYes. I've always taken the parody (of the state religion and of\nCatholicism) to consist of such things as a celibate priesthood, celibate\nnuns who teach children, confession, absolution, last rites, and the voided\ncross. The original religion does not have to have been polytheistic." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "On Tue, Sep 14, 2010 at 12:27 PM, James Wynn wrote:\n\n Me - But the idea that Typhon was egotistically--let alone" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 3, "text": "\"manically\"--obsessed with his face is simply not true based on his\ndiscussion with Severian in Sword of the Lictor. Keeping his original\nhead, in the original case, was a practical issue:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "Roy = Having one's head cut off to preserve the face is very radical,\nparticularly\n\nif there were other options available, such as clones and chem bodies that\ncould be made to look human, as was the demonstrated case with Potto and\nLemur. One for Siyuf was whipped out in about two-day's time." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "There are downsides to chem bodies as the Ayuntamiento discovered. Being\ndownloaded into a chem body might reasonably give Typhon no more actual\nlegal status than uploading his personality into a computer. There is no\nevidence of fast-grown clones being an available option in any of the\nnovels. The point remains that Typhon said he used the method he did for\npractical reasons. Not egotistical ones.\n\n Me - **That the waking Cargo was memory-wiped in the same fashion as as\nthe" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 3, "text": "Sleepers were seems the obvious implication." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "Roy - Neither the waking Cargo nor the Sleepers were memory-wiped, but in\nthe case\n\nof the Sleepers, at least, their brains were tinkered with." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Yes, The memories of the waking cargo were strategically wiped and added\nto. That's what I was getting at -- as described in quotes you offered. They\ndidn't forget that they had left Urth. They probably knew initially what the\npurpose of their cards was (although the significance of their value might\nhave unintentionally been softened). But they did not remember Typhon as\nnormal human dictator. The augurs and sybils and the congregants thought of\ntheir religion as one practiced throughout their lives.\n\nThe *idea* of Typhon and his family could not be expunged. It is unlikely\nthat any people on Urth thought of him as a two-headed being. He could not\nhave been in that form long before he died.\n\nAnd if there had been a religion centered around Typhon --one that could\nnot be expunged from the memory of the Cargo-- then it would not have\ndissipated with his death as easily as his government did (dividing\nallegiance between the competing alien powers).\n\n Roy - What did Typhon's wife and young children have to do with anything?" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "Why were\n\nthe memories of Typhon's family so deeply entrenched in the minds of the\npeople put aboard the _Whorl_ that not even a surgeon's knife could\neliminate them? For an answer, look to what Lemur next had to say: \"The\nmonarch had wanted a son to succeed him. Scylla was as strong-willed as\nthe\nmonarch himself, but female. It is a law of nature, as concerns our race,\nthat females are subject to males. Her father allowed her to found our\ncity,\nhowever, and many others. She founded your Chapter as well, a parody of\nthe\nstate religion of her own whorl. She was hardly more than a child, you\nunderstand, and the rest younger even than she.\" (ibid)\n\nThere is your \"parody\". Typhon and his family were entrenched in the minds\nof the people of Urth because they had been forced upon the people of\nUrth,\npossibly in the form of the state religion." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "No. I do not see how this can be at all. The text you are providing does\nnot map to your conclusion. Not at all.\n\nThe child Cilinia could not have designed all the traditions of the\nChapter. No way. Typhon's committees did that on an ad hoc basis-- the same\nway they put together the Writings. When Lemur say she \"founded\" the Chapter\nand Viron and other cities, he is talking about a titular role--with little\nmore input than a suggestion here and there. That's why Lemur stipulates\nthat she was little more than a child.\n\nThe state religion on Urth was real one- an established one analogous to\nthe Catholic Church...thus the similarities. Your explanation of the parody\nleaves little room for parody. Nor does it explain how religions of other\ncultures are also parodies of known world religions. For example, the parody\nof Islam among the Trivigaunte does not require a male god for ultimate\ndevotion--everything is reversed from Islamic culture regarding male-female\nrelations.\n\nThe reason Typhon and family are so ingrained in the minds of the Urthlings\nis obvious from looking at the personality cults established by lesser\ntyrants like Stalin and Saddam, and the obsession people have with their\nroyal families (ala the U.K.)\n\n\n Whether or not worship of Typhon and his family was the state religion on\nUrth, the fact remains that his family was entrenched in the minds of\npeople\nput aboard the _Whorl_, and the only solution found to what was apparently\nsome sort of problem associated with that fact was to rename them." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "Renamed,\nthey became gods in Mainframe. For the religion of Viron to be a parody of\nthe state religion on Urth, the state religion on Urth must have been\npolytheistic, otherwise the solution would have generated more problems\nthan\nthe solution was intended to remedy." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Urth's state religion was not centered around the worship of Typhon and his\nfamily. There's no evidence of a surviving cult of worship around Typhon in\nSeverian's day. There is no hint that the people the Conciliator encountered\nviewed him that way.\n\nI don't think Wolfe the author was so constrained that the state religion\nthe Chapter parodied had to be polytheistic. Typhon only needed to have the\npersonalities of his family to be redrawn in caricature. The Typhonic family\nwas an issue, but the various religions (as I said, those of other cities\nwere vastly different) he didn't care about at all. He played with them\nfreely.\n\nIf I were to carry what you are arguing to its logical end, then Typhon was\nundermining his plan by having Echidna with snake hair and Scylla with\ntentacles. And little Hierax as the god of death? Really?\n\nu+16b9\n\n_______________________________________________" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Dan'l Danehy-Oakes", "address": "danldo at gmail.com" }, "date": "2010-09-14T16:44:54+00:00", "subject": "(urth) The face of Pas", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "On Tue, Sep 14, 2010 at 9:41 AM, Jack Smith wrote:\n\"I don't think Wolfe the author was so constrained that the state religion\nthe Chapter parodied had to be polytheistic. \"\nYes. ?I've always taken the parody (of the state religion and of\nCatholicism) to consist of such things as a celibate priesthood, celibate\nnuns who teach children, confession, absolution, last rites, and the voided\ncross. — The original religion does not have to have been polytheistic." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "However - since you have (correctly in my opinion) opened up the\ncan-O-worms of parodied Catholicism - it might be argued that a\npolytheistic religion, where all the gods are members of the same\nfamily, could stand as a parody of the relations of the Holy Trinity\nin Catholicsm." }, { "kind": "sig", "depth": 0, "text": "Dan'l Danehy-Oakes" } ] }, { "message_id": "<005201cb542d$f01d3aa0$88d04a0c@rclackey>", "from": { "name": "Roy C. Lackey", "address": "rclackey at stic.net" }, "date": "2010-09-14T16:57:30+00:00", "subject": "(urth) The face of Pas", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Dave Tallman wrote:\nWe ought to look at resemblances people really notice in the books and\nsee\nwhat explanations are possible.\n\n1) Silk mistakes his astral-travelling older self for Patera Pike." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I don't accept the premise. Wolfe, in that List questionnaire, said that\nPike on the stairs of the manse was a ghost. I see no reason to doubt him." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "This was\nin bad light and just a glimpse of the lower part of his face.\n2) Severian mistakes the astral-travelling Silk for Master Malrubius. This\nis more troubling because Sev got a longer look and he has a\nnear-photographic memory." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "What scene do you mean? When Silkhorn scared the bejesus out of Gurloes\n(RTTW, 396)? Sev just said the bird belonged to Malrubius in an attempt to\navoid being punished and Silkhorn obliged him by putting his hand on\nGurloes' shoulder. Gurloes thought he was seeing a ghost when he turned\naround and saw the light-haired Silkhorn in what looked to be a guild cloak.\n(Silkhorn on that trip didn't look like Horn, he looked like a younger Silk\nthan he did back on Blue [388].) Sev knew that Oreb had come there with\nSilkhorn; Oreb had been there when they went to the necropolis.\n\n-Roy" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Tim O'Donnell", "address": "timodonn at gmail.com" }, "date": "2010-09-14T17:03:50+00:00", "subject": "(urth) The face of Pas", "in_reply_to": "<005201cb542d$f01d3aa0$88d04a0c@rclackey>", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "James Wynn wrote" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "But the idea that Typhon was egotistically--let alone\n\"manically\"--obsessed with his face is simply not true based on his\ndiscussion with Severian in Sword of the Lictor. Keeping his original\nhead, in the original case, was a practical issue:" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I have long suspected (with little evidence to be fair) that Typhon needed\nto keep his head/face/brain in order to be able to exercise his magic\npowers. These powers might survive cloning but perhaps his powers would not\nsurvive uploading into a chem or into mainframe. This would be a pretty\npractical reason to keep his head with the story of his face a cover so as\nnot to hint at the real source of his power." } ] }, { "message_id": "<4C8FAF65.7000505@gmail.com>", "from": { "name": "James Wynn", "address": "crushtv at gmail.com" }, "date": "2010-09-14T17:22:45+00:00", "subject": "(urth) The face of Pas", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "Jack Smith -\nI've always taken the parody (of the state religion and of\nCatholicism) to consist of such things as a celibate priesthood, celibate\nnuns who teach children, confession, absolution, last rites, and the voided\ncross. The original religion does not have to have been polytheistic." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Dan'l Danehy-Oakes- However - since you have (correctly in my opinion) opened up the\ncan-O-worms of parodied Catholicism - it might be argued that a\npolytheistic religion, where all the gods are members of the same\nfamily, could stand as a parody of the relations of the Holy Trinity\nin Catholicsm." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Also, the veneration of the Holy Family and saints. All of these were \nall presented as evidence, by Islamic competitors, that 8th c \nChristianity was polytheistic.\n\nWhile there might have been some of that in there, mostly I think Wolfe \nfound it most appealing to create a demonic version Greek mythology as \nwell as tossing in some Etruscan rituals and forms and shunting the \nwhole thing onto a gnostic foundation.\n\nu+16b9" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Dan'l Danehy-Oakes", "address": "danldo at gmail.com" }, "date": "2010-09-14T17:29:23+00:00", "subject": "(urth) The face of Pas", "in_reply_to": "<4C8FAF65.7000505@gmail.com>", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "On Tue, Sep 14, 2010 at 10:22 AM, James Wynn wrote:\nWhile there might have been some of that in there, mostly I think Wolfe\nfound it most appealing to create a demonic version Greek mythology as well\nas tossing in some Etruscan rituals and forms and shunting the whole thing\nonto a gnostic foundation." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I agree about Greek, and don't know much about Etruscan stuff, but\ntake it from a Catholic: the rituals and forms of the Chapter are dead\non parodies of Catholic forms and rituals." }, { "kind": "sig", "depth": 0, "text": "Dan'l Danehy-Oakes" } ] }, { "message_id": "<4C8FB2B8.6080003@gmail.com>", "from": { "name": "James Wynn", "address": "crushtv at gmail.com" }, "date": "2010-09-14T17:36:56+00:00", "subject": "(urth) The face of Pas", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": " On 9/14/2010 12:29 PM, Dan'l Danehy-Oakes wrote:\nOn Tue, Sep 14, 2010 at 10:22 AM, James Wynn wrote:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "While there might have been some of that in there, mostly I think Wolfe\nfound it most appealing to create a demonic version Greek mythology as well\nas tossing in some Etruscan rituals and forms and shunting the whole thing\nonto a gnostic foundation." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "I agree about Greek, and don't know much about Etruscan stuff, but\ntake it from a Catholic: the rituals and forms of the Chapter are dead\non parodies of Catholic forms and rituals" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I agree. The shriving. The \"sign of addition\". It all says \"Roman \nCatholic!\" in all-caps. But \"augur\" and the practice of \"augury\" is from \nthe Etruscan religions. \"Sybil\" is a Latin word, derived from the Greek. \nSo it harkens back to pre-Christian Italy as well. Also the form of \ntemples having holes in their ceilings.\n\nu+16b9" } ] }, { "message_id": "<4C8FB2D5.3020702@gmail.com>", "from": { "name": "James Wynn", "address": "crushtv at gmail.com" }, "date": "2010-09-14T17:37:25+00:00", "subject": "(urth) The face of Pas", "in_reply_to": "<005201cb542d$f01d3aa0$88d04a0c@rclackey>", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": " On 9/14/2010 11:57 AM, Roy C. Lackey wrote:\nDave Tallman wrote:\n > We ought to look at resemblances people really notice in the books and\nsee\nwhat explanations are possible." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "1) Silk mistakes his astral-travelling older self for Patera Pike." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "I don't accept the premise. Wolfe, in that List questionnaire, said that\nPike on the stairs of the manse was a ghost. I see no reason to doubt him." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Me either. Here's the text:\n\n4. /Was what Silk saw in the manteion Pike's ghost, or an aquastor, or \nwhat?/\n-- It was seen in the manse, not the manteion; it wasn't machine made.\n\n\n27. /Is Pike's ghost really Quetzal?/\n-- No.\n\nI believe in an interview, he was asked if Pike's ghost were a \"real \nghost\" and Wolfe replied that he was a \"real ghost\".\n\n\nThe Rajan is not machine made. In fact, he is a genuine ghost in that he \nis a disembodied spirit of someone who has died -- Horn and Silk.\n\nBut the figure of \"Pike\" vanishing in a \"silver mist\" simply does not \nimply a \"gothic\" ghost.\n\nRemember that when Wolfe was answering these questions no one had yet \nread \"The Book of the Short Sun\". Thumb through those volumes and note \nhow many references you get to ghosts. The Rajan twice (at least) denies \nto Severian that he is a ghost. He also denies that he the spirit of a \ndead man. But we, the readers, know that denial is ironic. He has died \ntwice...three times if you count the time Silk died in the pit. His \nspirit is out of his body. The only sense that Severian is wrong is in \nthat he thinks they are ghosts like Catherine Earnshaw in \"Wuthering \nHeights\". Silk does seem to sort of encounter those types of ghosts in \nhis dreams. Pikes ghost is just obviously a different sort.\n\nu+16b9" } ] }, { "message_id": "<00bc01cb5440$ba4c6500$88d04a0c@rclackey>", "from": { "name": "Roy C. Lackey", "address": "rclackey at stic.net" }, "date": "2010-09-14T19:12:01+00:00", "subject": "(urth) The face of Pas", "in_reply_to": "<4C8FA25B.5040409@gmail.com>", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "James Wynn wrote:\nThere are downsides to chem bodies as the Ayuntamiento discovered. Being\ndownloaded into a chem body might reasonably give Typhon no more actual\nlegal status than uploading his personality into a computer." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Legal status!? What would an egotistical tyrant care about legal status? Was\nhe going to be voted out of office or something?" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "There is no\nevidence of fast-grown clones being an available option in any of the\nnovels." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Thecla was just a few years older than Severian, yet her fully-grown khaibit\nwas working in a whore house. Lest anyone misunderstand, I do not subscribe\nto clone theories in LS/SS. Not at all. I'm just pointing out a fact in NS." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "The point remains that Typhon said he used the method he did for\npractical reasons. Not egotistical ones." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "That is your view. It is not mine.\n\n[snip]" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "The *idea* of Typhon and his family could not be expunged. It is\nunlikely that any people on Urth thought of him as a two-headed being.