# Inhumi in the Whorl *The Urth list — 79 messages, 11 voices, 08 Feb 2011* > 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. --- ### Andrew Mason *08 Feb 2011, 21:27* James Wynn wrote: . That's one way they could > have done it--if beings who can dream-travel would have their own > spaceships and if the Whorl would allow an alien spacecraft to dock. Not all spacecraft have to dock. The tender on which Severian and Burgundofara returned to Urth didn't; it just settled. > Gerry Quinn wrote: > By the way, Silk can dream travel and at thee end of _Return_ he is looking > for a spaceship. As for the Vanished People, maybe they landed on the > surface and bored their way in. No need to bore. There are passages connecting the surface of the Whorl to the interior, as part of the cooling system. --- ### Gerry Quinn *08 Feb 2011, 21:42 · in reply to Andrew Mason* > From: "Andrew Mason" > Gerry Quinn wrote: >> By the way, Silk can dream travel and at thee end of _Return_ he is >> looking >> for a spaceship. As for the Vanished People, maybe they landed on the >> surface and bored their way in. > No need to bore. There are passages connecting the surface of the > Whorl to the interior, as part of the cooling system. And to the landers as well. And perhaps other stuff. But there wouldn't be just holes open to space - they'd have to break in somehow. - Gerry Quinn --- ### David Stockhoff *09 Feb 2011, 00:16 · in reply to Gerry Quinn* There couldn't be series of hatches in the cooling tunnels, some open to space, some less so? There couldn't be airlocks all over the place? It was built by humans---it would have needed those airlocks during construction. It's an asteroid. Seriously, such matters would hardly be worth discussion by the characters, human or alien. One might as well expect all literary characters who drive cars and live in houses to always talk about carburetors and power tools, just because. (Now that would be funny....) > On 2/8/2011 4:42 PM, Gerry Quinn wrote: > > From: "Andrew Mason" > Gerry Quinn wrote: >>> By the way, Silk can dream travel and at thee end of _Return_ he is >>> looking >>> for a spaceship. As for the Vanished People, maybe they landed on the >>> surface and bored their way in. >> No need to bore. There are passages connecting the surface of the >> Whorl to the interior, as part of the cooling system. > And to the landers as well. And perhaps other stuff. > > But there wouldn't be just holes open to space - they'd have to break > in somehow. > > - Gerry Quinn > > _______________________________________________ --- ### Dan'l Danehy-Oakes *09 Feb 2011, 00:47 · in reply to David Stockhoff* > On Tue, Feb 8, 2011 at 4:16 PM, David Stockhoff wrote: > One might as well expect all literary characters who drive > cars and live in houses to always talk about carburetors and power tools, > just because. > > (Now that would be funny....) It's been done -- I don't recall the title, but Randall Garrett wrote a parody of early SF (specifically of Hugo Gernsback), set in the real world of the '60s, in which characters (and the narrator) constantly talk about the marvels of science they daily interact with. It's in his collection TAKEOFF!, I believe. ``` Dan'l Danehy-Oakes ``` --- ### David Stockhoff *09 Feb 2011, 01:57 · in reply to Dan'l Danehy-Oakes* I will look for it---thanks! > On 2/8/2011 7:47 PM, Dan'l Danehy-Oakes wrote: > On Tue, Feb 8, 2011 at 4:16 PM, David Stockhoff wrote: >> One might as well expect all literary characters who drive >> cars and live in houses to always talk about carburetors and power tools, >> just because. >> >> (Now that would be funny....) > It's been done -- I don't recall the title, but Randall Garrett wrote > a parody of early SF (specifically of Hugo Gernsback), set in the real > world of the '60s, in which characters (and the narrator) constantly > talk about the marvels of science they daily interact with. It's in > his collection TAKEOFF!, I believe. --- ### David Stockhoff *09 Feb 2011, 02:07 · in reply to David Duffy* Magnificent! Like Kim Stanley Robinson doing Heinlein. > On 2/8/2011 9:10 PM, David Duffy wrote: > On Tue, 8 Feb 2011, David Stockhoff wrote: >>> It's been done -- I don't recall the title, but Randall Garrett wrote >>> a parody of early SF (specifically of Hugo Gernsback), set in the real >>> world of the '60s, in which characters (and the narrator) constantly >>> talk about the marvels of science they daily interact with. It's in >>> his collection TAKEOFF!, I believe. > And http://www.shrovetuesdayobserved.com/flight.html > _______________________________________________ --- ### David Duffy *09 Feb 2011, 02:10 · in reply to David Stockhoff* >> On Tue, 8 Feb 2011, David Stockhoff wrote: >> It's been done -- I don't recall the title, but Randall Garrett wrote >> a parody of early SF (specifically of Hugo Gernsback), set in the real >> world of the '60s, in which characters (and the narrator) constantly >> talk about the marvels of science they daily interact with. It's in >> his collection TAKEOFF!, I believe. And http://www.shrovetuesdayobserved.com/flight.html --- ### Jeff Wilson *09 Feb 2011, 05:22 · in reply to David Stockhoff* > On 2/8/2011 6:16 PM, David Stockhoff wrote: > There couldn't be series of hatches in the cooling tunnels, some open to > space, some less so? There couldn't be airlocks all over the place? It > was built by humans---it would have needed those airlocks during > construction. It's an asteroid. It doesn't seem in keeping with the Typhonian mindset to have no guards or alarms for security and safety hazards like airlocks. ``` Jeff Wilson - jwilson at io.com Computational Intelligence Laboratory - Texas A&M Texarkana < http://www.tamut.edu/CIL > ``` --- ### David Stockhoff *09 Feb 2011, 12:26 · in reply to Jeff Wilson* > On 2/9/2011 12:22 AM, Jeff Wilson wrote: > On 2/8/2011 6:16 PM, David Stockhoff wrote: >> There couldn't be series of hatches in the cooling tunnels, some open to >> space, some less so? There couldn't be airlocks all over the place? It >> was built by humans---it would have needed those airlocks during >> construction. It's an asteroid. > It doesn't seem in keeping with the Typhonian mindset to have no > guards or alarms for security and safety hazards like airlocks. True, if you assume Typhon saw a primary threat from without, or any threat at all. But perhaps like any tyrant he focused his attention on the threats from within (thus his elaborate cultural control systems). And after all the ship was to move through the void between stars. Anything that could reach the ship there could likely compromise it anyway. There's no evidence it had photon torpedos or any other defenses. Landers dock with it at will; for all we know this requires remote assistance from the Whorl's computer control systems. Why lock the doors when you live in the middle of nowhere? --- ### Jeff Wilson *09 Feb 2011, 12:41 · in reply to David Stockhoff* > On 2/9/2011 6:26 AM, David Stockhoff wrote: > On 2/9/2011 12:22 AM, Jeff Wilson wrote: >> On 2/8/2011 6:16 PM, David Stockhoff wrote: >>> There couldn't be series of hatches in the cooling tunnels, some open to >>> space, some less so? There couldn't be airlocks all over the place? It >>> was built by humans---it would have needed those airlocks during >>> construction. It's an asteroid. >> It doesn't seem in keeping with the Typhonian mindset to have no >> guards or alarms for security and safety hazards like airlocks. > True, if you assume Typhon saw a primary threat from without, or any > threat at all. But perhaps like any tyrant he focused his attention on > the threats from within (thus his elaborate cultural control systems). > > And after all the ship was to move through the void between stars. > Anything that could reach the ship there could likely compromise it > anyway. There's no evidence it had photon torpedos or any other > defenses. Landers dock with it at will; for all we know this requires > remote assistance from the Whorl's computer control systems. > > Why lock the doors when you live in the middle of nowhere? In case rebels decide to use the unguarded airlocks as a way to circumvent the internal security measures. Or if they want to stage a coup, "Liberty or Death!" by threatening to vent the air into space. ``` Jeff Wilson - jwilson at io.com Computational Intelligence Laboratory - Texas A&M Texarkana < http://www.tamut.edu/CIL > ``` --- ### Gerry Quinn *09 Feb 2011, 12:50 · in reply to Jeff Wilson* > From: "Jeff Wilson" > On 2/8/2011 6:16 PM, David Stockhoff wrote: >> There couldn't be series of hatches in the cooling tunnels, some open to >> space, some less so? There couldn't be airlocks all over the place? It >> was built by humans---it would have needed those airlocks during >> construction. It's an asteroid. > It doesn't seem in keeping with the Typhonian mindset to have no guards or > alarms for security and safety hazards like airlocks. Most of the safety infrastructure might be internal. Suppose there are pressure sensors and airtight seals dispersed throught the maze of tunnels under the surface of the asteroid. If a leak is detected, seals in the region surrounding it will clamp down, and the Crew can then investigate at their leisure (how do you fix an asteroid anyway? - they'd probably just leave things as they are). They would have been more concerned about collisions than alien invaders. The Neighbours probably just landed on the surface, built an airtight chamber, and drilled down from there until they hit a tunnel.. Or they may have cut their way into a lander or other surface infrastructure, which didn't report anything amiss because its monitor's cards had been repurposed by the Cargo. One does wonder why the Crew were not more concerned or knowledgeable with regard to the Green-Blue system - after all, one would have expected them to send exploration vessels to Green and Blue soon after arrival. Probably the conflict between the Gods inhibited them from performing such actions, and after Pas was killed any external activity or exploration would have been prohibited by Echidna. - Gerry Quinn --- ### David Stockhoff *09 Feb 2011, 13:02 · in reply to Jeff Wilson* > On 2/9/2011 7:41 AM, Jeff Wilson wrote: > On 2/9/2011 6:26 AM, David Stockhoff wrote: >> On 2/9/2011 12:22 AM, Jeff Wilson wrote: >>> On 2/8/2011 6:16 PM, David Stockhoff wrote: >>>> There couldn't be series of hatches in the cooling tunnels, some >>>> open to >>>> space, some less so? There couldn't be airlocks all over the place? It >>>> was built by humans---it would have needed those airlocks during >>>> construction. It's an asteroid. >>> It doesn't seem in keeping with the Typhonian mindset to have no >>> guards or alarms for security and safety hazards like airlocks. >> True, if you assume Typhon saw a primary threat from without, or any >> threat at all. But perhaps like any tyrant he focused his attention on >> the threats from within (thus his elaborate cultural control systems). >> >> And after all the ship was to move through the void between stars. >> Anything that could reach the ship there could likely compromise it >> anyway. There's no evidence it had photon torpedos or any other >> defenses. Landers dock with it at will; for all we know this requires >> remote assistance from the Whorl's computer control systems. >> >> Why lock the doors when you live in the middle of nowhere? > In case rebels decide to use the unguarded airlocks as a way to > circumvent the internal security measures. Or if they want to stage a > coup, "Liberty or Death!" by threatening to vent the air into space. Heinlein would approve. But in that case the internal control systems would already have failed and there would be nothing to protect. Who would the rebels threaten? Where would they get the spacesuits from? --- ### David Stockhoff *09 Feb 2011, 13:09 · in reply to Gerry Quinn* > On 2/9/2011 7:50 AM, Gerry Quinn wrote: > > From: "Jeff Wilson" > On 2/8/2011 6:16 PM, David Stockhoff wrote: >>> There couldn't be series of hatches in the cooling tunnels, some >>> open to >>> space, some less so? There couldn't be airlocks all over the place? It >>> was built by humans---it would have needed those airlocks during >>> construction. It's an asteroid. >> It doesn't seem in keeping with the Typhonian mindset to have no >> guards or alarms for security and safety hazards like airlocks. > Most of the safety infrastructure might be internal. Suppose there are > pressure sensors and airtight seals dispersed throught the maze of > tunnels under the surface of the asteroid. If a leak is detected, > seals in the region surrounding it will clamp down, and the Crew can > then investigate at their leisure (how do you fix an asteroid anyway? > - they'd probably just leave things as they are). > > They would have been more concerned about collisions than alien > invaders. The Neighbours probably just landed on the surface, built an > airtight chamber, and drilled down from there until they hit a > tunnel.. Or they may have cut their way into a lander or other > surface infrastructure, which didn't report anything amiss because its > monitor's cards had been repurposed by the Cargo. > > One does wonder why the Crew were not more concerned or knowledgeable > with regard to the Green-Blue system - after all, one would have > expected them to send exploration vessels to Green and Blue soon after > arrival. Probably the conflict between the Gods inhibited them from > performing such actions, and after Pas was killed any external > activity or exploration would have been prohibited by Echidna. > > - Gerry Quinn Right. And any leak would have been incredibly slow in terms of overall air loss, due to the size of the Whorl, reducing the urgency of a lock failure or breach. Regardless of how the Neighbors got in. My guess is the Crew would have little natural motivation to do anything at all in the way of exploration. Without direct orders to the contrary, or an emergency, why not just continue as your traditions dictate? You run the place, after all. --- ### Marc Aramini *09 Feb 2011, 13:19 · in reply to David Stockhoff* You know, occasionally I see a quote and I think, wow, Gene is one tricky guy. PLEASE read this quote, from Citadel of the Autarch, p 400 of Sword and Citadel. Always sure that use of the world pelagic and argosies was more than just a catch phrase for Vodalus and people associated with him, almost like a creed, then I read this last night, something I must have just looked over without seeing for years. "Below them the necropolis spread an embroidery of mingled white and green. I know it is fashionable to speak in tones of faint digust of the "unhealthy" growth of the lawns and trees in such places, but I have never observed that there is actually anything unhealthy about it. Green things die that men may live, and MEN DIE THAT GREEN THINGS MAY LIVE, even that ignorant and innocent man I killed with his own ax there long ago. All our foliage is faded, so it is said, and no doubt it is so, and when the New Sun comes, his bride, the New Urth, will give glory to him with leaves like emeralds. But in the present day, the day of the old sun and old Urth, I have never seen any other green so deep as the great pines' in the