\nHe could not have been in that form long before he died." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I agree with that much.\n\n[snip]" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "The child Cilinia could not have designed all the traditions of the\nChapter. No way. Typhon's committees did that on an ad hoc basis-- the\nsame way they put together the Writings. When Lemur say she \"founded\"\nthe Chapter and Viron and other cities, he is talking about a titular\nrole--with little more input than a suggestion here and there. That's\nwhy Lemur stipulates that she was little more than a child." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Regardless of who designed the traditions of Viron, the fact remains that\nthe city, complete with its scores of manteions, was already built when the\nfirst people came aboard -- Marble was there at that time and said so; she\nwas working as a maid at the Sun Street manteion. The Sacred Windows were up\nand running with Viron's Chapter in charge of daily operations in the\nmanteions. And like it or not, the city's Charter was said to have been\nwritten by Scylla: \"The Charter, eh? Written in-ah-deity by Scylla and\ncorrected by Pas.\" (LAKE, chap. 7, 188) Thus, her role in the founding of\nViron and its institutions was not just titular.That she was a girl of about\nthirteen at the time she was scanned is not my problem to explain; that's\nthe way Wolfe wrote it.\n\n-Roy" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Lee Berman", "address": "severiansola at hotmail.com" }, "date": "2010-09-14T19:31:08+00:00", "subject": "(urth) The face of Pas", "in_reply_to": "<00bc01cb5440$ba4c6500$88d04a0c@rclackey>", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Tim O'Donnell: I have long suspected (with little evidence to be fair) that Typhon needed\nto keep his head/face/brain in order to be able to exercise his magic powers. These powers \nmight survive cloning but perhaps his powers would not survive uploading into a chem or into \nmainframe. This would be a pretty practical reason to keep his head with the story of his \nface a cover so as not to hint at the real source of his power." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I find Typhon's superhuman powers of telepathy and clairvoyance to be quite significant (though\nmost often glossed over in discussions of him). No other characters in BotNS that I can think of\nhave similar powers. Maybe Tzadkiel, who seem to speak to Severian during a dream.\n \n \nI think the Mandragora's similar powers support your suggestion that Typhon's powers can be \nduplicated via cloning. (mythological Typhon being a man-dragon) \t\t \t \t\t " } ] }, { "message_id": "<4C8FDC45.4090600@gmail.com>", "from": { "name": "James Wynn", "address": "crushtv at gmail.com" }, "date": "2010-09-14T20:34:13+00:00", "subject": "(urth) The face of Pas", "in_reply_to": "<00bc01cb5440$ba4c6500$88d04a0c@rclackey>", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "James Wynn-\nThere are downsides to chem bodies as the Ayuntamiento discovered. Being\ndownloaded into a chem body might reasonably give Typhon no more actual\nlegal status than uploading his personality into a computer." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Roy-\nLegal status!? What would an egotistical tyrant care about legal status? Was\nhe going to be voted out of office or something?" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "A tyrant must induce people to obey him. Would anyone obey a robot? \nMamelta's attitude toward them makes me think the idea would be \npreposterous. Secular tyrants like Stalin and Saddam maintained total \ncontrol even as thet killed and terrorized everyone around them. It's \nalmost like magic act. Getting venal people work hard to set up a system \nwith you yourself at the top is a subject that has always fanscinated \nhistorians. Xenophon was not the first." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "JW- There is no\nevidence of fast-grown clones being an available option in any of the\nnovels." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Roy- Thecla was just a few years older than Severian, yet her fully-grown khaibit\nwas working in a whore house. Lest anyone misunderstand, I do not subscribe\nto clone theories in LS/SS. Not at all. I'm just pointing out a fact in NS." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "And presumably she was implanted around the same time as Thecla." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "JW - The point remains that Typhon said he used the method he did for\npractical reasons. Not egotistical ones." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Roy - That is your view. It is not mine." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Hmmm...We are talking about what Typhon _says_, right? I'd be curious to \nhear your alternate reading on what Typhon _says_ his reasons were:\n\n\"My physicians, of whom I naturally had the best of many worlds,\ntold me it might be possible for me to take a new body, their first thought\nbeing to enclose my brain in the skull previously occupied by another. \nYou see\nthe flaw in that?\"[snip] The face would be lost, and it is the face that \nmen are\naccustomed to obey!\"\n\nI gather two relevant points here 1) Implanting his brain in a young \nbody was an option for his doctors. 2)Typhon felt he had to keep his \nface because it was the face his subjects had grown \"accustomed to obey\"." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "The child Cilinia could not have designed all the traditions of the\nChapter. No way. Typhon's committees did that on an ad hoc basis-- the\nsame way they put together the Writings. When Lemur say she \"founded\"\nthe Chapter and Viron and other cities, he is talking about a titular\nrole--with little more input than a suggestion here and there. That's\nwhy Lemur stipulates that she was little more than a child." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Regardless of who designed the traditions of Viron, the fact remains that\nthe city, complete with its scores of manteions, was already built when the\nfirst people came aboard -- Marble was there at that time and said so; she\nwas working as a maid at the Sun Street manteion. The Sacred Windows were up\nand running with Viron's Chapter in charge of daily operations in the\nmanteions. And like it or not, the city's Charter was said to have been\nwritten by Scylla: \"The Charter, eh? Written in-ah-deity by Scylla and\ncorrected by Pas.\" (LAKE, chap. 7, 188) Thus, her role in the founding of\nViron and its institutions was not just titular.That she was a girl of about\nthirteen at the time she was scanned is not my problem to explain; that's\nthe way Wolfe wrote it." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "You need to read that text a little more carefully, Roy. What Remora \nsays is:\n\n\"The Charter, eh? Written in-ah-deity by Scylla and corrected by Pas. So \nit-um-asserts.\"\n\nEven Remora, retains skepticism regarding what the Charter says \nregarding its own history.\nBut even then, what Remora and Lemur think about the founding of the \nWhorl should be taken with the same degree of skepticism: \"So he \nasserts\". And that's the way Wolfe wrote it.\n\nu+16b9" } ] }, { "message_id": "<4C901670.6040401@verizon.net>", "from": { "name": "David Stockhoff", "address": "dstockhoff at verizon.net" }, "date": "2010-09-15T00:42:24+00:00", "subject": "(urth) The face of Pas", "in_reply_to": "<4C8FB2B8.6080003@gmail.com>", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": " Not to reintroduce last month's debate topic of whether Urth and the \nWhorl are in \"our\" future or not, and thus whether the Commonwealth's \nstate religion was a decayed Catholicism, or something that might have \narisen in a parallel universe from some universal desire for such a \nthing. But---\n\nI am always struck by the way these trappings suggest that this is in \nfact what has happened---that this iteration is one without a \"savior\" \nand therefore with hollow versions of the \"true religion.\" Especially \nthe \"sign of addition\"---such a perfectly logical alternative \nexplanation for making the sign of the cross. All these real roots seem \nto have been combined out of a yearning for Catholicism by people who \ncould not have known it.\n\nEither that, or the religion was constructed by people seeking to \nimitate Catholicism without understanding it, like amateur \narchaeologists. Certainly there is evidence for that kind of deliberate, \nalmost scientific syncretism. And on the Whorl, both explanations may be \ntrue." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "On 9/14/2010 1:36 PM, James Wynn wrote:\n On 9/14/2010 12:29 PM, Dan'l Danehy-Oakes wrote:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "On Tue, Sep 14, 2010 at 10:22 AM, James Wynn wrote:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 3, "text": "While there might have been some of that in there, mostly I think Wolfe\nfound it most appealing to create a demonic version Greek mythology \nas well\nas tossing in some Etruscan rituals and forms and shunting the whole \nthing\nonto a gnostic foundation." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "I agree about Greek, and don't know much about Etruscan stuff, but\ntake it from a Catholic: the rituals and forms of the Chapter are dead\non parodies of Catholic forms and rituals" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "I agree. The shriving. The \"sign of addition\". It all says \"Roman \nCatholic!\" in all-caps. But \"augur\" and the practice of \"augury\" is \nfrom the Etruscan religions. \"Sybil\" is a Latin word, derived from the \nGreek. So it harkens back to pre-Christian Italy as well. Also the \nform of temples having holes in their ceilings.\n\nu+16b9\n_______________________________________________" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Dave Tallman", "address": "davetallman at msn.com" }, "date": "2010-09-15T01:49:18+00:00", "subject": "(urth) The face of Pas", "in_reply_to": "<4C901670.6040401@verizon.net>", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "About the apparition of \"Patera Pike\" --\n1) Pike was old when he died. RttW p. 40 says he was about eighty.\n2) The apparition is called \"the old auger,\" which happens to fit the future\nSilk perfectly.\n3) Wolfe in the Q+A session didn't ever say it was a real ghost. He said it\nwasn't machine generated and it wasn't Quetzal in disguise. That's all. If\nhe was ever more definite in another interview I'd like to see the citation.\nEven if he was it could still fir Silk/Rajan." } ] }, { "message_id": "<009b01cb5490$5be13220$82d14a0c@rclackey>", "from": { "name": "Roy C. Lackey", "address": "rclackey at stic.net" }, "date": "2010-09-15T04:42:02+00:00", "subject": "(urth) The face of Pas", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Dan'l Danehy-Oakes wrote:\nI agree about Greek, and don't know much about Etruscan stuff, but\ntake it from a Catholic: the rituals and forms of the Chapter are dead\non parodies of Catholic forms and rituals." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Sure, it's easy to see that the religion of Viron is a parody of\nCatholicism. It it also easy to see how a parody could be made in a\nHindu-based city like the one Gaon must have been based on. It is not so\neasy to see it in an Islam-based city like Trivigaunte. Lemur said that\nViron's religion was a parody of the state religion on Urth, but that says\nnothing about the other couple-hundred cities on the _Whorl_. But what he\nsaid about Typhon and his family being deeply entrenched in the minds of\npeople put aboard the ship does apply to all the other cities.\n\nThough the religion in Trivigaunte in Silk's day may have degenerated so far\nas to be all but beyond recognition, it cannot have been that way on Day\nOne. What to do with 9+ gods in such a monotheistic religion? Did all the\nother gods just agree to step aside and let Sphigx have her way?\n\n-Roy" } ] }, { "message_id": "<00a001cb5490$a87d5140$82d14a0c@rclackey>", "from": { "name": "Roy C. Lackey", "address": "rclackey at stic.net" }, "date": "2010-09-15T04:44:12+00:00", "subject": "(urth) The face of Pas", "in_reply_to": "<4C8FDC45.4090600@gmail.com>", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 3, "text": "James Wynn-\nThere are downsides to chem bodies as the Ayuntamiento discovered." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Being" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 3, "text": "downloaded into a chem body might reasonably give Typhon no more actual\nlegal status than uploading his personality into a computer." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "Roy-\nLegal status!? What would an egotistical tyrant care about legal status?" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Was" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "he going to be voted out of office or something?" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "A tyrant must induce people to obey him. Would anyone obey a robot?" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Obviously so. People obeyed Potto and Lemur and the fake Siyuf. People\ndidn't know they were robots." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 3, "text": "The child Cilinia could not have designed all the traditions of the\nChapter. No way. Typhon's committees did that on an ad hoc basis-- the\nsame way they put together the Writings. When Lemur say she \"founded\"\nthe Chapter and Viron and other cities, he is talking about a titular\nrole--with little more input than a suggestion here and there. That's\nwhy Lemur stipulates that she was little more than a child." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "Regardless of who designed the traditions of Viron, the fact remains\nthat\nthe city, complete with its scores of manteions, was already built when\nthe\nfirst people came aboard -- Marble was there at that time and said so;" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "she" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "was working as a maid at the Sun Street manteion. The Sacred Windows\nwere up\nand running with Viron's Chapter in charge of daily operations in the\nmanteions. And like it or not, the city's Charter was said to have been\nwritten by Scylla: \"The Charter, eh? Written in-ah-deity by Scylla and\ncorrected by Pas.\" (LAKE, chap. 7, 188) Thus, her role in the founding\nof\nViron and its institutions was not just titular.That she was a girl of\nabout\nthirteen at the time she was scanned is not my problem to explain;" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "that's" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "the way Wolfe wrote it." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "You need to read that text a little more carefully, Roy. What Remora\nsays is:\n\n\"The Charter, eh? Written in-ah-deity by Scylla and corrected by Pas. So\nit-um-asserts.\"" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I did read the text carefully, James. That's why I wrote \"the city's Charter\nwas **said** to have been written by Scylla\"." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Even Remora, retains skepticism regarding what the Charter says\nregarding its own history.\nBut even then, what Remora and Lemur think about the founding of the\nWhorl should be taken with the same degree of skepticism: \"So he\nasserts\". And that's the way Wolfe wrote it." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Yes he did. And if you don't like it that Hoof described the astral Cilinia\nas looking like \"a girl old enough to take care of other sprats but not old\nenough to get married\" (RTTW, 347), or that Cilinia herself, while looking\nat her remains on Urth, said \"I died young. It can't have been long after I\nwas scanned for the _Whorl_.\" (392), you can claim that it was only Hoof who\nmade the assertions and it doesn't mean what it seems to mean if it doesn't\nsuit your notion of the founding of Viron or its Chapter or whatever point\nyou really wanted to make.\n\nLook at your above assertions about what Cilinia could or could not have had\nto do with the founding of the Chapter, and that it was done by \"Typhon's\ncommittees\". Where did you get that? I stated what the text had to say about\nit, along with corroborative indications that the infrastructure for the\nChapter was in place from the get-go. Which position merits more skepticism?\n\n-Roy" } ] }, { "message_id": "<5A44845213ED46AA91AC0AC02259943A@jill>", "from": { "name": "Gerry Quinn", "address": "gerryq at indigo.ie" }, "date": "2010-09-15T10:20:23+00:00", "subject": "(urth) The face of Pas", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "----- Original Message ----- " }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "From: \"Dan'l Danehy-Oakes\" \nI agree about Greek, and don't know much about Etruscan stuff, but\ntake it from a Catholic: the rituals and forms of the Chapter are dead\non parodies of Catholic forms and rituals." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "There are certainly some rituals and forms analogous to those of \nCatholicism, although I think it should not be exaggerated - Catholicism is \nnot the only religion with hierarchies of male priests, for example. The \n'Peace of Pas' does of course correspond closely to Last Rites, or Extreme \nUnction as it was once called, and is IMO the closest to a specifically \nCatholic ritual. But some Protestant denominations have Last Rites too, and \nthe corresponding Jewish ritual does not seem so different.\n\nI think Wolfe would not think it strange to have a convergence of rituals - \nquite the opposite in fact. Indeed, I think he would say that rituals tend \nto be conserved across religions and cultures. For some hints as to this, \nconsider Severian's discussion of the coin he was given by Vodalus, or the \nway hillmen children are washed in rivers after birth (Fifth Head of \nCerberus, 2nd novella). The meanings of rituals and forms may be multiple \nand debatable, but the ritual is conserved. Could we even say: the \nOutsider's two or many voices, Pas's two heads, the Holy Trinity, even the \npantheons of polytheism in general? Silk finds a connection between the \nOutsider and Pas's two heads, but to find a connection is not to prove a \nparody or a derivation of any sort.\n\nIn short, I don't think we know enough about the state riligion of Urth in \nTyphon's time to identify it as Catholicism, though the sign of addition \ndoes indicate some Christian roots. (Elsewhere Quetzal mentions 'Ah Lah' as \na forgotten god, and refers to a somewhat modified version of the story of \nAdam and Eve. And the Chrasmological Writings seem to take a pinch of \neverything in the line of religion and related philosophy.)\n\n- Gerry Quinn\n\n\n " } ] }, { "message_id": "<4C90D9A3.3080807@gmail.com>", "from": { "name": "James Wynn", "address": "crushtv at gmail.com" }, "date": "2010-09-15T14:35:15+00:00", "subject": "(urth) The face of Pas", "in_reply_to": "<00a001cb5490$a87d5140$82d14a0c@rclackey>", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "Me -\nA tyrant must induce people to obey him. Would anyone obey a robot?" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Roy -\nObviously so. People obeyed Potto and Lemur and the fake Siyuf. People\ndidn't know they were robots." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Typhon could not have prevented those closest to him from knowing that, \nand those are the ones he had to fear and control. While the \nAyuntamiento had reasons to keep their chem-nature secret (more than \nthey even realized), robots on Urth were robots. On the Whorl they were \n\"chemical persons\"." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "Me-\nEven Remora, retains skepticism regarding what the Charter says\nregarding its own history.\nBut even then, what Remora and Lemur think about the founding of the\nWhorl should be taken with the same degree of skepticism: \"So he\nasserts\". And that's the way Wolfe wrote it." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Roy-\nYes he did. And if you don't like it that Hoof described the astral Cilinia\nas looking like \"a girl old enough to take care of other sprats but not old\nenough to get married\" (RTTW, 347), or that Cilinia herself, while looking\nat her remains on Urth, said \"I died young. It can't have been long after I\nwas scanned for the _Whorl_.\" (392), you can claim that it was only Hoof who\nmade the assertions and it doesn't mean what it seems to mean if it doesn't\nsuit your notion of the founding of Viron or its Chapter or whatever point\nyou really wanted to make." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Sigh. Roy, Roy, Roy. Do not pretend you do not understand the difference \nbetween hearsay and first hand information." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Roy-\nLook at your above assertions about what Cilinia could or could not have had\nto do with the founding of the Chapter, and that it was done by \"Typhon's\ncommittees\". Where did you get that?" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": " From an interview I recalled with Wolfe where he discussed how the \nWritings were put together. But, mainly, Typhon didn't strike me as a \nbig reader." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Roy-\nI stated what the text had to say about\nit, along with corroborative indications that the infrastructure for the\nChapter was in place from the get-go.\nWhich position merits more skepticism?" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Correction: You stated what *Remora* said the Charter said about it. You \ncan't just say \"the text says\". Context is key.\nWhat I'm saying is that I'm as skeptical about what the Charter says \nabout itself as Remora seems to be. But you are right that typically in \na Wolfe novel, when someone says something emphatically or expresses \nskepticism about something then the opposite is true. (Oh. Wait. You \ndidn't say that. That's what _I_ say.) So maybe Remora's skepticism is \nproof that along with all her other activities betraying humanity to \naliens, Cilinia was in the playroom designing the laws, streets & \nbuildings, and religious ordinances of Viron and _many other cities as \nwell_.\n\nOr maybe it was the Mainframe effigies of Pas and Scylla who did that. \nAfter all, that is _precisely_ what the \"text says\".\n\nu+16b9" } ] }, { "message_id": "<4C90DF4F.4020301@gmail.com>", "from": { "name": "James Wynn", "address": "crushtv at gmail.com" }, "date": "2010-09-15T14:59:27+00:00", "subject": "(urth) The face of Pas", "in_reply_to": "<009b01cb5490$5be13220$82d14a0c@rclackey>", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "It is not so\neasy to see it in an Islam-based city like Trivigaunte. Lemur said that\nViron's religion was a parody of the state religion on Urth, but that says\nnothing about the other couple-hundred cities on the _Whorl_. But what he\nsaid about Typhon and his family being deeply entrenched in the minds of\npeople put aboard the ship does apply to all the other cities.\nThough the religion in Trivigaunte in Silk's day may have degenerated so far\nas to be all but beyond recognition, it cannot have been that way on Day\nOne. What to do with 9+ gods in such a monotheistic religion? Did all the\nother gods just agree to step aside and let Sphigx have her way?" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "The concept of monotheism as a central doctrinal signifier was \nfoundational to Islam from the beginning. \"There is no god by God\" is \nthe first doctrinal tenant of a Muslim.\n\nAs for how such a practice could arise, there are at least two \npossibilities. 1) The memory monotheism was so ingrained in the minds of \noriginal the Islamic citizens of Trivigaunte that they naturally \nreturned to that belief immediately. 2) The scientists recognized in \nadvance that monotheism was so deeply ingrained as designed the city's \nreligion around it.\nEither way, it seems unlikely that Lemur's knowledge was comprehensive \nregarding the cultural/political situation on Urth and the requirements \nof the Whorl's design.\n\nAs for why the other gods did not compete for worshipers there:\nApparently, there are ways to summon and avoid summoning gods. Quetzal \nmanaged to completely avoid having any gods appear in Viron after the \ndeath of Pas and Tussah. I guess forbidding child sacrifice was one way, \nbut I imagine there could be others. Presumably, the Trivigaunte were \nonly interested in attracting the interest of Sphigx. They might well \nhave been quite adept at it.\n\nu+16b9" } ] }, { "message_id": "<4C910DB9.4030709@gmail.com>", "from": { "name": "James Wynn", "address": "crushtv at gmail.com" }, "date": "2010-09-15T18:17:29+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Oreb's Powers of Speech", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": " At the end of RttW Oreb says \"Good Fishing\".\nThis statement as odd on a number of levels, of course, but one way that \nit did is that it felt like a FAIL regarding Oreb's characteristic \npowers of speech. Only two words, fine, but THREE syllables. But I \nfigured, well, it's Wolfe's story.\n\nHowever, while rereading interviews yesterday I came across this \nstatement by Wolfe:\n\nhttp://www.sfsite.com/03b/gw124.htm\n\nWolfe: \"Of course all of us speak differently to different audiences. \nAuk talks like I do when I'm talking to the dogs. Almost no one seems to \nnotice how Oreb talks, but _Oreb can manage only two syllables_: 'Good \nbird! Watch out! Bad boy. Iron girl. Good Silk!' \"\n\nI don't know what it signifies, but based on what Wolfe says, it ought \nto mean something.\n\nu+16b9" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Gwern Branwen", "address": "gwern0 at gmail.com" }, "date": "2010-09-15T18:48:34+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Oreb's Powers of Speech", "in_reply_to": "<4C910DB9.4030709@gmail.com>", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "On Wed, Sep 15, 2010 at 2:17 PM, James Wynn wrote:\n?At the end of RttW Oreb says \"Good Fishing\".\nThis statement as odd on a number of levels, of course, but one way that it\ndid is that it felt like a FAIL regarding Oreb's characteristic powers of\nspeech. Only two words, fine, but THREE syllables. But ?I figured, well,\nit's Wolfe's story.\n\nHowever, while rereading interviews yesterday I came across this statement\nby Wolfe:\n\nhttp://www.sfsite.com/03b/gw124.htm\n\nWolfe: \"Of course all of us speak differently to different audiences. Auk\ntalks like I do when I'm talking to the dogs. Almost no one seems to notice\nhow Oreb talks, but _Oreb can manage only two syllables_: 'Good bird! Watch\nout! Bad boy. Iron girl. Good Silk!' \"\n\nI don't know what it signifies, but based on what Wolfe says, it ought to\nmean something." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Doesn't that quote mean that nothing odd is going on (beyond the\nobvious Gospel allusion or whatever)?\n\n\"Iron girl\" is 3 syllables by my count, as is \"good fishing\"." }, { "kind": "sig", "depth": 0, "text": "gwern" } ] }, { "message_id": "<4C911642.5060608@gmail.com>", "from": { "name": "James Wynn", "address": "crushtv at gmail.com" }, "date": "2010-09-15T18:53:54+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Oreb's Powers of Speech", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": " On 9/15/2010 1:48 PM, Gwern Branwen wrote:\nDoesn't that quote mean that nothing odd is going on (beyond the\nobvious Gospel allusion or whatever)?\n\n\"Iron girl\" is 3 syllables by my count, as is \"good fishing\"." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "\"Iron girl\" is two syllables if you have a Texas accent.\n\nu+16b9" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Dan'l Danehy-Oakes", "address": "danldo at gmail.com" }, "date": "2010-09-15T18:54:45+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Oreb's Powers of Speech", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "On Wed, Sep 15, 2010 at 11:48 AM, Gwern Branwen wrote:\n\"Iron girl\" is 3 syllables by my count, as is \"good fishing\"." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Given Wolfe's geographical history, he probably pronounces \"iron\" as\none syllable: \"eyrn.\"" }, { "kind": "sig", "depth": 0, "text": "Dan'l Danehy-Oakes" } ] }, { "message_id": "<004701cb550a$305e2020$2fd34a0c@rclackey>", "from": { "name": "Roy C. Lackey", "address": "rclackey at stic.net" }, "date": "2010-09-15T19:14:07+00:00", "subject": "(urth) The face of Pas", "in_reply_to": "<4C90DF4F.4020301@gmail.com>", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "James Wynn quoted and wrote:\nIt is not so\neasy to see it in an Islam-based city like Trivigaunte. Lemur said that\nViron's religion was a parody of the state religion on Urth, but that\nsays\nnothing about the other couple-hundred cities on the _Whorl_. But what\nhe\nsaid about Typhon and his family being deeply entrenched in the minds of\npeople put aboard the ship does apply to all the other cities.\nThough the religion in Trivigaunte in Silk's day may have degenerated so\nfar\nas to be all but beyond recognition, it cannot have been that way on Day\nOne. What to do with 9+ gods in such a monotheistic religion? Did all\nthe\nother gods just agree to step aside and let Sphigx have her way?" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "The concept of monotheism as a central doctrinal signifier was\nfoundational to Islam from the beginning. \"There is no god by God\" is\nthe first doctrinal tenant of a Muslim.\n\nAs for how such a practice could arise, there are at least two\npossibilities. 1) The memory monotheism was so ingrained in the minds of\noriginal the Islamic citizens of Trivigaunte that they naturally\nreturned to that belief immediately. 2) The scientists recognized in\nadvance that monotheism was so deeply ingrained as designed the city's\nreligion around it.\nEither way, it seems unlikely that Lemur's knowledge was comprehensive\nregarding the cultural/political situation on Urth and the requirements\nof the Whorl's design." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Both of those possibilities ignore my point. I'll say it again. If memories\nof Typhon and his family were too deeply entrenched in the minds of people\nput aboard the _Whorl_ to be eliminated, how could/would they have initially\nmanifested themselves in a monotheistic religion like Islam? Either the\nmemories of the Nine were there on Day One or they weren't." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "As for why the other gods did not compete for worshipers there:\nApparently, there are ways to summon and avoid summoning gods. Quetzal\nmanaged to completely avoid having any gods appear in Viron after the\ndeath of Pas and Tussah. I guess forbidding child sacrifice was one way,\nbut I imagine there could be others. Presumably, the Trivigaunte were\nonly interested in attracting the interest of Sphigx. They might well\nhave been quite adept at it." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Quetzal could not control the gods. No sacrifice of any kind was required\nfor the manifestation of a god, as Kypris coming to the glass at Orchid's\nand to the glass on the airship proves.\n\n-Roy" } ] }, { "message_id": "<005c01cb550a$a475ab40$2fd34a0c@rclackey>", "from": { "name": "Roy C. Lackey", "address": "rclackey at stic.net" }, "date": "2010-09-15T19:17:22+00:00", "subject": "(urth) The face of Pas", "in_reply_to": "<4C90D9A3.3080807@gmail.com>", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "James Wynn quoted and wrote:\nRoy-\nLook at your above assertions about what Cilinia could or could not have\nhad\nto do with the founding of the Chapter, and that it was done by\n\"Typhon's\ncommittees\". Where did you get that?" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": " From an interview I recalled with Wolfe where he discussed how the\nWritings were put together. But, mainly, Typhon didn't strike me as a\nbig reader." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "Roy-\nI stated what the text had to say about\nit, along with corroborative indications that the infrastructure for the\nChapter was in place from the get-go.\nWhich position merits more skepticism?" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Correction: You stated what *Remora* said the Charter said about it. You\ncan't just say \"the text says\". Context is key." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Yes it is, James. You seem to be confusing Chapter and Charter. Look back at\nwhat I wrote. You broke up my paragraph, which is perfectly okay, but the\nantecedent for the pronoun \"it\" in the second half of the paragraph is in\nthe first half of the paragraph, i.e., the founding of the Chapter. The\nRemora quote had to do with the Charter, but the earlier quote about the\nfounding of the Chapter was from Lemur.\n\n-Roy" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Jack Smith", "address": "jack.smith.1946 at gmail.com" }, "date": "2010-09-15T19:19:44+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Oreb's Powers of Speech", "in_reply_to": "<4C910DB9.4030709@gmail.com>", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "You're right about Oreb only using one-syllable words. Perhaps the\ntwo-syllable \"fishing\" implies some sort of development in our feathered\nfriend.\n\nOreb is limited in speech but not in understanding. At one point the story\nshifts to Oreb's point of view. He dines on the face of the dead Dace, and\nthen reflects: \"The dead one had been good. There could be no doubt about\nthat. Friendly in the reserved fashion Oreb preferred alive, and delicious,\ndead.\" (Calde, Ch. 6)\n\nWolfe's humor is like Faulkner's in *As I Lay Dying.*" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "On Wed, Sep 15, 2010 at 2:17 PM, James Wynn wrote:\n At the end of RttW Oreb says \"Good Fishing\".\nThis statement as odd on a number of levels, of course, but one way that it\ndid is that it felt like a FAIL regarding Oreb's characteristic powers of\nspeech. Only two words, fine, but THREE syllables. But I figured, well,\nit's Wolfe's story.\n\nHowever, while rereading interviews yesterday I came across this statement\nby Wolfe:\n\nhttp://www.sfsite.com/03b/gw124.htm\n\nWolfe: \"Of course all of us speak differently to different audiences. Auk\ntalks like I do when I'm talking to the dogs. Almost no one seems to notice\nhow Oreb talks, but _Oreb can manage only two syllables_: 'Good bird! Watch\nout! Bad boy. Iron girl. Good Silk!' \"\n\nI don't know what it signifies, but based on what Wolfe says, it ought to\nmean something.\n\nu+16b9\n_______________________________________________" } ] }, { "message_id": "<4C912EEB.6060706@gmail.com>", "from": { "name": "James Wynn", "address": "crushtv at gmail.com" }, "date": "2010-09-15T20:39:07+00:00", "subject": "(urth) The face of Pas", "in_reply_to": "<004701cb550a$305e2020$2fd34a0c@rclackey>", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": " I'll recombine two threads here..." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Roy -\nBoth of those possibilities ignore my point. I'll say it again. If memories\nof Typhon and his family were too deeply entrenched in the minds of people\nput aboard the _Whorl_ to be eliminated, how could/would they have initially\nmanifested themselves in a monotheistic religion like Islam? Either the\nmemories of the Nine were there on Day One or they weren't." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "But, Roy, the citizens of Trivigaunted were not _unaware _of the other \ngods. They merely only honored Sphigx. So their memories of the Typhonic \nfamily was dealt with by their _knowledge_ of the rest of Pas' \nfamily.And of course, expunging the memory of Typhon's family was not \neven an issue for subsequent generations." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "Me -\nAs for why the other gods did not compete for worshipers there:\nApparently, there are ways to summon and avoid summoning gods. Quetzal\nmanaged to completely avoid having any gods appear in Viron after the\ndeath of Pas and Tussah. I guess forbidding child sacrifice was one way,\nbut I imagine there could be others. Presumably, the Trivigaunte were\nonly interested in attracting the interest of Sphigx. They might well\nhave been quite adept at it." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Roy -\nQuetzal could not control the gods. No sacrifice of any kind was required\nfor the manifestation of a god, as Kypris coming to the glass at Orchid's\nand to the glass on the airship proves." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Not entirely. But Quetzal believed he could _affect_ the occurrence of \ntheophanies, or at least he said he believed he could:\n\n\"Before Kypris manifested here on Scylsday, the Windows of our city had \nbeen empty for decades. I can't take credit for that, it wasn't my \ndoing. But I've done everything in my power to prevent theophanies. It \nhasn't been much, but I've done what I could. I proscribed human \nsacrifice, and got made law, for one thing. I admit I'm proud of that.\" \n[Epiphany of the Long Sun, page 124]\n\n\"I'm in contact with religious leaders in Urbs, Wick, and other cities, \ncities where his children have boasted of killing Pas.\" [p 131]\n\n\"Now you see why I've tried to prevent theophanies, don't you, Patera \nCalde?\"\n[page 132]\n\n\nQuetzal implies that there were other factors affecting the lack of \ntheophanies in Viron." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Yes it is, James. You seem to be confusing Chapter and Charter. Look back at\nwhat I wrote. You broke up my paragraph, which is perfectly okay, but the\nantecedent for the pronoun \"it\" in the second half of the paragraph is in\nthe first half of the paragraph, i.e., the founding of the Chapter. The\nRemora quote had to do with the Charter, but the earlier quote about the\nfounding of the Chapter was from Lemur." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I supposed I lost track of which you were arguing for at that moment. \nBut the dubiousness regarding what the Charter says about it's founding \nand what version Lemur has heard or extrapolated on what he has heard \nabout the founding of the Chapter are identical. If it is dubious that \nCilinia wrote the Charter for Viron and all the other cities that Scylla \nwas credited for founding, then it is equally dubious that she designed \nthe formalities of the Chapter. We're told what Lemur told Silk--to \nmock and belittle Silk's piety. We're also told lots of other things \nabout the Whorl with which we can judge how much to credit what he says.\n\nI think we've gone off track, though. Who cares if Cilinia was a child \nprodigy who designed multiple governments, cities, and religions in \ndetail? I don't think any of this matters as to whether there was a \npolytheistic, state religion of Urth centered around Typhon's family. \nAnd I don't see much to support yet that there was. The religion that \nthe Chapter was an evil parody of was surely Roman Catholicism (or a \nBriahtic analog). And that's why Silk was \"a good man in a bad religion\" \nas Wolfe called it...as bad a religion as Wolfe was inclined to imagine.\n\nu+16b9" } ] }, { "message_id": "<62d721fe425ea11487e8af85674e83e3@imap.io.com>", "from": { "name": "Adam Thornton IO", "address": "adam at io.com" }, "date": "2010-09-15T21:05:41+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Oreb's Powers of Speech", "in_reply_to": "<4C910DB9.4030709@gmail.com>", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "On Wed, 15 Sep 2010 13:17:29 -0500, James Wynn wrote:\nAt the end of RttW Oreb says \"Good Fishing\".\nThis statement as odd on a number of levels, of course, but one way that" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "it did is that it felt like a FAIL regarding Oreb's characteristic \npowers of speech. Only two words, fine, but THREE syllables. But I \nfigured, well, it's Wolfe's story.\n\nHowever, while rereading interviews yesterday I came across this \nstatement by Wolfe:\n\nhttp://www.sfsite.com/03b/gw124.htm\n\nWolfe: \"Of course all of us speak differently to different audiences. \nAuk talks like I do when I'm talking to the dogs. Almost no one seems to" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "notice how Oreb talks, but _Oreb can manage only two syllables_: 'Good \nbird! Watch out! Bad boy. Iron girl. Good Silk!' \"\n\nI don't know what it signifies, but based on what Wolfe says, it ought \nto mean something." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Quite apart from _Orphans of the Sky_, I'm pretty sure that it's the\nOutsider speaking through Oreb to his Fisher of Men.\n\n\nAdam" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Mr Thalassocrat", "address": "thalassocrat08 at gmail.com" }, "date": "2010-09-15T21:55:52+00:00", "subject": "(urth) The face of Pas", "in_reply_to": "<004701cb550a$305e2020$2fd34a0c@rclackey>", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "On Thu, Sep 16, 2010 at 4:44 AM, Roy C. Lackey wrote:\n\nIf memories\nof Typhon and his family were too deeply entrenched in the minds of people\nput aboard the _Whorl_ to be eliminated, how could/would they have\ninitially\nmanifested themselves in a monotheistic religion like Islam? Either the\nmemories of the Nine were there on Day One or they weren't." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "On my hypothesis, the Triv culture on the Whorl was an artificial construct,\nso Islam needn't figure into at all. (Hopefully I'm not missing the point\nhere!)\n\nAs to how the Whorl-dwellers were \"converted\", it's worth recalling Auk's\nmeeting with Tartaros in the tunnels (Calde Ch.6). It happens at the \"oldest\naltar\", of which Tartaros says: \"When the first people came here, Auk, they\nwere shown how we desired to be worshipped. Soon, they were made to forget.\nThey did, but because they had seen what they had seeen, a part of them\nremebered, and when they found our altars on the inner surface, they\nsacrificed as we had taught them. First of all, here.\"" } ] }, { "message_id": "<006b01cb5559$70d13440$5bd14a0c@rclackey>", "from": { "name": "Roy C. Lackey", "address": "rclackey at stic.net" }, "date": "2010-09-16T04:41:26+00:00", "subject": "(urth) The face of Pas", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Dave Tallman wrote:\nAbout the apparition of \"Patera Pike\" --\n1) Pike was old when he died. RttW p. 40 says he was about eighty.\n2) The apparition is called \"the old auger,\" which happens to fit the\nfuture\nSilk perfectly.\n3) Wolfe in the Q+A session didn't ever say it was a real ghost. He said\nit\nwasn't machine generated and it wasn't Quetzal in disguise. That's all. If\nhe was ever more definite in another interview I'd like to see the\ncitation.\nEven if he was it could still fir Silk/Rajan." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "It has long been my belief that Wolfe said Pike in the manse was a ghost,\nand I know I'm not the only one with that impression. If he didn't state so\nexpressly elsewhere, this is the best I can do to reconstruct the belief. At\nthe time of the Q&A, the SS concept of astral travel was unknown to us.\nGiven the way the first Pike question was phrased, when Wolfe's answer\neliminated an aquastor and the answer to the second Pike question eliminated\nQuetzal, a ghost was what was left. Sorry, but that's the best I can come up\nwith.\n\n-Roy" } ] }, { "message_id": "<254097.84092.qm@web50707.mail.re2.yahoo.com>", "from": { "name": "Jerry Friedman", "address": "jerry_friedman at yahoo.com" }, "date": "2010-09-16T05:27:32+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Oreb's Powers of Speech", "in_reply_to": "<4C910DB9.4030709@gmail.com>", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "From: James Wynn \nAt the end of RttW Oreb says \"Good Fishing\"." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "...\n\nSorry, where does he say that? In a quick look, I could only find where Daisy \nwrites it five times at the very end of the book.\n\nJerry Friedman\n\n\n\n " } ] }, { "message_id": "<4C9229D6.2070809@gmail.com>", "from": { "name": "James Wynn", "address": "crushtv at gmail.com" }, "date": "2010-09-16T14:29:42+00:00", "subject": "(urth) The face of Pas", "in_reply_to": "<006b01cb5559$70d13440$5bd14a0c@rclackey>", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": " :" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "Dave Tallman -\n3) Wolfe in the Q+A session didn't ever say it was a real ghost.\nHe said it wasn't machine generated and it wasn't Quetzal in\ndisguise. That's all. If he was ever more definite in another\ninterview I'd like to see the citation. Even if he was it\ncould still fir Silk/Rajan." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Roy -\nIt has long been my belief that Wolfe said Pike in the manse was a ghost,\nand I know I'm not the only one with that impression. If he didn't state so\nexpressly elsewhere, this is the best I can do to reconstruct the belief. At\nthe time of the Q&A, the SS concept of astral travel was unknown to us.\nGiven the way the first Pike question was phrased, when Wolfe's answer\neliminated an aquastor and the answer to the second Pike question eliminated\nQuetzal, a ghost was what was left. Sorry, but that's the best I can come up\nwith." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I do remember -or imagine I remember- an interview in which someone \ntried to pin Wolfe down about Pike's ghost. As I remember it, they asked \nwas Pike's ghost a real ghost or what and Wolfe replied \"It was a real \nghost.\" But I cannot find that interview by googling. Given that, \nperhaps we should accept, for the sake of argument, it that it he never \nsaid it. If we accept that Wolfe only said \"It was not machine-made\" it \nseriously under-cuts the assessment that it was a Gothic ghost, IMO. \nBecause that is a very occult response.\n\nBut even if he DID say it, it is still obvious to me that \"real\" or not, \nit was not a Gothic ghost. Only Terry Pratchet or Robert Asprin would \nwrite a scene that way with an old-fashioned ghost.\n\nu+16b9" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Jack Smith", "address": "jack.smith.1946 at gmail.com" }, "date": "2010-09-16T16:03:15+00:00", "subject": "(urth) The face of Pas", "in_reply_to": "<4C9229D6.2070809@gmail.com>", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "\"The Wolfean Oracle Speaks\"\n\nAn interview by Michael Andre-Driussi:\n\n\n4. Was what Silk saw in the manteion Pike's ghost, or an aquastor, or what?\n-- It was seen in the manse, not the manteion; it wasn't machine made. [DRL:\nSee question 27.]\n\n27. Is Pike's ghost really Quetzal? -- No. [DRL: Which blandly leaves the\npossibility that the `ghost' might still be another of the alien inhumi....\nSee question 4; also, below.]\n\n\n\nI don't have the date of this interview or where it was conducted." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "On Thu, Sep 16, 2010 at 10:29 AM, James Wynn wrote:\n :" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "Dave Tallman -" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 3, "text": "3) Wolfe in the Q+A session didn't ever say it was a real ghost.\nHe said it wasn't machine generated and it wasn't Quetzal in\ndisguise. That's all. If he was ever more definite in another\ninterview I'd like to see the citation. Even if he was it\ncould still fir Silk/Rajan." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "Roy -\n\nIt has long been my belief that Wolfe said Pike in the manse was a ghost,\nand I know I'm not the only one with that impression. If he didn't state\nso\nexpressly elsewhere, this is the best I can do to reconstruct the belief.\nAt\nthe time of the Q&A, the SS concept of astral travel was unknown to us.\nGiven the way the first Pike question was phrased, when Wolfe's answer\neliminated an aquastor and the answer to the second Pike question\neliminated\nQuetzal, a ghost was what was left. Sorry, but that's the best I can come\nup\nwith." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "I do remember -or imagine I remember- an interview in which someone tried\nto pin Wolfe down about Pike's ghost. As I remember it, they asked was\nPike's ghost a real ghost or what and Wolfe replied \"It was a real ghost.\"\nBut I cannot find that interview by googling. Given that, perhaps we should\naccept, for the sake of argument, it that it he never said it. If we accept\nthat Wolfe only said \"It was not machine-made\" it seriously under-cuts the\nassessment that it was a Gothic ghost, IMO. Because that is a very occult\nresponse.\n\nBut even if he DID say it, it is still obvious to me that \"real\" or not, it\nwas not a Gothic ghost. Only Terry Pratchet or Robert Asprin would write a\nscene that way with an old-fashioned ghost.\n\nu+16b9\n\n\n\n_______________________________________________" } ] }, { "message_id": "<4C92674A.5070404@gmail.com>", "from": { "name": "James Wynn", "address": "crushtv at gmail.com" }, "date": "2010-09-16T18:51:54+00:00", "subject": "(urth) The face of Pas", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": " Jack, the title is misleading. It was not an interview performed by \nMantis. He only acted as a go between for members of this List asking \nquestions about the Book of the Long Sun. The sources are not very easy \nto find by searching the Urth.net archives so I'll post them here:\n\nMantis announces Wolfe's agreement to the Q&A:\nhttp://www.urth.net/whorl/archives/v0005/0258.shtml\n\nQ&A 1\nhttp://www.urth.net/whorl/archives/v0006/0350.shtml\n\nQ&A 2\nhttp://www.urth.net/whorl/archives/v0007/0511.shtml" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "\"The Wolfean Oracle Speaks\"\n\nAn interview by Michael Andre-Driussi:\n\n4. Was what Silk saw in the manteion Pike's ghost, or an aquastor, or \nwhat? -- It was seen in the manse, not the manteion; it wasn't machine \nmade. [DRL: See question 27.]\n\n27. Is Pike's ghost really Quetzal? -- No. [DRL: Which blandly leaves \nthe possibility that the `ghost' might still be another of the alien \ninhumi.... See question 4; also, below.]\n\nI don't have the date of this interview or where it was conducted.\n-- \nBest wishes,\nJack" } ] }, { "message_id": "<006201cb55d5$a173b1a0$aecc4a0c@rclackey>", "from": { "name": "Roy C. Lackey", "address": "rclackey at stic.net" }, "date": "2010-09-16T19:30:28+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Oldest altar", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Andrew wrote:\nAs to how the Whorl-dwellers were \"converted\", it's worth recalling Auk's\nmeeting with Tartaros in the tunnels (Calde Ch.6). It happens at the\n\"oldest\naltar\", of which Tartaros says: \"When the first people came here, Auk,\nthey\nwere shown how we desired to be worshipped. Soon, they were made to\nforget.\nThey did, but because they had seen what they had seeen, a part of them\nremembered, and when they found our altars on the inner surface, they\nsacrificed as we had taught them. First of all, here.\"" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "That quote doesn't make sense. I wonder if it's tied to what Lemur said\nabout entrenched memories of Typhon and his family being too deep to\neliminate, so the Nine were renamed. Let's parse the Tartaros quote.\n\nAt first glance, the first sentence seems straightforward enough, but then\nyou have to wonder what the first people were doing down in the tunnels. The\narea with the altar and a Window was wider than the tunnels that led to it,\nbut it's unclear just how large the area was. The chamber was not too far\nfrom the Pit. So was it some sort of orientation center for new arrivals who\nhad just been brought up to the ship in landers?\n\nEven if that is so, why were they then made to forget what they had been\ntaught? Is this where Lemur's comments come in? Maybe I better give that\nquote again: \"The surgeons found, however, that their patients' memories of\ntheir ruler, his family, and some of his officials were too deeply\nentrenched to be eliminated altogether. To obscure the record, they renamed\nthem. Their ruler, the man who called himself the monarch, became Pas, the\nshrew he had married Echidna, and so on.\"\n\nNow to the third sentence of the Tartaros quote. After being made to forget\nhow to worship properly, complete with sacrifices, when the first people saw\nthe altars set up in the cities that had been built for them, they went back\nto worshipping as they had been taught, complete with sacrifices. What had\nchanged?\n\nI really have no vested interest one way or the other in the notion that\nTyphon and his family had been worshipped on Urth, so if anyone has a better\nexplanation for Tartaros' statement, I'd like to see it. And that is not a\nchallenge.\n\nBTW, while it is true that there is no evidence in the Urth Cycle that\nTyphon and his family had been worshipped back on Urth, neither is there\nany evidence that Catholicism or some approximation thereof had been\npracticed in Typhon's time.