necropolis when the wind swells their branches. They draw their strength from the departed generations of mankind, and the masts of argosies, that are built up of many trees, are not so high as they." I was especially mindful of the use of argosies here, built of trees, but those man made spars are not so high as those trees built upon the vanished generations of mankind. I am SURE Wolfe had this plan all along. --- ### Marc Aramini *09 Feb 2011, 13:45 · in reply to Marc Aramini* You know, I've never been really sold on the idea that the soldier Miles or whatever is really a returned Jonas, and yesterday for the first time in a long time I was reading the ending of Citadel (what wonderful imagery) and the description of the masculine voice and the feminine voices under the water by the sailor who used Jonas' Wellerisms kind of made me wonder once again if there is a universal consensus that Severian is right in believing that soldier guy is Jonas. This unnamed (I think) sailor has all of the speech style of Jonas, but we always attribute it to them both being sailors. In the afterword, Wolfe says one of the most frustrating things is Sev's failure to distinguish between sailing vessels and actual interplanetary vessels, and says the moon is no farther than another coast. Where could this apply in the text? The sailer says for a bit he felt as if he was wasn't on Gyoll, but on a river that runs up in the sky, or underground, and then he runs into that weird ship of Pandours or something, and I always wanted explication for this scene in general, and why Wolfe says in the afterward that Severian does not distinguish between sea and interplanetary vessels. --- ### James Wynn *09 Feb 2011, 13:49 · in reply to Jeff Wilson* >> There couldn't be series of hatches in the cooling tunnels, some open to >> space, some less so? There couldn't be airlocks all over the place? It >> was built by humans---it would have needed those airlocks during >> construction. It's an asteroid. > It doesn't seem in keeping with the Typhonian mindset to have no > guards or alarms for security and safety hazards like airlocks. Is there any reference to the Neighbors having ships? If they have conventional spaceships, why did they have to wait for the Whorl to leave? u+16b9 --- ### Marc Aramini *09 Feb 2011, 13:58 · in reply to Marc Aramini* Now that I think about it I guess the weird ship of pandours the guy ran into was from the moon or something (not brown faced pandours). (top of page 400, bigger men than Sev or the sailor), and thats how the appendix might apply. Sev asks if they are starved looking or big eyed. — I dunno ? > --- On Wed, 2/9/11, Marc Aramini wrote: > > The sailer says for a bit he felt as if he was wasn't on > Gyoll, but on a river that runs up in the sky, or > underground, and then he runs into that weird ship of > Pandours or something, and I always wanted explication for > this scene in general, and why Wolfe says in the afterward > that Severian does not distinguish between sea and > interplanetary vessels. > > > > > ? ? ? > _______________________________________________ --- ### Gerry Quinn *09 Feb 2011, 15:44 · in reply to Marc Aramini* > From: "Marc Aramini" > > You know, I've never been really sold on the idea that the soldier Miles > or whatever is really a returned Jonas, and yesterday for the first time > in a long time I was reading the ending of Citadel (what wonderful > imagery) and the description of the masculine voice and the feminine > voices under the water by the sailor who used Jonas' Wellerisms kind of > made me wonder once again if there is a universal consensus that Severian > is right in believing that soldier guy is Jonas. This unnamed (I think) > sailor has all of the speech style of Jonas, but we always attribute it to > them both being sailors. In the afterword, Wolfe says one of the most > frustrating things is Sev's failure to distinguish between sailing vessels > and actual interplanetary vessels, and says the moon is no farther than > another coast. Where could this apply in the text? > > The sailer says for a bit he felt as if he was wasn't on Gyoll, but on a > river that runs up in the sky, or underground, and then he runs into that > weird ship of Pandours or something, and I always wanted explication for > this scene in general, and why Wolfe says in the afterward that Severian > does not distinguish between sea and interplanetary vessels. Severian does seem to leap to the conclusion that Miles is Jonas on the basis of rather slim evidence, although apart from the speech mannerisms, he has apparently seen visions of Jolenta. And Severian seems to raise people he has been associated with. But if he's *not* Jonas, it's hard to see what the point of him is, so I tend to assume Severian is probably right! I don;t know about the ezplanation for the ship, but as regards the matter of distinguishing ships I think Wolfe is just setting the scene for a double-take by the reader when he realises that 2the old sailor" was probably an astronaut, and "ship" is as likely to mean "spaceship" as "seaship" in Severian's time. [Similarly with the "ship volant" on Severian's coat of arms, which the reader will initially picture as a sailing ship - but of course this kind of ship is truly volant!] - Gerry Quinn --- ### Gerry Quinn *09 Feb 2011, 15:53 · in reply to James Wynn* >> From: "James Wynn" >>> There couldn't be series of hatches in the cooling tunnels, some open to >>> space, some less so? There couldn't be airlocks all over the place? It >>> was built by humans---it would have needed those airlocks during >>> construction. It's an asteroid. >> It doesn't seem in keeping with the Typhonian mindset to have no guards >> or alarms for security and safety hazards like airlocks. > Is there any reference to the Neighbors having ships? > If they have conventional spaceships, why did they have to wait for the > Whorl to leave? Well, we know they travelled between planets somehow, and to the Whorl, and perhaps to wherever they live now. They detected the Whorl as it approached their solar system, and visited it, bringing with them inhumi. And we know they built great structures on Green. Why should we not expect them to have spaceships, or at least to be able to make them if needed? Not sure what you mean about waiting for the Whorl to leave. - Gerry Quinn --- ### James Wynn *09 Feb 2011, 16:14 · in reply to Gerry Quinn* >> Is there any reference to the Neighbors having ships? >> If they have conventional spaceships, why did they have to wait for >> the Whorl to leave? > Well, we know they travelled between planets somehow, and to the > Whorl, and perhaps to wherever they live now. They detected the Whorl > as it approached their solar system, and visited it, bringing with > them inhumi. And we know they built great structures on Green. Why > should we not expect them to have spaceships, or at least to be able > to make them if needed? Because (unless someone can identity a Neighbor-ship) the only method of travel native to this system is via inhumi. I mean, if this were a story set in Polynesia in 1550 and some chief mentioned colonizing a great continent to the East, would we just ASSUME they must have hidden caravels? > Not sure what you mean about waiting for the Whorl to leave. Seriously? Their whole civilization on Green was destroyed centuries ago, but the Whorl arrives and they say "Here are the keys, Horn, we found a way off the planet. S'long." u+16b9 --- ### Gerry Quinn *09 Feb 2011, 16:40 · in reply to James Wynn* > From: "James Wynn" >>> Is there any reference to the Neighbors having ships? >>> If they have conventional spaceships, why did they have to wait for the >>> Whorl to leave? >> Well, we know they travelled between planets somehow, and to the Whorl, >> and perhaps to wherever they live now. They detected the Whorl as it >> approached their solar system, and visited it, bringing with them inhumi. >> And we know they built great structures on Green. Why should we not >> expect them to have spaceships, or at least to be able to make them if >> needed? > Because (unless someone can identity a Neighbor-ship) the only method of > travel native to this system is via inhumi. > I mean, if this were a story set in Polynesia in 1550 and some chief > mentioned colonizing a great continent to the East, would we just ASSUME > they must have hidden caravels? If we believed him, we'd assume they had ships capable of getting there and back. If it was clear that the canoes we know of couldn't do it, we'd guess that they had bigger ones. We know the Neighbours are not 'space hippies' a la Star Trek. They do not avoid technology - theit city on Green appears to be composed of steel-framed skyscrapers. As Horn observes: "We are ready to believe that they are practically minor gods - that they know everything and possess all manner of mysterious powers; but they must seem perfectly ordinary to themselves." Just like us, they probably have many ways of doing similar things, and use them as appropriate >> Not sure what you mean about waiting for the Whorl to leave. > Seriously? Their whole civilization on Green was destroyed centuries ago, > but the Whorl arrives and they say "Here are the keys, Horn, we found a > way off the planet. S'long." Are you saying that the Whorl was somehow their way off the planet? It seems to me that they were pretty much evacuating it anyway, but then the Whorl appeared and they thought the humans might fight the inhumi better. So they invited them to stay. - Gerry Quinn --- ### Jeff Wilson *09 Feb 2011, 17:19 · in reply to David Stockhoff* > On 2/9/2011 7:09 AM, David Stockhoff wrote: > My guess is the Crew would have little natural motivation to do anything > at all in the way of exploration. Without direct orders to the contrary, > or an emergency, why not just continue as your traditions dictate? You > run the place, after all. Unauthorized access to the tunnels and airlocks don't count as an emergency? ``` Jeff Wilson - jwilson at io.com Computational Intelligence Laboratory - Texas A&M Texarkana < http://www.tamut.edu/CIL > ``` --- ### Gerry Quinn *09 Feb 2011, 17:24 · in reply to Jeff Wilson* > From: "Jeff Wilson" > On 2/9/2011 7:09 AM, David Stockhoff wrote: >> My guess is the Crew would have little natural motivation to do anything >> at all in the way of exploration. Without direct orders to the contrary, >> or an emergency, why not just continue as your traditions dictate? You >> run the place, after all. > Unauthorized access to the tunnels and airlocks don't count as an > emergency? Well, the Cargo have for some considerable time been trashing the landers, filling the tunnels with criminals and mutated hyenas, and even having wars down there. So on the whole, I'd guess not. - Gerry Quinn --- ### James Wynn *09 Feb 2011, 17:55 · in reply to Gerry Quinn* >>> Well, we know they travelled between planets somehow, and to the >>> Whorl, and perhaps to wherever they live now. They detected the >>> Whorl as it approached their solar system, and visited it, bringing >>> with them inhumi. And we know they built great structures on Green. >>> Why should we not expect them to have spaceships, or at least to be >>> able to make them if needed? >> Because (unless someone can identity a Neighbor-ship) the only method >> of travel native to this system is via inhumi. >> I mean, if this were a story set in Polynesia in 1550 and some chief >> mentioned colonizing a great continent to the East, would we just >> ASSUME they must have hidden caravels? > If we believed him, we'd assume they had ships capable of getting > there and back. If it was clear that the canoes we know of couldn't > do it, we'd guess that they had bigger ones. Or, like a good engineer, we would assume that they accomplished the task with the methods at hand. Well, we do know that inhumi-powered dream-travel can get the Neighbors between planets or to the Whorl, right? > We know the Neighbours are not 'space hippies' a la Star Trek. They > do not avoid technology - theit city on Green appears to be composed > of steel-framed skyscrapers. Dream-travel IS technology. My grandparents grew up in a civilization of steel-framed skyscrapers as well. But they had no spaceships, even though, unlike the Neighbors, they had no alternate (in some ways, superior) method. u+16b9 --- ### Lee Berman *09 Feb 2011, 17:55 · follows Marc Aramini* > Marc Aramini: Green things die that men may live, and MEN DIE THAT GREEN THINGS MAY LIVE It seems clear that the New Sun and its killing of humanity so that green things (even a green man) may live is presaged here. The pelagic, watery, fish stuff combined with the green stuff makes it clear that Wolfe is trying to get at something in BotNS that he more fully fleshes out in Short Sun with Blue and Green. As Severian is alone in the mountains above Thrax he ponders ideal worlds. Two of the principles he considers as ideal seem to be a population of people all brothers because they are derived from the same two ancestors (or something like that). And also vegetarianism. I think Wolfe's values may have mutated a bit in the 20 years between BotNS and Short Sun. But death of humanity, blue water and green plants seem to persist as themes. (and for me, it is difficult to find the basics of Christianity there). Natural trees being higher than man-made masts seems to suggest the idea that our current humanity is an artificial, flawed, imperfect (perhaps corrupted?) species. Perhaps one that needs to be replaced. Such a philosophy doesn't seem too crazy for the 70's in America. --- ### Gerry Quinn *09 Feb 2011, 18:13 · in reply to James Wynn* > From: "James Wynn" >>>> Well, we know they travelled between planets somehow, and to the Whorl, >>>> and perhaps to wherever they live now. They detected the Whorl as it >>>> approached their solar system, and visited it, bringing with them >>>> inhumi. And we know they built great structures on Green. Why should >>>> we not expect them to have spaceships, or at least to be able to make >>>> them if needed? >>> Because (unless someone can identity a Neighbor-ship) the only method of >>> travel native to this system is via inhumi. >>> I mean, if this were a story set in Polynesia in 1550 and some chief >>> mentioned colonizing a great continent to the East, would we just ASSUME >>> they must have hidden caravels? >> If we believed him, we'd assume they had ships capable of getting there >> and back. If it was clear that the canoes we know of couldn't do it, >> we'd guess that they had bigger ones. > Or, like a good engineer, we would assume that they accomplished the task > with the methods at hand. > Well, we do know that inhumi-powered dream-travel can get the Neighbors > between planets or to the Whorl, right? No... we've never seen that. In all cases of dream-travel we've seen, only souls have been transported. It's not at all clear that the Neighbours could transfer natural-state inhumi in this fashion. Maybe they could, but I find it easier to believe they used spaceships. Still, what are we arguing about? We know they got there somehow - it's doesn't really matter much what technology they used. - Gerry Quinn --- ### Lee Berman *09 Feb 2011, 18:21 · follows Gerry Quinn* > Marc