\n\n-Roy" } ] }, { "message_id": "<4C927D2A.2050104@gmail.com>", "from": { "name": "James Wynn", "address": "crushtv at gmail.com" }, "date": "2010-09-16T20:25:14+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Oldest altar", "in_reply_to": "<006201cb55d5$a173b1a0$aecc4a0c@rclackey>", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": " On 9/16/2010 2:30 PM, Roy C. Lackey wrote:\nAndrew wrote:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "\"When the first people came here, Auk, they were shown how we desired\nto be worshipped. Soon, they were made to forget. They did, but because\nthey had seen what they had seeen, a part of them remebered, and when\nthey found our altars on the inner surface, they sacrificed as we had\ntaught them. First of all, here.\"" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Roy-\nThat quote doesn't make sense. I wonder if it's tied to what Lemur said\nabout entrenched memories of Typhon and his family being too deep to\neliminate, so the Nine were renamed. Let's parse the Tartaros quote.\n\nAt first glance, the first sentence seems straightforward enough, but then\nyou have to wonder what the first people were doing down in the tunnels. The\narea with the altar and a Window was wider than the tunnels that led to it,\nbut it's unclear just how large the area was. The chamber was not too far\nfrom the Pit. So was it some sort of orientation center for new arrivals who\nhad just been brought up to the ship in landers?" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Let me take a shot at it.\n\n1) I would suppose that when Tautaros says \"when the first people came \nhere\" he means \"came to the Whorl generally\".\n\n2) As they traveled deeper into the Whorl from the outside, they \nencountered Tautaros' altars first because they were closer to the \noutside. Based on their training, they knew what to do when they \nencountered an alter. If they had no animals to sacrifice, they chose \none of their fellow colonists.\n\n3) Presumably, when Taurtaros says \"First of all, here\" he is only \ntalking to Auk specifically about the Vironese colonists, but the \nprinciple would be the same in other cities." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Roy -\nEven if that is so, why were they then made to forget what they had been\ntaught? Is this where Lemur's comments come in? Maybe I better give that\nquote again: \"The surgeons found, however, that their patients' memories of\ntheir ruler, his family, and some of his officials were too deeply\nentrenched to be eliminated altogether. To obscure the record, they renamed\nthem. Their ruler, the man who called himself the monarch, became Pas, the\nshrew he had married Echidna, and so on.\"\n\nNow to the third sentence of the Tartaros quote. After being made to forget\nhow to worship properly, complete with sacrifices, when the first people saw\nthe altars set up in the cities that had been built for them, they went back\nto worshipping as they had been taught, complete with sacrifices. What had\nchanged?" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I _think_ you are misinterpreting what Tartaros is saying here. I don't \ntake this to mean they were made to forget specifically what they were \ntaught about worship. They were taught how to worship just before the \nmemory wiping specifically so they _would_ remember it right after the \nprocedure. What they forgot--at least to some degree-- was what they did \nbefore. This seems to me to imply that the memory tinkering was not a \npurely medical process. Memory wiping was medical. But to implant \naltered knowledge and memories, you had to teach it to them before the \nmind wiping. What's in short term memory survives." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Roy-\nI really have no vested interest one way or the other in the notion that\nTyphon and his family had been worshipped on Urth, so if anyone has a better\nexplanation for Tartaros' statement, I'd like to see it. And that is not a\nchallenge.\n\nBTW, while it is true that there is no evidence in the Urth Cycle that\nTyphon and his family had been worshipped back on Urth, neither is there\nany evidence that Catholicism or some approximation thereof had been\npracticed in Typhon's time." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Aren't the many close analogs between the Chapter and Roman Catholicism \nevidence of this? If Lemur is entirely correct that the Chapter was a \nparody of the state religion of Urth, then that religion is likely to \nhave been something like Roman Catholicism. It is clear that the Gospels \nhave survived to Typhon's time and been incorporated into the Writings \nbecause Silk refers to the event of Jesus casting out the money changers.\n\n\"The sellers never extended a single bit's credit, true. They gave \ncredit to no augur, and certainly they would not extend it to an augur \nwhose manteion stood in the poorest quarter of the city. Yet the \nOutsider could not be denied, so they would have to. He would have to be \nfirm with them, extremely firm. Remind them that the Outsider was known \nto esteem them last among men already that according to the Writings he \nhad once (having possessed and enlightened a fortunate man) beaten them \nseverely in person.\"[Nightside, page 17]\n\nBut it is also possible that Lemur's knowledge was inaccurate in some \nways. A skeptic like Lemur in Trivigaunte might say the same about the \nreligion there and have been *just* as accurate/inaccurate. Both RC and \nIslam *have* been state religions at certain times in history.\n\nu+16b9" } ] }, { "message_id": "<555470.98189.qm@web84105.mail.mud.yahoo.com>", "from": { "name": "DAVID STOCKHOFF", "address": "dstockhoff at verizon.net" }, "date": "2010-09-16T21:23:10+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Oldest altar", "in_reply_to": "<006201cb55d5$a173b1a0$aecc4a0c@rclackey>", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "In fact, if one wants to take the fact that Wolfe modeled the Commonwealth on Byzantium (with the Korean War thrown in for local color) to its logical conclusion, the period before the Autarchs would necessarily be characterized by paganism, animal sacrifice, and a state religion centered on the ruler.\n\n--- On Thu, 9/16/10, Roy C. Lackey wrote:\n\nI really have no vested interest one way or the other in the notion that\nTyphon and his family had been worshipped on Urth, so if anyone has a better\nexplanation for Tartaros' statement, I'd like to see it. And that is not a\nchallenge.\n\nBTW, while it is true that there is no evidence in the Urth Cycle that\nTyphon and his family had been worshipped? back on Urth, neither is there\nany evidence that Catholicism or some approximation thereof had been\npracticed in Typhon's time.\n\n-Roy" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Mr Thalassocrat", "address": "thalassocrat08 at gmail.com" }, "date": "2010-09-16T21:32:42+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Oldest altar", "in_reply_to": "<006201cb55d5$a173b1a0$aecc4a0c@rclackey>", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "On Fri, Sep 17, 2010 at 5:00 AM, Roy C. Lackey wrote:\nAndrew wrote:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "As to how the Whorl-dwellers were \"converted\", it's worth recalling Auk's\nmeeting with Tartaros in the tunnels (Calde Ch.6). It happens at the\n\"oldest\naltar\", of which Tartaros says: \"When the first people came here, Auk,\nthey\nwere shown how we desired to be worshipped. Soon, they were made to\nforget.\nThey did, but because they had seen what they had seeen, a part of them\nremembered, and when they found our altars on the inner surface, they\nsacrificed as we had taught them. First of all, here.\"" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "That quote doesn't make sense. I wonder if it's tied to what Lemur said\nabout entrenched memories of Typhon and his family being too deep to\neliminate, so the Nine were renamed. Let's parse the Tartaros quote.\n\nAt first glance, the first sentence seems straightforward enough, but then\nyou have to wonder what the first people were doing down in the tunnels.\nThe\narea with the altar and a Window was wider than the tunnels that led to it,\nbut it's unclear just how large the area was. The chamber was not too far\nfrom the Pit. So was it some sort of orientation center for new arrivals\nwho\nhad just been brought up to the ship in landers?" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "That's my guess." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Even if that is so, why were they then made to forget what they had been\ntaught?" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I read it as \"made to forget in general\": their memories were wiped to a\nlarge extent." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Is this where Lemur's comments come in? Maybe I better give that\nquote again: \"The surgeons found, however, that their patients' memories of\ntheir ruler, his family, and some of his officials were too deeply\nentrenched to be eliminated altogether. To obscure the record, they renamed\nthem. Their ruler, the man who called himself the monarch, became Pas, the\nshrew he had married Echidna, and so on.\"" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "The memories of Typhon et al went too deep for this wipe to eradicate them,\nand so they were used to construct the Whorl pantheon." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Now to the third sentence of the Tartaros quote. After being made to forget\nhow to worship properly, complete with sacrifices, when the first people\nsaw\nthe altars set up in the cities that had been built for them, they went\nback\nto worshipping as they had been taught, complete with sacrifices. What had\nchanged?" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Well, the worship they had been taught in the \"orientation area\", which had\nbeen attached to their deep memories of Typhon et al & so survived the wipe." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "I really have no vested interest one way or the other in the notion that\nTyphon and his family had been worshipped on Urth, so if anyone has a\nbetter\nexplanation for Tartaros' statement, I'd like to see it. And that is not a\nchallenge.\n\nBTW, while it is true that there is no evidence in the Urth Cycle that\nTyphon and his family had been worshipped back on Urth, neither is there\nany evidence that Catholicism or some approximation thereof had been\npracticed in Typhon's time.\n\nHere from memory is my list of the little we know about religion on Urth in" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Typhon's day (probably incomplete, possibly incorrect):\n\n- The peasants Sev and young Gunnie encounter immediately upon their return\nfrom Yesod sacrifice to \"sky powers\" in high places.\n- The term \"Increate\" is used, which I think implies at least a top-dog\ncreator God, if not actual monotheism, possibly just amongst the educated\nclasses.\n- The saint-name naming convention is in place already, which is meaningful\nhere to the extent that the names given in the text aren't just a\ntranslation artifect.\n- If the St Catherine story comes down to BOTNS time from Typhon's time,\nthen there is some reason to suppose that the names may actually be \"our\"\nsaints' names. It seems to be the same as \"our\" St Catherine's story,\ncomplete with \"our\" Emperor Maxentius.\n\nI don't think there's enough info to draw firm conclusions. Every reference\nto \"our\" religions on the Whorl could be an artifiact of the Whorl\ncultrual-construction team. Taking Whorlish religions as \"parodies of the\nUrth state religion\" doesn't tell us much. For example, Catholic ritual etc\nelements in the Vironese worship can be seen as elements inserted by the\nWhorl team to mess up a polytheistic original; or as part of a \"state\nreligion\" messed up by a polytheistic religion created by the team." } ] }, { "message_id": "<4C929176.2010302@gmail.com>", "from": { "name": "James Wynn", "address": "crushtv at gmail.com" }, "date": "2010-09-16T21:51:50+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Oldest altar", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": " Roy-\n Now to the third sentence of the Tartaros quote. After being made\n to forget\n how to worship properly, complete with sacrifices, when the first\n people saw\n the altars set up in the cities that had been built for them, they\n went back\n to worshipping as they had been taught, complete with sacrifices.\n What had\n changed?\n\nMr Thalassocrat wrote-\nWell, the worship they had been taught in the \"orientation area\", \nwhich had been attached to their deep memories of Typhon et al & so \nsurvived the wipe." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Something a little remarkable is implied here, I think. Had Typhon had \nhis druthers --Lemur believes-- the colonists would have had no memory \nof him or his family. The system of gods ruling the Cargo on the Whorl \nis a workaround. \"They will remember us no matter what we do, so we will \ndistort their memory of us\". This is contrary to our typical view of \nTyphon's egotism. Perhaps, if they remembered the Typhons, they would \nremember the rest of their lives on Urth and their lot aboard the Whorl. \nPerhaps, the concern was that if they retained their memories, then they \nnot be content to remain as cargo and join forces to take over the ship. \nKeep them confused so they could be controlled.\n\nu+16b9" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Andrew Mason", "address": "andrew.mason53 at googlemail.com" }, "date": "2010-09-16T22:09:46+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Oldest altar", "in_reply_to": "<4C929176.2010302@gmail.com>", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "James Wynn wrote (quoting Roy Lackey):" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "BTW, while it is true that there is no evidence in the Urth Cycle that\nTyphon and his family had been worshipped “back on Urth, neither is there\nany evidence that Catholicism or some approximation thereof had been\npracticed in Typhon's time." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Aren't the many close analogs between the Chapter and Roman Catholicism\nevidence of this” If Lemur is entirely correct that the Chapter was a\nparody of the state religion of Urth, then that religion is likely to\nhave been something like Roman Catholicism. It is clear that the Gospels\nhave survived to Typhon's time and been incorporated into the Writings\nbecause Silk refers to the event of Jesus casting out the money changers." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Consider the religion of Urth a thousand years later. It seems to\ncontain reminiscences of Catholicism (or at least of some form of\nChristianity which makes much of ritual); names of saints like\nKatharine and Barbara, crosses (Dorcas refers to roods, and there's\nthe landmark Ctesiphon's Cross), a paschal candle. True, it also seems\nto contain elements derived from Hinduism, and in any case it's been\noverlaid by the cult of the Conciliator and the New Sun, but it's\nlikely that some elements in it go back further than that. (As I\nmentioned in another thread, this need not be seen as a direct\nsurvival from our time; it can bepart of the cultural memory returned\nto humans by machines, as recounted by Cyriaca.)\n\nAlso. Severian dreams of a ritual taking place in the Citadel chapel\nat a time before the old sun was darkened, which invoves bread, wine\nand a knife - not exactly the Christian eucharist, but something like\nit." } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Matthew Weber", "address": "palaeologos at gmail.com" }, "date": "2010-09-16T22:13:41+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Oldest altar", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "On Thu, Sep 16, 2010 at 3:09 PM, Andrew Mason ", "from": { "name": "Jack Smith", "address": "jack.smith.1946 at gmail.com" }, "date": "2010-09-16T23:14:25+00:00", "subject": "(urth) The face of Pas", "in_reply_to": "<4C92674A.5070404@gmail.com>", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Thanks for the links." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "On Thu, Sep 16, 2010 at 2:51 PM, James Wynn wrote:\n Jack, the title is misleading. It was not an interview performed by\nMantis. He only acted as a go between for members of this List asking\nquestions about the Book of the Long Sun. The sources are not very easy to\nfind by searching the Urth.net archives so I'll post them here:\n\nMantis announces Wolfe's agreement to the Q&A:\nhttp://www.urth.net/whorl/archives/v0005/0258.shtml\n\nQ&A 1\nhttp://www.urth.net/whorl/archives/v0006/0350.shtml\n\nQ&A 2\nhttp://www.urth.net/whorl/archives/v0007/0511.shtml\n\n \"The Wolfean Oracle Speaks\"" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "An interview by Michael Andre-Driussi:\n\n4. Was what Silk saw in the manteion Pike's ghost, or an aquastor, or\nwhat? -- It was seen in the manse, not the manteion; it wasn't machine made.\n[DRL: See question 27.]\n\n27. Is Pike's ghost really Quetzal? -- No. [DRL: Which blandly leaves the\npossibility that the `ghost' might still be another of the alien inhumi....\nSee question 4; also, below.]\n\nI don't have the date of this interview or where it was conducted.\n--\nBest wishes,\nJack" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "_______________________________________________" } ] }, { "message_id": "<64C3B689-1DC2-4F6B-A769-070A779C8BF3@yahoo.com>", "from": { "name": "Nicholas", "address": "nickjost at yahoo.com" }, "date": "2010-09-17T01:29:42+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Oldest altar", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "As is mentioned by others the Orthodox liturgy explicitly uses a knife. It is ritually inserted prior to a formal cutting motion being made. Since Wolfe has mentioned that the state is based on a Byzantine pattern this could indicate a eucharistic ceremony. That being said I haven't read the books about the whorl so I can't comment further." } ] }, { "message_id": "<4C935453.5040000@gmail.com>", "from": { "name": "James Wynn", "address": "crushtv at gmail.com" }, "date": "2010-09-17T11:43:15+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Oreb's Powers of Speech", "in_reply_to": "<254097.84092.qm@web50707.mail.re2.yahoo.com>", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "Me-\nAt the end of RttW Oreb says \"Good Fishing\"." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "...\n\nJerry Friedman -\nSorry, where does he say that? In a quick look, I could only find where Daisy\nwrites it five times at the very end of the book." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Interesting. I had remembered her as quoting Oreb. But a careful read of \nthe last chapter and afterward, as well as a search of the book at \nAmazon reveals Oreb saying no such thing.\n\nu+16b9" } ] }, { "message_id": "<4C935491.4050405@verizon.net>", "from": { "name": "David Stockhoff", "address": "dstockhoff at verizon.net" }, "date": "2010-09-17T11:44:17+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Oldest altar", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": " Perhaps the knife is not dissimilar to the one Severian uses to split \nthe skull of the old Autarch." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "On 9/16/2010 6:13 PM, Matthew Weber wrote:\n\n\nOn Thu, Sep 16, 2010 at 3:09 PM, Andrew Mason \n> \nwrote:\n\n Also. Severian dreams of a ritual taking place in the Citadel chapel\n at a time before the old sun was darkened, which invoves bread, wine\n and a knife - not exactly the Christian eucharist, but something like\n it.\n\n\nIn the Eastern Orthodox liturgy, the (leavened) bread used in \nCommunion is cut with a triangular-bladed knife, referred to as the Spear.\n\n-- \nMatt +\n\nIt is when I struggle to be brief that I become obscure.\n Horace [Quintus Horatius Flaccus] (65-8 B.C.), Epistles, bk. III \n(Ars Poetica) [c. 8 B.C.], l. 25\n\n\n_______________________________________________" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Lee Berman", "address": "severiansola at hotmail.com" }, "date": "2010-09-17T13:36:09+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Oldest altar", "in_reply_to": "<4C935491.4050405@verizon.net>", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Not that I have a solution but a few vague observations:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "\"When the first people came here, Auk, they were shown how we desired\nto be worshipped. Soon, they were made to forget." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": " \nSounds like a conflict. One person or group reversed the actions of another." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "They did, but because they had seen what they had seen, a part of them remembered, \nand when they found our altars on the inner surface, they sacrificed as we had \ntaught them. First of all, here.\"" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "So the reversal was only partial. Maybe it means human sacrifice was reduced to \nanimal sacrifice? Human sacrifice is most closely associated with Echidna, I think. \n \nOn Urth, Typhon demanded tribute of fair women and boys. What he did with them seems \nillustrated in the painting of his court orgy. Perhaps shrewish Echidna did not look kindly \nupon such attractive objects of her husband's attention and had her barbaric way with them \nwhen Typhon was finished.\n \nThe name Scylla is invoked in BotNS. Echidna is not but there is mention of a book bound\nin echidne hide. Perhaps it is a spelling error and spiny anteater is meant. But that seems \nlike an awkward, painful sort of binding for a book. Moreover \"Echidne\" is an alternate \nspelling for the Mother of All Monsters. Having her skin used to bind books in Ultan's Library \ncould be part of the foul mood of her electronic avatar in the Whorl.\n \nRegarding Scylla, I'll re-observe:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "She founded your Chapter as well, a parody of the state religion of her own whorl." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": " \nTo me the word \"own\" might imply ownership more than just origin. Typhon ruled a multi-planet \nempire. Perhaps Typhon installed Scylla as the ruler of another planet in his empire. \nThe Empire had much interstellar travel and trade so I don't see that everything on The Whorl \nneeded to come from Urth. \t\t \t \t\t " } ] }, { "message_id": "<004a01cb651e$6af42300$37d14a0c@rclackey>", "from": { "name": "Roy C. Lackey", "address": "rclackey at stic.net" }, "date": "2010-10-06T06:19:17+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Oldest altar", "in_reply_to": "<4C929176.2010302@gmail.com>", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Take two. Let me give the Tartaros quote again:\n\n\"When the first people came, Auk, they were shown how we desired to be\nworshipped. Soon, they were made to forget. They did, but because they had\nseen what they had seen, a part of them remembered, and when they found our\naltars on the inner surface, they sacrificed as we had taught them. First of\nall, here.\"\n\nInterpretations aside, it is indisputable that the worship preceded the\nforgetting. Why? I mean, why did the Typhons want to be worshipped at all?\nLemur said the monarch's doctors had erased \"as much as they dared of their\npatients' personal lives.\" Okay, I can accept that erasing the first\npeople's personal memories might keep them from becoming disaffected with\ntheir new environment, but I have a hard time believing that the best way to\ngo about making people forget someone is to first teach them to worship that\nsomeone.\n\nI can accept, in theory if not in practice, that an absolute dictator of a\nwhole planet, who also had an unbridled ego, might have made himself so\nprominent in the lives of his subjects that he would leave an indelible mark\non their memories, but why and how should that be the case for his wife and\nyoung children? His seven kids would have ranged in age from about 13 to 7\nat the time they were scanned. We know that the eldest, Cilinia, died soon\nafter being scanned.\n\nIn Typhon's eyes, all of his children were found wanting in some way, if\nonly by gender. Molpe was crazy, Tartaros blind and Hierax was a psycho who\n\"inherited his father's virile indifference to the physical sensations of\nothers to the point of mania.\" \"He allowed himself to be seduced by it, to\nthe point that he came to care for nothing else and while still a child\nslaughtered thousands for his amusement.\" (LAKE, chap. 12, 300) Under what\npossible circumstances would a boy of about ten have been allowed to slay\nthousands of people?\n\nSpeaking confusedly of the Monarch's small second daughter, Mamelta said: \"I\nremember seeing her often at home, dancing through my dreams. She was a\nwonderful dancer, but we cheered because we were afraid. You saw the hunger\nin her face for the kind of cheers the others got.\" (LAKE, chap. 10, 262)\nWhy would Mamelta (and others) have feared how a little girl reacted to\naudience response? Had she feared the girl or one or both of her parents?\n\nKypris also described a scene in which Typhon, apparently, had killed a\nthousand people who had been forced to kneel in a public square, while she\nwas made to watch from a balcony while he watched her from another balcony.\n(NIGHTSIDE, chap. 12, 296-97)\n\nScylla (in Chenille) told her newly appointed prophets (Auk, Dace, Incus) to\nkill fifty or a hundred children to attract her attention if Kypris made\nanother theophany. When she departed Chenille at the Window at the lake, Auk\nsaw \"the sneering features of a girl a year or two from womanhood.\" (CALDE,\nchap. 1, 31) She was said to be \"as strong-willed\" as her father. The three\nyoungest girls were: \"Thelxiepeia with her spells and drugs and poisons, fat\nPhaea, and Sphigx, who combined her father's fortitude with her mother's\nvile temper. In a family such as hers, she would be forced to cultivate\nthose qualities or die, unquestionably.\" (LAKE, chap. 12, 299-300)\n\nThese things paint an ugly picture of the Typhons while they were\nflesh-and-blood people on Urth, and explains why they might not want the\nfirst people put aboard the ship to remember them. However, Mamelta, though\nshe seemed not to have remembered Molpe's real name, remembered the dancing\nand the girl's hunger for adulation. The girl became the goddess of music,\ndance and art on the ship. The boy who slaughtered thousands became the god\nof death on the ship. Scylla said of her father, \"In the beginning we chose\nup, with Daddy to be the god of everything--that's what his name meant--and\nboss over everybody.\" (LAKE, chap. 11, 274) Aggressive Sphigx became the\ngoddess of war. Each family member's role as gods in Mainframe was a\nreflection of their personalities when they were flesh-and-blood people.\n\nThe Typhons' names were changed when they became digitized entities in\nMainframe, became gods with as much or more power than they ever had on\nUrth, now over a captive congregation rendered meek and unable to even think\nabout opposing them, but that was *after* the first people on the ship had\nbeen taught how to worship them by burning animals on a sacrificial altar.\nSo, again, what really changed when the Cargo was made to forget?\n\nLike Mamelta, Duko Rigoglio (aka Roger) had been a Sleeper forced to board\nthe ship. Also like her, he could not remember what Pas' real name had been\non Urth. But he remembered Nessus and the fact that he had lived somewhere\nsouth of the Citadel (IGJ, 218-19), which is where he received his fatal\nwound while on that astral trip there with Silkhorn. His rise to power on\nBlue had been modeled on Typhon's rise to power on Urth (279). When Silkhorn\nand Fava made that astral trip to the Duko's palace in Soldo, Rigoglio was\ncurious about Oreb. Silkhorn explained that the bird had originally been\nintended as a sacrifice. The Duko admonished Silkhorn, saying \"You failed\nrepeatedly to honor the gods as is their right.\" \"You wakers on the _Whorl_.\nIn Nessus the gods walked among us, lords and ladies of Urth, even unto\nShining Pas.\" (217)\n\nNote the plural, gods, flesh-and-blood entities seen by the public in\nNessus. By Pas he means Typhon, the man with a single head. As I have said\nbefore, I don't care what religion(s) had been practiced during Typhon's\nreign or what the state religion may have been. But Rigoglio claimed that\nthe Typhons had been regarded as gods on Urth, and that helps to explain\nsome of the outrageous behavior attributed to them that I outlined above,\nand the sense of fear felt by people who had known them on Urth; gods can\nget away with anything, so long as they have the power. It also explains why\nTyphon's kids were so prominent in the minds of people put on the ship that\nthey could not be forgotten.\n\nRigoglio came to realize that some of his memories were false. If you want\nto argue that his memory of the Typhons as gods on Urth was false, then that\ndirectly contradicts the idea that Typhon wanted both sleeping and waking\nCargo to forget him and his family.\n\nThough flesh-and-blood on Urth, in Mainframe they could only be virtual\npeople, computer personalities who manifested themselves in computer\nterminals when they chose, or when summoned by sacrifices made in proximity\nto a computer terminal. The point is, they wanted to be worshipped, which\nbrings me back to the oldest altar and the forgetting. Typhon elected to be\nportrayed as a two-headed freak, his wife with snakes in her hair, and their\nchildren not as little kids but as adults with physical attributes\nappropriate to their chosen roles as gods. An image on a computer screen\nlacks the presence and authority of a living physical being, but the Typhons\nhad little choice and the worshippers they commandeered none. The people on\nthe ship depended on the ship's gods for everything from day and night to\nthe weather and almost everything else they needed to live.\n\nIt seems to me that to maintain their positions as lords of the _Whorl_,\nwhen they were actually only virtual beings in a big computer, the Typhons\nused their god-like powers, which existed only by virtue of Mainframe, to\nintimidate those subject to their whims and utilized their\ncomputer-generated images as an interface, as their medium of command. On\nUrth, those people subject to their whims had been conditioned to obey real\npeople, but on the ship those lords and masters were no longer real. On the\nship as on Urth, the Typhons conducted themselves as gods, and they had the\npower to get away with it in both places. The altars and the burned\nsacrifices on the ship may have been new, but not the egos and behavior that\nprompted them.\n\n-Roy" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Jack Smith", "address": "jack.smith.1946 at gmail.com" }, "date": "2010-10-06T10:16:42+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Oldest altar", "in_reply_to": "<004a01cb651e$6af42300$37d14a0c@rclackey>", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Good, well-reasoned post." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "On Wed, Oct 6, 2010 at 2:19 AM, Roy C. Lackey wrote:\nTake two. Let me give the Tartaros quote again:\n\n\"When the first people came, Auk, they were shown how we desired to be\nworshipped. Soon, they were made to forget. They did, but because they had\nseen what they had seen, a part of them remembered, and when they found our\naltars on the inner surface, they sacrificed as we had taught them. First\nof\nall, here.\"\n\nInterpretations aside, it is indisputable that the worship preceded the\nforgetting. Why? I mean, why did the Typhons want to be worshipped at all?\nLemur said the monarch's doctors had erased \"as much as they dared of their\npatients' personal lives.\" Okay, I can accept that erasing the first\npeople's personal memories might keep them from becoming disaffected with\ntheir new environment, but I have a hard time believing that the best way\nto\ngo about making people forget someone is to first teach them to worship\nthat\nsomeone.\n\nI can accept, in theory if not in practice, that an absolute dictator of a\nwhole planet, who also had an unbridled ego, might have made himself so\nprominent in the lives of his subjects that he would leave an indelible\nmark\non their memories, but why and how should that be the case for his wife and\nyoung children? His seven kids would have ranged in age from about 13 to 7\nat the time they were scanned. We know that the eldest, Cilinia, died soon\nafter being scanned.\n\nIn Typhon's eyes, all of his children were found wanting in some way, if\nonly by gender. Molpe was crazy, Tartaros blind and Hierax was a psycho who\n\"inherited his father's virile indifference to the physical sensations of\nothers to the point of mania.\" \"He allowed himself to be seduced by it, to\nthe point that he came to care for nothing else and while still a child\nslaughtered thousands for his amusement.\" (LAKE, chap. 12, 300) Under what\npossible circumstances would a boy of about ten have been allowed to slay\nthousands of people?\n\nSpeaking confusedly of the Monarch's small second daughter, Mamelta said:\n\"I\nremember seeing her often at home, dancing through my dreams. She was a\nwonderful dancer, but we cheered because we were afraid. You saw the hunger\nin her face for the kind of cheers the others got.\" (LAKE, chap. 10, 262)\nWhy would Mamelta (and others) have feared how a little girl reacted to\naudience response? Had she feared the girl or one or both of her parents?\n\nKypris also described a scene in which Typhon, apparently, had killed a\nthousand people who had been forced to kneel in a public square, while she\nwas made to watch from a balcony while he watched her from another balcony.\n(NIGHTSIDE, chap. 12, 296-97)\n\nScylla (in Chenille) told her newly appointed prophets (Auk, Dace, Incus)\nto\nkill fifty or a hundred children to attract her attention if Kypris made\nanother theophany. When she departed Chenille at the Window at the lake,\nAuk\nsaw \"the sneering features of a girl a year or two from womanhood.\" (CALDE,\nchap. 1, 31) She was said to be \"as strong-willed\" as her father. The three\nyoungest girls were: \"Thelxiepeia with her spells and drugs and poisons,\nfat\nPhaea, and Sphigx, who combined her father's fortitude with her mother's\nvile temper. In a family such as hers, she would be forced to cultivate\nthose qualities or die, unquestionably.\" (LAKE, chap. 12, 299-300)\n\nThese things paint an ugly picture of the Typhons while they were\nflesh-and-blood people on Urth, and explains why they might not want the\nfirst people put aboard the ship to remember them. However, Mamelta, though\nshe seemed not to have remembered Molpe's real name, remembered the dancing\nand the girl's hunger for adulation. The girl became the goddess of music,\ndance and art on the ship. The boy who slaughtered thousands became the god\nof death on the ship. Scylla said of her father, \"In the beginning we chose\nup, with Daddy to be the god of everything--that's what his name meant--and\nboss over everybody.\" (LAKE, chap. 11, 274) Aggressive Sphigx became the\ngoddess of war. Each family member's role as gods in Mainframe was a\nreflection of their personalities when they were flesh-and-blood people.\n\nThe Typhons' names were changed when they became digitized entities in\nMainframe, became gods with as much or more power than they ever had on\nUrth, now over a captive congregation rendered meek and unable to even\nthink\nabout opposing them, but that was *after* the first people on the ship had\nbeen taught how to worship them by burning animals on a sacrificial altar.\nSo, again, what really changed when the Cargo was made to forget?