Aramini: I've never been really sold on the idea that the soldier Miles or whatever > is really a returned Jonas Well, I think it is assumed that the soldier was dead, but Severian reanimated him, in part with his memory of his friend Jonas, whom he missed. Sorta like the reanimating Thecla in his own mind. Miles was never a sailor; he only talks that way because of Jonas inside him. And Jonas is motivated because he thinks he might have a shot at Jolenta in this handsome, blond guy he now inhabits. Jonas departs when Severian tells him that Jolenta is dead. > Sev's failure to distinguish between sailing vessels and actual interplanetary vessels Well, for a cloistered torturer, the Xanthic lands are approximately the same distance as a planet orbiting Fomalhaut. Plus Wolfe suggests that the skills of a sailor on a wind-powered ship on Urth would be of similar value on a spaceship with solar-wind blown mirror sails. So there was free substitution between people doing these two jobs. So ocean and space sailors all talk the same way. (The Spring Wind story takes place "beyond the shores of Urth") > .....the description of the masculine voice and the feminine voices under the water by the sailor > who used Jonas' Wellerisms.. > I guess the weird ship of pandours the guy ran into was from the moon or something. Sev asks if they > are starved looking or big eyed. — I dunno ? I'm pretty sure Severian asks about "starved-looking" etc. because he is wondering if there were Ascians on that ship. He asks because Ascians are supposed to be the slaves of Erebus and Abaia and the male and female voices below the water are meant to represent Abaia and undines. The ship itself probably represent Erebus, like the Naviscaput (I'm not so sure Abaia and Erebus are entirely separate beings). Erebus has an abode in the Antarctic and has "pale, cold warriors" at his command. The pandours on the ship would seem to represent these. Undines seem to have access to multi-dimensional space-time and I think the same must be true for Erebus and Abaia. Thus the old sailor's sense that the river was going up to the sky or underground. The old sailor (Maxellindis' uncle, iirc) seems to have a bit of extra-sharp perception in regard to space travel and alien beings etc. He is probably the sailor who was around when Severian almost drowns in the first couple chapters and probably part of the knowledgable cadre of characters that Severian keeps bumping into during his travels (watchers/guides I think). We get a more biological, less metaphoric look at such ocean-bound creatures in Short Sun, with The Mother and Great Scylla. --- ### James Wynn *09 Feb 2011, 18:27 · in reply to Gerry Quinn* >> Well, we do know that inhumi-powered dream-travel can get the >> Neighbors between planets or to the Whorl, right? > No... we've never seen that. In all cases of dream-travel we've seen, > only souls have been transported. It's not at all clear that the > Neighbours could transfer natural-state inhumi in this fashion. Maybe > they could, but I find it easier to believe they used spaceships. Hmmm... crazy idea, but perhaps this is a good reason to reconsider one's reading regarding WHETHER the Neighbors transported natural-state inhumi to the Whorl. Perhaps this is a reason to presume they did NOT infect humanity with inhumi by transporting natural state inhumi to the Whorl and then returning them to Green. That is a complex operation that I would prefer to be hinted at in the text--especially since dream-travel, Time-travel, and bodily possession are methods offered in the text. > Still, what are we arguing about? We know they got there somehow - > it's doesn't really matter much what technology they used. Well, it makes a great deal of difference if they used dream-travel (the only method available to them as, so far as I see). u+16b9 --- ### Gerry Quinn *09 Feb 2011, 18:49 · in reply to James Wynn* > From: "James Wynn" >>> Well, we do know that inhumi-powered dream-travel can get the Neighbors >>> between planets or to the Whorl, right? >> No... we've never seen that. In all cases of dream-travel we've seen, >> only souls have been transported. It's not at all clear that the >> Neighbours could transfer natural-state inhumi in this fashion. Maybe >> they could, but I find it easier to believe they used spaceships. > Hmmm... crazy idea, but perhaps this is a good reason to reconsider one's > reading regarding WHETHER the Neighbors transported natural-state inhumi > to the Whorl. Perhaps this is a reason to presume they did NOT infect > humanity with inhumi by transporting natural state inhumi to the Whorl and > then returning them to Green. That is a complex operation that I would > prefer to be hinted at in the text It's not just hinted at in the text - we're pretty much told that that was done. [Except we don't know they brought the inhumi back to Green afterwards. Maybe they just killed them.] > --especially since dream-travel, Time-travel, and bodily possession are > methods offered in the text. There's no indication that any of these can be used to transport large physical objects, so I assume they probably had other means of doing that. Maybe they transported the ring that was given to Horn though - I'm not sure about that. >> Still, what are we arguing about? We know they got there somehow - it's >> doesn't really matter much what technology they used. > Well, it makes a great deal of difference if they used dream-travel (the > only method available to them as, so far as I see). But how could they have infected the Whorl with inhumi uising dream travel? (Nor do time travel or bodily possession appear useful in this regard.) I don't see how they could have got to Green from Blue using dream travel either. It seems to me they must have had spaceships of some kind. They could have got their astral bodies to Green by travelling with inhumi who had come from there. But they'd have had no reason to build a city there, because their own physical bodies would have been sleeping back on Earth. So just like Silkhorn, they use dream travel when appropriate, but at other times they use spaceships. At the end of RTTW, Silk is going in search of a spaceship to travel to the Whorl, even though he has previously engaged in interplanetary and even iterstellar dream travel. - Gerry Quinn --- ### DAVID STOCKHOFF *09 Feb 2011, 18:56 · in reply to Jeff Wilson* Not in an asteroid, no. I meant a real Whorl emergency, like rising temperatures and weather disasters that sweep the Whorl, or the collapse of the electrical power network. Not a knock on the door. But let's straighten out our assumptions. If "rebels" (as proposed) could get spacesuits and open a hatch, then either (a) a close watch must be kept on the airlocks by still-functional automatic systems to prevent it or (b) no one cares/has foreseen such an event and there is no such system, at least not a sophisticated one. Or else (c) there is a system of automatic responses to breaches and pressure drops, and that's that. If (a), where is there any sign of this? The Whorl is not an Imperial Starbase. It's an asteroid maintained, if at all, by computers---if they still function---and by human tradition from generation to generation. There's no 911 to call if someone burgles your asteroid. Therefore, why bother even defining an "unauthorized person"? Far easier to just lock up the space suits and put the hatches far away from the cargo and hope for the best. I don't think they have space suits anyway. Multiple redundancy is a far more likely engineering approach than training people to go out and fix things. Anyway, that's