\n\nLike Mamelta, Duko Rigoglio (aka Roger) had been a Sleeper forced to board\nthe ship. Also like her, he could not remember what Pas' real name had been\non Urth. But he remembered Nessus and the fact that he had lived somewhere\nsouth of the Citadel (IGJ, 218-19), which is where he received his fatal\nwound while on that astral trip there with Silkhorn. His rise to power on\nBlue had been modeled on Typhon's rise to power on Urth (279). When\nSilkhorn\nand Fava made that astral trip to the Duko's palace in Soldo, Rigoglio was\ncurious about Oreb. Silkhorn explained that the bird had originally been\nintended as a sacrifice. The Duko admonished Silkhorn, saying \"You failed\nrepeatedly to honor the gods as is their right.\" \"You wakers on the\n_Whorl_.\nIn Nessus the gods walked among us, lords and ladies of Urth, even unto\nShining Pas.\" (217)\n\nNote the plural, gods, flesh-and-blood entities seen by the public in\nNessus. By Pas he means Typhon, the man with a single head. As I have said\nbefore, I don't care what religion(s) had been practiced during Typhon's\nreign or what the state religion may have been. But Rigoglio claimed that\nthe Typhons had been regarded as gods on Urth, and that helps to explain\nsome of the outrageous behavior attributed to them that I outlined above,\nand the sense of fear felt by people who had known them on Urth; gods can\nget away with anything, so long as they have the power. It also explains\nwhy\nTyphon's kids were so prominent in the minds of people put on the ship that\nthey could not be forgotten.\n\nRigoglio came to realize that some of his memories were false. If you want\nto argue that his memory of the Typhons as gods on Urth was false, then\nthat\ndirectly contradicts the idea that Typhon wanted both sleeping and waking\nCargo to forget him and his family.\n\nThough flesh-and-blood on Urth, in Mainframe they could only be virtual\npeople, computer personalities who manifested themselves in computer\nterminals when they chose, or when summoned by sacrifices made in proximity\nto a computer terminal. The point is, they wanted to be worshipped, which\nbrings me back to the oldest altar and the forgetting. Typhon elected to be\nportrayed as a two-headed freak, his wife with snakes in her hair, and\ntheir\nchildren not as little kids but as adults with physical attributes\nappropriate to their chosen roles as gods. An image on a computer screen\nlacks the presence and authority of a living physical being, but the\nTyphons\nhad little choice and the worshippers they commandeered none. The people on\nthe ship depended on the ship's gods for everything from day and night to\nthe weather and almost everything else they needed to live.\n\nIt seems to me that to maintain their positions as lords of the _Whorl_,\nwhen they were actually only virtual beings in a big computer, the Typhons\nused their god-like powers, which existed only by virtue of Mainframe, to\nintimidate those subject to their whims and utilized their\ncomputer-generated images as an interface, as their medium of command. On\nUrth, those people subject to their whims had been conditioned to obey real\npeople, but on the ship those lords and masters were no longer real. On the\nship as on Urth, the Typhons conducted themselves as gods, and they had the\npower to get away with it in both places. The altars and the burned\nsacrifices on the ship may have been new, but not the egos and behavior\nthat\nprompted them.\n\n-Roy\n\n_______________________________________________" } ] }, { "message_id": "<96A7AB2B340D461A9EE00C4D65ED2955@jill>", "from": { "name": "Gerry Quinn", "address": "gerryq at indigo.ie" }, "date": "2010-10-06T10:43:07+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Oldest altar", "in_reply_to": "<004a01cb651e$6af42300$37d14a0c@rclackey>", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "From: \"Roy C. Lackey\" \n\"When the first people came, Auk, they were shown how we desired to be\nworshipped. Soon, they were made to forget. They did, but because they had\nseen what they had seen, a part of them remembered, and when they found \nour\naltars on the inner surface, they sacrificed as we had taught them. First \nof\nall, here.\"" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I think your post is excellent. The foregoing paragraph still seems rather \nmysterious, though, as it seems to hint at events during a period about \nwhich we know little or nothing - i.e. a time between when people first came \nto the Whorl, and when they began living on the inner surface, in cities \nsuch as Viron. Perhaps they lived in the tunnels while the main interior of \nthe Whorl was excavated and terraformed. Their tasks would have included \nhauling out thousands of cubic kilometres of asteroid rock (makes me think \nof ancient Egyptians constructing the Pyramids). Mainframe probably did not \nyet exist. Did Typhon (and/or his family) institute a special form of \nworship during this period?\n\n- Gerry Quinn" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "António Marques", "address": "entonio at gmail.com" }, "date": "2010-10-06T12:13:50+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Oldest altar", "in_reply_to": "<004a01cb651e$6af42300$37d14a0c@rclackey>", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "On 6 October 2010 07:19, Roy C. Lackey wrote:\nThe Duko admonished Silkhorn, saying \"You failed\nrepeatedly to honor the gods as is their right.\" \"You wakers on the _Whorl_.\nIn Nessus the gods walked among us, lords and ladies of Urth, even unto\nShining Pas.\" (217)\n\nNote the plural, gods, flesh-and-blood entities seen by the public in\nNessus. By Pas he means Typhon, the man with a single head. As I have said\nbefore, I don't care what religion(s) had been practiced during Typhon's\nreign or what the state religion may have been. But Rigoglio claimed that\nthe Typhons had been regarded as gods on Urth, and that helps to explain\nsome of the outrageous behavior attributed to them that I outlined above,\nand the sense of fear felt by people who had known them on Urth; gods can\nget away with anything, so long as they have the power." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "That's not how I read it (that the Typhons had been regarded as gods\non Urth). Rather, the people he [now] knows as gods walked among him\nand others on Urth. Just as he doesn't remeber their names, he doesn't\nremember their role at the time; wakers take them as gods, so gods it\nis. Mamelta - who didn't have years after her awakening to come to\nregard the wakers' culture as more reliable than her own (a point\nRigoglio stresses) - doesn't seem to regard Typhon as a god, but as a\nconqueror. Now, it isn't impossible that a god appears as a conqueror,\nbut somehow it doesn't look like that to me in her discourse." } ] }, { "message_id": "<4CAC6D21.1070002@verizon.net>", "from": { "name": "David Stockhoff", "address": "dstockhoff at verizon.net" }, "date": "2010-10-06T12:35:45+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Oldest altar", "in_reply_to": "<96A7AB2B340D461A9EE00C4D65ED2955@jill>", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": " Lacking no knowledge about how memory-wiping \"works,\" I can only agree \nand observe that plainly there is tension between the Typhons' desire, \non the one hand, to have their worst excesses forgotten so that they may \nbe worshiped wholeheartedly on the Whorl and, on the other, that their \ncrimes and flaws not be entirely forgotten so that they may be worshiped \nfearfully on the Whorl.\n\nIn fact, this seems almost to be the function of a pantheon---that it \ncontain gods to be feared as well as gods to be loved, though even then \nyou still have gods that are to be loved and feared at the same time. \nWolfe's God contains all functions: he is to be loved, but he once wiped \nout most life on Earth with a flood, just as the Increate did or allowed \non Ushas. So this tension is a real part of godhood, and the Typhons may \nbe equally a parody or an analysis of godhood.\n\nAs for Typhon's most horrid children, I am reminded of Saddam's sons, \nwho also were able to order deaths through their official positions. All \nan emperor needs to do is make his 10-y-old son Guardian of the Royal \nGarden Shed, and the slaughter can begin if the boy is so inclined. \nThese types of behavior are both a liability and an asset, depending. \nSaddam also built palaces and statues and mosques and stadiums and \nhospitals and so on, that he be thought of paternally and that his \npeccadilloes be overshadowed by this paternal image. But Iraqi citizens \nwere effectively terrorized.\n\nFinally, I hypothesize that Typhon's doctors could not biomedically \nimplant memories, at least not as well as they could wipe them. We know \nthis because the colonists were basically lectured on how to worship the \ngods---there were no injections or implants or reverse uploads. \nTherefore, it makes sense that wiping would be the final stage, \nespecially if wiping affects long-term memory more than short-term. \nKnowing some memory would remain, they did the best they could to \nsuggest to the colonists that the gods were to be both loved and feared, \nbut never hated. Rather than empty their heads and then refill them, \nthey subjected them to propaganda, then carved out the most damaging \nmemories: the details of Typhon's rule and day-to-day life on Urth.\n\nHad the Typhons been planning to take ship on the Whorl, they would have \nbeen able to continue their behavior as before. As \"gods\" with no \nphysical presence, it was wise to tone down this behavior, since they \ncould only rule through subordinates and were unable to personally \nbrutalize anyone. Total memory wipe was unnecessary and \nundesirable---muddling memories or making them fuzzy or confused was \nsufficient for this purpose." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "On 10/6/2010 6:43 AM, Gerry Quinn wrote:\n\nFrom: \"Roy C. Lackey\" " }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "\"When the first people came, Auk, they were shown how we desired to be\nworshipped. Soon, they were made to forget. They did, but because \nthey had\nseen what they had seen, a part of them remembered, and when they \nfound our\naltars on the inner surface, they sacrificed as we had taught them. \nFirst of\nall, here.\"" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "I think your post is excellent. The foregoing paragraph still seems \nrather mysterious, though, as it seems to hint at events during a \nperiod about which we know little or nothing - i.e. a time between \nwhen people first came to the Whorl, and when they began living on the \ninner surface, in cities such as Viron. Perhaps they lived in the \ntunnels while the main interior of the Whorl was excavated and \nterraformed. Their tasks would have included hauling out thousands of \ncubic kilometres of asteroid rock (makes me think of ancient Egyptians \nconstructing the Pyramids). Mainframe probably did not yet exist. Did \nTyphon (and/or his family) institute a special form of worship during \nthis period?\n\n- Gerry Quinn\n\n\n\n\n\n\n_______________________________________________" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Lee Berman", "address": "severiansola at hotmail.com" }, "date": "2010-10-06T12:59:34+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Oldest altar", "in_reply_to": "<4CAC6D21.1070002@verizon.net>", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Roy C. Lackey- It is indisputable that the worship preceded the\nforgetting. Why? I mean, why did the Typhons want to be worshipped at all?" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Clearly it was something they were used to on Urth (and perhaps other planets)." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "I have a hard time believing that the best way to go about making people forget \nsomeone is to first teach them to worship that someone." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Yes. Hence we must suspect the Typhons were not a unified family. That some\nwere working at cross-purpose to others. But we already know that happened. Why \nnot assume the various problems of The Whorl all resulted from this same conflict. \n \nFor me the suggestion is that part of the process of wiping Pas out of Mainframe was \nto wipe him from the memory of Whorl residents. But the memory-wiping process also \ninadvertantly erased the teachings of how to worship. Neither erasure was complete.\n \nThere is much evidence found in Roy's post to suggest the Typhons were involved with \nhuman sacrifice on Urth. Evidence from BotNS and the hidden painting of Pas suggests \nTyphon had a sexual purpose for the victims also. (Herena's arm made her unsuitably\nugly but the cute boys and girls sent to Typhon did not return).\n \nThe conclusion for me is that Typhon and his family wanted human sacrifice to \ncontinue on the Whorl but something went wrong. Both Mainframe and human brains were \nbollixed by the attempted insurrection. The windows didn't work all the time. Pas \nremained in human memory as an absent Father God. And people picked up some ridiculous \nnotion that human life was valuable and started sacrificing animals instead. This is why \nDuko admonishes Silkhorn for attempting to honor the gods with a bird sacrifice. That isn't \nwhat they wanted.\n \nThe Outsider is a minor god, barely present enough to be a competitor to the other gods.\nThis is in parallel to the status of Jahweh (later also called Allah) in the early days of\nJudaism. The more numerous worshipers of Jaweh's competitors, Moloch, Asteroth, the Baal \ngods, were gleeful participants in human sacrifice. I think it was the Plan of the Outsider \nto get Typhon's family fighting among themselves, messing up the blasphemous Whorl, ending \nhuman sacrifice, enlightening Silk, discrediting the false gods, etc.)\n\nThus the Long Sun series addresses the Abraham/Isaac portion of God's Covenant with humanity. \nBotNS obviously addresses the Noah/Flood portion of the Covenenant. I wonder if Short Sun is\nmeant to address the Jacob/Moses portions regarding the Promised Land." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Under what possible circumstances would a boy of about ten have been allowed to slay\nthousands of people?" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Why would Mamelta (and others) have feared how a little girl reacted to\naudience response? Had she feared the girl or one or both of her parents?" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": " \nPerhaps they were extremely powerful human beings. Or perhaps they were something more than \nhuman. Their disdain for human life and the sanctity of the human body is a bit creepy. I get\nthe impression, from his work and interviews, that Gene Wolfe considers the possibility that\nman's inhumanity to man might have an alien source. \n \nSeverian twice mentions his dream of a benign, utopian world where \"all the people knew \nthemselves bound by ties of blood, being descended from the same pair of colonists\" I think\nthis could mean we will treat each other humanely, as we were meant to, when we are free from \nnon-human influences. A nice mix of SF and Christianity. \t\t \t \t\t " } ] }, { "message_id": "<4CACA186.20404@gmail.com>", "from": { "name": "James Wynn", "address": "crushtv at gmail.com" }, "date": "2010-10-06T16:19:18+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Oldest altar", "in_reply_to": "<004a01cb651e$6af42300$37d14a0c@rclackey>", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": " Nicely done, Roy.\n\nI'll just address your proffered questions." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Roy C. Lackey-\nTake two.\n[snip]\nInterpretations aside, it is indisputable that the worship preceded the\nforgetting. Why? I mean, why did the Typhons want to be worshipped at all?" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Isn't it because they were worshiped _secularly_ on Urth? I mean, \nworshiped in the sense that Stalin was worshiped or Kim Jong Il _is_ \nworshiped.**\n\nAlso, it was a joke. The Wakers were already conditioned to obey the \nTyphons. Typhon couldn't redirect that conditioning onto something else \n(same issue as the head-transplant operation). He didn't want their \nmemories of him to help them reconstruct their old memories. He didn't \nwant to stir up too many actual memories. So he created the Nine to \ndistort their memories of him and his family to obey something \ndifferent--something that only exists on the Whorl, that they would \nnever have encountered on Urth.\n\n**I recently heard a report about refugees in South Korea being allowed \nto visit relatives in North Korea. One old woman who had become a \nChristian asked her nephew (meeting him for the first time) if he \nbelieved in God. He told her that Kim Jong Il was God." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "I can accept, in theory if not in practice, that an absolute dictator of a\nwhole planet, who also had an unbridled ego, might have made himself so\nprominent in the lives of his subjects that he would leave an indelible mark\non their memories, but why and how should that be the case for his wife and\nyoung children? His seven kids would have ranged in age from about 13 to 7\nat the time they were scanned. We know that the eldest, Cilinia, died soon\nafter being scanned." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "It doesn't require an unbridled ego. It seems obvious that absolute \ndictators who survive require absolute devotion of their subjects at all \ntimes. And they take multi-leveled steps to ensure their subjects are \nreminded of that.\n\nAs for why the children? That's a good question. That Typhon permitted \nhis children to take part in his terror of Urth implies that he did not \nconsider them a threat...he so them as part of his legacy. So his family \nrepresented a Royal Family of Terror-- Queen Elizabeth II meets Saddam." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "In Typhon's eyes, all of his children were found wanting in some way [snip] Hierax was a psycho who \"inherited his father's virile indifference to the physical sensations of others to the point of mania.\"" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Do you think Typhon saw this as a deficiency?" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "[snip] Scylla (in Chenille) told her newly appointed prophets (Auk, Dace, Incus) to kill fifty or a hundred children to attract her attention if Kypris made\nanother theophany." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "It appears that the Whorl gods cannot monitor all behavior at once--but \nthe Mainframe is designed to flag sacrifices in front of Sacred Windows \nand monitors based on type...human sacrifices are major flags, large \nhuman sacrifices are not likely to go unnoticed." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "[snip]\nThe Typhons' names were changed when they became digitized entities in\nMainframe, became gods with as much or more power than they ever had on\nUrth, now over a captive congregation rendered meek and unable to even think\nabout opposing them, but that was *after* the first people on the ship had\nbeen taught how to worship them by burning animals on a sacrificial altar.\nSo, again, what really changed when the Cargo was made to forget?" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "You seem to have answered this question. They were digitized and the \nwere gods with the power over their subjects souls as well as their \nminds and bodies. But most importantly, the gods existed on the Whorl \nonly. Thus, their identities were not useful for the the Wakers and \nSleepers to reconstruct their old memories." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Rigoglio came to realize that some of his memories were false. If you want\nto argue that his memory of the Typhons as gods on Urth was false, then that\ndirectly contradicts the idea that Typhon wanted both sleeping and waking\nCargo to forget him and his family." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I think you are making this more complicated than necessary.\n\nPas is a god on the Whorl and Rigoglio is well aware that he was a \nflesh-and-blood entity on Urth. So the gods walked among them on Urth. \nBefore being put to sleep, Rigoglio undoubtably was taught and \nconditioned to worship the gods just as the original Wakers were. That \nis why, when he woke, he had the same inclination to worship the Nine as \ndid the inhabitants of Viron.\nIf the Urthlings actually, _religiously_, worshiped the Typhons, why \nteach them new rituals?\n\nTyphon couldn't remove the memory of himself and his family (who even to \nthe youngest he had implicated in his terror over his subjects), so he \nchose not to try. Just as Lemur explained. Instead he distorted the memory.\n\nu+16b9" } ] }, { "message_id": "<4CACB063.2060406@gmail.com>", "from": { "name": "James Wynn", "address": "crushtv at gmail.com" }, "date": "2010-10-06T17:22:43+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Oldest altar", "in_reply_to": "<4CACA186.20404@gmail.com>", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "James Wynn-\nAs for why the children? That's a good question. That Typhon permitted \nhis children to take part in his terror of Urth implies that he did \nnot consider them a threat...*he so them* as part of his legacy." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "\"he saw them\"" } ] }, { "message_id": "<370746.52150.qm@web84103.mail.mud.yahoo.com>", "from": { "name": "DAVID STOCKHOFF", "address": "dstockhoff at verizon.net" }, "date": "2010-10-06T17:44:17+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Oldest altar", "in_reply_to": "<4CACA186.20404@gmail.com>", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Exactly!\n\n--- On Wed, 10/6/10, James Wynn wrote:\n\nFrom: James Wynn \nSubject: Re: (urth) Oldest altar\nTo: \"The Urth Mailing List\" \nDate: Wednesday, October 6, 2010, 12:19 PM\n\n\nThe Wakers were already conditioned to obey the Typhons. Typhon couldn't redirect that conditioning onto something else (same issue as the head-transplant operation). He didn't want their memories of him to help them reconstruct their old memories. He didn't want to stir up too many actual memories. So he created the Nine to distort their memories of him and his family to obey something different--something that only exists on the Whorl, that they would never have encountered on Urth.\n\n....\n\nTyphon couldn't remove the memory of himself and his family (who even to the youngest he had implicated in his terror over his subjects), so he chose not to try. Just as Lemur explained. Instead he distorted the memory.\n\nu+16b9" } ] }, { "message_id": "<002701cb65d8$20d59280$1ad34a0c@rclackey>", "from": { "name": "Roy C. Lackey", "address": "rclackey at stic.net" }, "date": "2010-10-07T04:28:38+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Oldest altar", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "Ant?nio Marques quoted and wrote:\nThe Duko admonished Silkhorn, saying \"You failed\nrepeatedly to honor the gods as is their right.\" \"You wakers on the\n_Whorl_.\nIn Nessus the gods walked among us, lords and ladies of Urth, even unto\nShining Pas.\" (217)\n\nNote the plural, gods, flesh-and-blood entities seen by the public in\nNessus. By Pas he means Typhon, the man with a single head. As I have\nsaid\nbefore, I don't care what religion(s) had been practiced during Typhon's\nreign or what the state religion may have been. But Rigoglio claimed\nthat\nthe Typhons had been regarded as gods on Urth, and that helps to explain\nsome of the outrageous behavior attributed to them that I outlined\nabove,\nand the sense of fear felt by people who had known them on Urth; gods\ncan\nget away with anything, so long as they have the power." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "That's not how I read it (that the Typhons had been regarded as gods\non Urth). Rather, the people he [now] knows as gods walked among him\nand others on Urth. Just as he doesn't remeber their names, he doesn't\nremember their role at the time; wakers take them as gods, so gods it\nis. Mamelta - who didn't have years after her awakening to come to\nregard the wakers' culture as more reliable than her own (a point\nRigoglio stresses) - doesn't seem to regard Typhon as a god, but as a\nconqueror. Now, it isn't impossible that a god appears as a conqueror,\nbut somehow it doesn't look like that to me in her discourse." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Rigoglio had never been exposed to the gods-in-the-machine on the ship, and\nthe gods could not follow the colonists to Blue. Even if he just gave\nlip-service to the ship's gods, just went along to get along on Blue, how\ncould he recognize the two-headed freak the colonists spoke of back on the\nship as the monarch he had known of on Urth? The people of Urth had known\nnothing of the head transplant, and the people on the ship at the time of\nthe exodus knew nothing at all about Urth. How would he have equated the\ngirl Cilinia on Urth with the tentacled being the people from the ship had\ncalled Scylla?\n\n-Roy" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Lee Berman", "address": "severiansola at hotmail.com" }, "date": "2010-10-07T11:13:57+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Oldest altar", "in_reply_to": "<002701cb65d8$20d59280$1ad34a0c@rclackey>", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Roy C. Lackey: ...the gods could not follow the colonists to Blue." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": " \nWould seem to be true. Yet we have Echinda worship still strong in Gaon.\n \nCoincidence or not that we have a giant, shapeshifting entity in the ocean\ncalled The Mother? \t\t \t \t\t " } ] }, { "message_id": "<8EED0E2B-AA44-447B-8BC7-6354346F9A58@gmail.com>", "from": { "name": "entonio at gmail.com", "address": "entonio at gmail.com" }, "date": "2010-10-07T13:03:55+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Oldest altar", "in_reply_to": "<002701cb65d8$20d59280$1ad34a0c@rclackey>", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "No dia 2010/10/07, ?s 05:28, \"Roy C. Lackey\" \nescreveu:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Rigoglio had never been exposed to the gods-in-the-machine on the \nship, and\nthe gods could not follow the colonists to Blue. Even if he just gave\nlip-service to the ship's gods, just went along to get along on \nBlue, how\ncould he recognize the two-headed freak the colonists spoke of back \non the\nship as the monarch he had known of on Urth? The people of Urth had \nknown\nnothing of the head transplant, and the people on the ship at the \ntime of\nthe exodus knew nothing at all about Urth. How would he have equated \nthe\ngirl Cilinia on Urth with the tentacled being the people from the \nship had\ncalled Scylla?" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Those are good questions, but I don't see their relevance here - istm \nthey apply just as well no matter what the status of the typhons (do I \nlove this plural!) on Urth was.\n\nA way around it is to posit that the tinkering with their memories \nincluded inserting the new names there. Or even the new appearances. \nIdentification would be trivial. The sleepers would only remember some \nevents and personalities.\n\nI don't think Roger was paying lip service. I think he came to accept \nthe wakers' pov, because he realised his own was unreliable. \n " } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "entonio at gmail.com", "address": "entonio at gmail.com" }, "date": "2010-10-07T13:14:40+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Oldest altar", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "No dia 2010/10/07, ?s 12:13, Lee Berman \nescreveu:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "Roy C. Lackey: ...the gods could not follow the colonists to Blue." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Would seem to be true." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "All evidence is that only a small number of people realised that. " } ] }, { "message_id": "<4CADDCFD.8000103@gmail.com>", "from": { "name": "James Wynn", "address": "crushtv at gmail.com" }, "date": "2010-10-07T14:45:17+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Oldest altar", "in_reply_to": "<002701cb65d8$20d59280$1ad34a0c@rclackey>", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Roy-\nRigoglio had never been exposed to the gods-in-the-machine on the ship, and\nthe gods could not follow the colonists to Blue. Even if he just gave\nlip-service to the ship's gods, just went along to get along on Blue, how\ncould he recognize the two-headed freak the colonists spoke of back on the\nship as the monarch he had known of on Urth? The people of Urth had known\nnothing of the head transplant, and the people on the ship at the time of\nthe exodus knew nothing at all about Urth. How would he have equated the\ngirl Cilinia on Urth with the tentacled being the people from the ship had\ncalled Scylla?" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I would suppose (for supposition is all we have, I think) that when \nRigoglio thought of the Typhons, he thought of their monstrous versions \nin the Whorl. And though he retained the memory that they were flesh and \nblood on Urth, he had also been artificially conditioned (prior to being \nput to sleep) to think of them as gods deserving of worship. It's not at \nall unlikely that he had _some_ surviving memories of their corporal \nforms. But those memories took a less pre-eminent place in his mind than \ntheir Whorl forms (just as Silk no doubt sometimes --in the years \nfollowing the Exodus-- thought of Kypris as looking something like \nChenille and Auk thought of Chenille as being something like Kypris).\n\nThis would cause psychological tension and confusion, but it is the sort \ntension between education, belief, and intuition that the human mind \ntolerates all the time.\n\nu+16b9" } ] }, { "message_id": "<363672.67995.qm@web84107.mail.mud.yahoo.com>", "from": { "name": "DAVID STOCKHOFF", "address": "dstockhoff at verizon.net" }, "date": "2010-10-07T15:05:08+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Oldest altar", "in_reply_to": "<4CADDCFD.8000103@gmail.com>", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "In other words, take Rigolio's statement that the gods walked on Urth at face value. For someone with his memories and in his condition, that would be a plain statement of fact, however complicated by other facts.\n\n--- On Thu, 10/7/10, James Wynn wrote:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "From: James Wynn \nSubject: Re: (urth) Oldest altar\nTo: \"The Urth Mailing List\" \nDate: Thursday, October 7, 2010, 10:45 AM\nRoy-\nRigoglio had never been exposed to the gods-in-the-machine on the ship, and\nthe gods could not follow the colonists to Blue. Even if he just gave\nlip-service to the ship's gods, just went along to get along on Blue, how\ncould he recognize the two-headed freak the colonists spoke of back on the\nship as the monarch he had known of on Urth? The people of Urth had known\nnothing of the head transplant, and the people on the ship at the time of\nthe exodus knew nothing at all about Urth. How would he have equated the\ngirl Cilinia on Urth with the tentacled being the people from the ship had\ncalled Scylla?" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I would suppose (for supposition is all we have, I think) that when Rigoglio thought of the Typhons, he thought of their monstrous versions in the Whorl. And though he retained the memory that they were flesh and blood on Urth, he had also been artificially conditioned (prior to being put to sleep) to think of them as gods deserving of worship. It's not at all unlikely that he had _some_ surviving memories of their corporal forms. But those memories took a less pre-eminent place in his mind than their Whorl forms (just as Silk no doubt sometimes --in the years following the Exodus-- thought of Kypris as looking something like Chenille and Auk thought of Chenille as being something like Kypris).\n\nThis would cause psychological tension and confusion, but it is the sort tension between education, belief, and intuition that the human mind tolerates all the time.\n\nu+16b9" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Lee Berman", "address": "severiansola at hotmail.com" }, "date": "2010-10-07T16:06:27+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Oldest altar", "in_reply_to": "<363672.67995.qm@web84107.mail.mud.yahoo.com>", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "entonio: the typhons (do I love this plural!) " }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": " \nMe too. Sorta like \"The Typhonnnns! dum dit dit dit dum dit dit dit duh duh duh dit.\"\n \nHomerPas- D'oh! I've got a headsache.\n \nMargidna- Anyone for more roast Musk?\n \nLiscylla- Can't world conquest and world peace go hand in hand?\n \nBartaros- cowabunga! Outta my way dude, I can't see a thing!\n \nMagolpe- ------\n \n \t\t \t \t\t " } ] }, { "message_id": "<911681.67684.qm@web84102.mail.mud.yahoo.com>", "from": { "name": "DAVID STOCKHOFF", "address": "dstockhoff at verizon.net" }, "date": "2010-10-07T19:59:26+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Oldest altar", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I'll bet there's been an episode where Homer had 2 heads, at least briefly.\nIf not, it's about time!\n\n--- On Thu, 10/7/10, Lee Berman wrote:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "From: Lee Berman \nSubject: (urth) Oldest altar\nTo: urth at lists.urth.net\nDate: Thursday, October 7, 2010, 12:06 PM\nentonio: the typhons (do I? love this plural!)? " }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": " \nMe too. Sorta like \"The Typhonnnns! dum dit dit dit dum dit dit dit duh duh duh dit.\"\n \nHomerPas- D'oh! I've got a headsache.\n \nMargidna- Anyone for more roast Musk?\n \nLiscylla- Can't world conquest and world peace go hand in hand?\n \nBartaros- cowabunga! Outta my way dude, I can't see a thing!\n \nMagolpe-? ------\n \n? ??? ???????? ?????? ??? ? " } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Dave Tallman", "address": "davetallman at msn.com" }, "date": "2010-10-08T13:56:18+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Oldest altar", "in_reply_to": "<911681.67684.qm@web84102.mail.mud.yahoo.com>", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "David Stockhoff wrote:\n\nI'll bet there's been an episode where Homer had 2 heads, at least\nbriefly. If not, it's about time!\n\n\nYes, in \"Treehouse of Horror II\" Homer had Mr. Burn's head grafted to\nhis body. Given the character of Burns, that's a good match with\nTyphon/Piaton. Since it's a Treehouse episode it's not in the normal\ncontinuity." } ] }, { "message_id": "<4CAF2566.9090603@verizon.net>", "from": { "name": "David Stockhoff", "address": "dstockhoff at verizon.net" }, "date": "2010-10-08T14:06:30+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Oldest altar", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": " I knew it. Brilliant!" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "On 10/8/2010 9:56 AM, Dave Tallman wrote:\nDavid Stockhoff wrote:\n\n I'll bet there's been an episode where Homer had 2 heads, at least\n briefly. If not, it's about time!\n\nYes, in \"Treehouse of Horror II\" Homer had Mr. Burn's head grafted to \nhis body. Given the character of Burns, that's a good match with \nTyphon/Piaton. Since it's a Treehouse episode it's not in the normal \ncontinuity.\n\n\n_______________________________________________\nUrth Mailing List\nTo post, write urth at urth.net" } ] } ] }