only led to disaster in any movie I've ever seen. ;) > --- On Wed, 2/9/11, Jeff Wilson wrote: > From: Jeff Wilson > Subject: Re: (urth) Inhumi in the Whorl > To: "The Urth Mailing List" > Date: Wednesday, February 9, 2011, 12:19 PM > On 2/9/2011 7:09 AM, David Stockhoff > wrote: >> My guess is the Crew would have little natural motivation to do >> anything at all in the way of exploration. Without direct orders to the > > contrary, or an emergency, why not just continue as your traditions >> dictate? You run the place, after all. > Unauthorized access to the tunnels and airlocks don't count > as an emergency? > > -- Jeff Wilson - jwilson at io.com > Computational Intelligence Laboratory - Texas A&M > Texarkana > < http://www.tamut.edu/CIL > --- ### DAVID STOCKHOFF *09 Feb 2011, 19:00 · in reply to Lee Berman* You may be right, and these ideas are largely signs of an engineer's critique of the world. Of course, by the same token they may not be truly serious. > --- On Wed, 2/9/11, Lee Berman wrote: > From: Lee Berman > Subject: (urth) the pelagic argosy sights the new sun > To: urth at lists.urth.net > Date: Wednesday, February 9, 2011, 12:55 PM >> Marc Aramini: Green things die that men may live, and >> MEN DIE THAT GREEN THINGS MAY LIVE > > It seems clear that the New Sun and its killing of humanity > so that green things (even a green man) > may live is presaged here. The pelagic, watery, fish stuff > combined with the green stuff makes it > clear that Wolfe is trying to get at something in BotNS > that he more fully fleshes out in Short Sun > with Blue and Green. > > As Severian is alone in the mountains above Thrax he > ponders ideal worlds. Two of the principles he > considers as ideal seem to be a population of people all > brothers because they are derived from the > same two ancestors (or something like that). And also > vegetarianism. I think Wolfe's values may have > mutated a bit in the 20 years between BotNS and Short Sun. > But death of humanity, blue water and green > plants seem to persist as themes. (and for me, it is > difficult to find the basics of Christianity there). > > Natural trees being higher than man-made masts seems to > suggest the idea that our current humanity is an > artificial, flawed, imperfect (perhaps corrupted?) species. > Perhaps one that needs to be replaced. Such > a philosophy doesn't seem too crazy for the 70's in > America. ??? --- ### Lee Berman *09 Feb 2011, 19:07 · follows DAVID STOCKHOFF* > Gerry Quinn: but then the Whorl appeared and they thought the humans might fight the > inhumi better I think it is more complex than this. We could consider BotNS a religious/mythological based story for which the moral is that the world/universe is more than a battle between good and evil. The battle between good and evil, angels and demons itself constitutes a necessary part of the Creation process. Likewise we could consider Short Sun an ecologically based story for which the moral is that the world/universe is more than a conflict between predator/prey/parasite. The total interaction of all participating creatures is necessary to drive the ecosystem. The uakari and the margay do not understand why the Brazilian farmer feels the need to parasitically cut down the rain forest and destroy their natural habitat and way of life. The Brazilian farmer does not understand why Green groups seek to stop them from cutting down the rain forest, taking away their livlihood and way of life. The Neighbors are a species of being far beyond that of human beings. Inhumi, in some ways, might also be considered superior. I get the sense that humans are the low species on the totem pole in this whole Sun series. Inhumi seem to exploit them at will. Inhumi may be controlled by the Neighbors, or perhaps there is a see-saw battle like the one between humans and insects. Either way, the humans of Urth, the Whorl and Blue-Green seem constantly manipulated by beings who are superior in ability and vision. As the future of the oblivous uakari and margay of the Amazon are jerked around by farmers and Green types, so humanity is jerked around on all their worlds by superior beings in the Sun Series. --- ### Lee Berman *09 Feb 2011, 19:16 · follows Lee Berman* > Gerry Quinn: But how could they have infected the Whorl with inhumi uising dream travel? > (Nor do time travel or bodily possession appear useful in this regard.) > I don't see how they could have got to Green from Blue using dream travel > either. It seems to me they must have had spaceships of some kind. > They could have got their astral bodies to Green by travelling with inhumi > who had come from there. But they'd have had no reason to build a city > there, because their own physical bodies would have been sleeping back on > Earth. If I understand James correctly, when Inhumi dream travel to Urth they become human. Not just some ethereal dream-substance but fully, fleshly human, able to have eat, have sex produce gastric juices, seminal fluid, ova, etc. So, what do inhumi and Neighbors become when they dream travel between other worlds including Blue, Green and the Whorl? --- ### Roy C. Lackey *09 Feb 2011, 19:17 · in reply to James Wynn* >>> James Wynn wrote, quoted, wrote: >>> Is there any reference to the Neighbors having ships? >>> If they have conventional spaceships, why did they have to wait for >>> the Whorl to leave? >> Well, we know they travelled between planets somehow, and to the >> Whorl, and perhaps to wherever they live now. They detected the Whorl >> as it approached their solar system, and visited it, bringing with >> them inhumi. And we know they built great structures on Green. Why >> should we not expect them to have spaceships, or at least to be able >> to make them if needed? > Because (unless someone can identity a Neighbor-ship) the only method of > travel native to this system is via inhumi. Silkhorn believed that the Neighbors had spaceships: "Eventually the Vanished People found some means of crossing the abyss to Green. Perhaps they built landers of their own -- I believe that they must have." (IGJ, 353) -Roy --- ### James Wynn *09 Feb 2011, 19:22 · in reply to Gerry Quinn* >> Perhaps this is a reason to presume they did NOT infect humanity with >> inhumi by transporting natural state inhumi to the Whorl and then >> returning them to Green. That is a complex operation that I would >> prefer to be hinted at in the text > It's not just hinted at in the text - we're pretty much told that that > was done. It is, at best, inferrable. But it is a totally unnecessary presumption. > [Except we don't know they brought the inhumi back to Green > afterwards. Maybe they just killed them.] Impossible. The inhumi must return to Green to lay their eggs. In your scenario, they would have to release the wild inhumi in the Whorl and then recollect them for transport back. >> ...if they used dream-travel (the only method available to them as, >> so far as I see). > But how could they have infected the Whorl with inhumi uising dream > travel? (Nor do time travel or bodily possession appear useful in this > regard.) All they need to do is to influence some portion of humanity to make an expedition to Green and ensure some of them are fed on by inhumi. From a technical perspective, that's a much simpler operation. > I don't see how they could have got to Green from Blue using dream > travel either. It seems to me they must have had spaceships of some > kind. > They could have got their astral bodies to Green by travelling with > inhumi who had come from there. But they'd have had no reason to > build a city there, because their own physical bodies would have been > sleeping back on Earth. So? If you want to colonize the verdant Green, why not leave your bodies behind to build your cities on Green? That's like saying the Ayuntamiento had no reason to possess chem bodies because they had bodies of their own. > So just like Silkhorn, they use dream travel when appropriate, but at > other times they use spaceships. At the end of RTTW, Silk is going in > search of a spaceship to travel to the Whorl, even though he has > previously engaged in interplanetary and even iterstellar dream travel. And the Rajan planned to use a Whorl ship to get there. Even accepting that he might have to fight inhumi for it. Yet only 60 years previously-- the Neighbors had spaceships of their own. So there's not a single Neighbor ship left on the planet? Also, he's taking humans with him--humans cannot leave their bodies behind for long periods as they travel astrally. u+16b9 --- ### Dan'l Danehy-Oakes *09 Feb 2011, 19:26 · in reply to Lee Berman* > On Wed, Feb 9, 2011 at 11:16 AM, Lee Berman wrote: > If I understand James correctly, when Inhumi dream travel to Urth they become human. Not > just some ethereal dream-substance but fully, fleshly human, able to have eat, have sex > produce gastric juices, seminal fluid, ova, etc. > > So, what do inhumi and Neighbors become when they dream travel between other worlds > including Blue, Green and the Whorl? Well, the reason, as I understand it, that inhumi become human in dream-travel is because they have human souls -- souls stolen from humans. (Insert meditation on "the blood is the life" here.) So an inhumX who has a human soul will become human in dream-travel no matter where they wind up. An interesting question is, before they began stealing human blood/souls, what kind of souls, if any, did these inhumi have? ``` Dan'l Danehy-Oakes ``` --- ### James Wynn *09 Feb 2011, 19:36 · in reply to Roy C. Lackey* > Roy- > Silkhorn believed that the Neighbors had spaceships: > > "Eventually the Vanished People found some means of crossing the abyss to > Green. Perhaps they built landers of their own -- I believe that they must > have." (IGJ, 353) Corrrection: The Rajan believed it necessary that the Neighbors ONCE had space ships. Indeed, it does seem logical that the Vanished People did not use dream-travel to travel to Green the FIRST TIME--which is what the Rajan is talking about here. They would have had to encounter inhumi before they could use dream-travel. But there is no evidence, that they use any other means in any contemporary sense. The Rajan has as much traffic with the Neighbors as anyone and yet he does not know of any spaceships still in existence. Otherwise, why go fight inhumi for a Whorl lander? Also, if he knew of the Neighbors had spacecraft currently, there would be no doubt (as he implies there is) that the Neighbors used some physical means to go to Green initially. u+16b9 --- ### Gerry Quinn *09 Feb 2011, 19:37 · in reply to Lee Berman* > From: "Lee Berman" >> Gerry Quinn: but then the Whorl appeared and they thought the humans >> might fight the >> inhumi better > I think it is more complex than this. > > We could consider BotNS a religious/mythological based story for which the > moral is that the > world/universe is more than a battle between good and evil. The battle > between good and evil, > angels and demons itself constitutes a necessary part of the Creation > process. Fair enough - we could also note that the creation process is more *important* than good and evil: "Which does humanity need more? Justice and peace? Or a New Sun?" > Likewise we could consider Short Sun an ecologically based story for which > the moral is that > the world/universe is more than a conflict between predator/prey/parasite. > The total interaction > of all participating creatures is necessary to drive the ecosystem. That seems a bit of a stretch. It is easier to take the opposite tack: the parasite has destroyed its prey, and will now itself die. The story is driven by the failure of an ecosystem, not its success. [In some sense, all three stories are driven by such a failure, but in BotNS the cause and cure are in some degree external, and in BotSS the system has outlived is design life. I don't think ecosystem failure is the central theme ofd the Solar Cycle.] > The Neighbors are a species of being far beyond that of human beings. I'm not sure I agree. Remember that line of Horn's I quoted earlier: "We are ready to believe that they are practically minor gods - that they know everything and possess all manner of mysterious powers; but they must seem perfectly ordinary to themselves." They may be more morally, aesthetically, and technologically advanced in some ways - but they were still defeated by the inhumi. Not to go all Campbellian, but perhaps there's a reason why the humans end up in possession of Blue. > Inhumi, in some ways, might also be considered superior I get the sense > that humans are > the low species on the totem pole in this whole Sun > series. Inhumi seem to exploit them at will. Inhumi may be controlled by > the > Neighbors, or perhaps there is a see-saw battle like the one between > humans and insects. That seems quite wrong. The Neighbours failed utterly to control them. The inhumi destroyed the Neighbours. > Either way, the humans of Urth, the Whorl and Blue-Green seem constantly > manipulated by beings > who are superior in ability and vision. As the future of the oblivous > uakari and margay of the Amazon > are jerked around by farmers and Green types, so humanity is jerked around > on all their worlds by > superior beings in the Sun Series. To some degree, certainly, at ;least at the time that the stories are set. On the other hand, he Hierogrammates were created by humans in the first instance. Ane Urth has in the past been the hub of an interstellar empire. (This may be the cause of some of its current difficulties.) - Gerry Quinn --- ### Gerry Quinn *09 Feb 2011, 19:45 · in reply to Lee Berman* >> From: "Lee Berman" >> Gerry Quinn: But how could they have infected the Whorl with inhumi >> uising dream travel? >> (Nor do time travel or bodily possession appear useful in this regard.) >> I don't see how they could have got to Green from Blue using dream travel >> either. It seems to me they must have had spaceships of some kind. >> They could have got their astral bodies to Green by travelling with inhumi >> who had come from there. But they'd have had no reason to build a city >> there, because their own physical bodies would have been sleeping back on >> Earth. > If I understand James correctly, when Inhumi dream travel to Urth they > become human. Not > just some ethereal dream-substance but fully, fleshly human, able to have > eat, have sex > produce gastric juices, seminal fluid, ova, etc. > > So, what do inhumi and Neighbors become when they dream travel between > other worlds > including Blue, Green and the Whorl? Neighbours become Neighbours, just as humans become humans Inhumi become whatever species they are imitating. Essentially, dream travellers take on the shape of their souls. Scylla travels in a raven, but in dream travel she is human. But normally, human bodies house human souls. Inhumi are an exceptional case. - Gerry Quinn --- ### James Wynn *09 Feb 2011, 19:46 · in reply to Dan'l Danehy-Oakes* >> If I understand James correctly, when Inhumi dream travel to Urth they become human. Not >> just some ethereal dream-substance but fully, fleshly human, able to have eat, have sex >> produce gastric juices, seminal fluid, ova, etc.So, what do inhumi and Neighbors become when they dream travel between other worlds >> including Blue, Green and the Whorl? > Well, the reason, as I understand it, that inhumi become human in > dream-travel is because they have human souls -- souls stolen from > humans. (Insert meditation on "the blood is the life" here.) So an > inhumX who has a human soul will become human in dream-travel no > matter where they wind up. An interesting question is, before they > began stealing human > blood/souls, what kind of souls, if any, did these inhumi have? Yes, what do Neighbors and sentient inhumi look like during soul travel? Honestly, I think the Neighbors that the resurrected HORN encountered were in astral form. There's a spectral feel to that meeting. But, since Wolfe has toyed with every possible metamorphosis of the human soul in these 7 volumes, I'm surprised Wolfe didn't toy with what would happen if a wild inhumi fed on a dream-traveler. u+16b9 --- ### Son of Witz *09 Feb 2011, 20:07 · in reply to Lee Berman* > On Feb 9, 2011, at 9:55 AM, Lee Berman wrote: >> Marc Aramini: Green things die that men may live, and MEN DIE THAT GREEN THINGS MAY LIVE > It seems clear that the New Sun and its killing of humanity so that green things (even a green man) > may live is presaged here. The pelagic, watery, fish stuff combined with the green stuff makes it > clear that Wolfe is trying to get at something in BotNS that he more fully fleshes out in Short Sun > with Blue and Green. > > As Severian is alone in the mountains above Thrax he ponders ideal worlds. Two of the principles he > considers as ideal seem to be a population of people all brothers because they are derived from the > same two ancestors (or something like that). And also vegetarianism. I think Wolfe's values may have > mutated a bit in the 20 years between BotNS and Short Sun. But death of humanity, blue water and green > plants seem to persist as themes. (and for me, it is difficult to find the basics of Christianity there). > > Natural trees being higher than man-made masts seems to suggest the idea that our current humanity is an > artificial, flawed, imperfect (perhaps corrupted?) species. Perhaps one that needs to be replaced. Such > a philosophy doesn't seem too crazy for the 70's in America. > _______________________________________________ --- ### Gerry Quinn *09 Feb 2011, 20:14 · in reply to James Wynn* > From: "James Wynn" >>> Perhaps this is a reason to presume they did NOT infect humanity with >>> inhumi by transporting natural state inhumi to the Whorl and then >>> returning them to Green. That is a complex operation that I would prefer >>> to be hinted at in the text >> It's not just hinted at in the text - we're pretty much told that that >> was done. > It is, at best, inferrable. But it is a totally unnecessary presumption. By some definitions of "unnecessary". We are told they boarded the Whorl. We are told they infected the humans with inhumi. We know there were inhumi on the Whorl. It is reasonable to assume they carried out the infection when they boarded the Whorl. >> [Except we don't know they brought the inhumi back to Green afterwards. >> Maybe they just killed them.] > Impossible. The inhumi must return to Green to lay their eggs. In your > scenario, they would have to release the wild inhumi in the Whorl and then > recollect them for transport back. Good point. Although it would probably have been easier to capture humans rather than release and recapture inhumi (these may have been the human "acquaintances" Windcloud spoke of). You're right, they must have made two trips. >>> ...if they used dream-travel (the only method available to them as, so >>> far as I see). >> But how could they have infected the Whorl with inhumi uising dream >> travel? (Nor do time travel or bodily possession appear useful in this >> regard.) > All they need to do is to influence some portion of humanity to make an > expedition to Green and ensure some of them are fed on by inhumi. From a > technical perspective, that's a much simpler operation. You're forgetting that they would still have to get the resulting inhumi onto the Whorl. Also, the time scale doesn't seem to work. Windcloud said he boarded the Whorl before it arrived in their system, which fits a lot better with the apparent length of time Quetzal was in Viron. There's no record of such an expedition, and no indication that Quetzal in particular was brought back from one. And how would they influence people to do this anyway? How would they even get to the Whorl to influence them, without having travelled there physically? >> I don't see how they could have got to Green from Blue using dream travel >> either. It seems to me they must have had spaceships of some kind. >> They could have got their astral bodies to Green by travelling with >> inhumi who had come from there. But they'd have had no reason to build a >> city there, because their own physical bodies would have been sleeping >> back on Earth. > So? If you want to colonize the verdant Green, why not leave your bodies > behind to build your cities on Green? That's like saying the Ayuntamiento > had no reason to possess chem bodies because they had bodies of their own. We have no indication that dream travel can be used to make a permant relocation, or that dream travellers can bear children to colonise a new planet. Silkhorn knows all about it, and he reckons they used spaceships. >> So just like Silkhorn, they use dream travel when appropriate, but at >> other times they use spaceships. At the end of RTTW, Silk is going in >> search of a spaceship to travel to the Whorl, even though he has >> previously engaged in interplanetary and even iterstellar dream travel. > And the Rajan planned to use a Whorl ship to get there. Even accepting > that he might have to fight inhumi for it. Yet only 60 years previously-- > the Neighbors had spaceships of their own. So there's not a single > Neighbor ship left on the planet? Also, he's taking humans with > him--humans cannot leave their bodies behind for long periods as they > travel astrally. He's met some Neighbours - they didn't necessarily give him the keys to their spaceships. Also, you say yourself here that humans cannot leave their bodies behind for long periods - why would you expect that Neighbours could? - Gerry Quinn --- ### Lee Berman *09 Feb 2011, 20:30 · follows Gerry Quinn* > Gerry Quinn: Fair enough - we could also note that the creation process is more > *important* than good and evil: "Which does humanity need more? Justice and > peace? Or a New Sun?" Yes, I think we are in agreement on Wolfe's intentions. Especially if "creation", "God's Plan" and "Word of the Increate" are all synonymous. > That seems a bit of a stretch. It is easier to take the opposite tack: the > parasite has destroyed its prey, and will now itself die. The story is > driven by the failure of an ecosystem, not its success. [In some sense, all > three stories are driven by such a failure, but in BotNS the cause and cure > are in some degree external, and in BotSS the system has outlived is design > life. I don't think ecosystem failure is the central theme ofd the Solar > Cycle.] I don't quite get you here. Why has the parasite destroyed its prey? Inhumi don't normally kill their host. All three species seem destined to live on in one form or another. Do you mean that Neighbors are not seen in corporeal form? Only Urth (and its ocean-bound denizens) seem threatened with extinction by a future of ice. But Severian and his handlers have taken care of that. Cyclical succession including resurrection is a perfectly viable way to maintain an ecosystem. Happens every year in some places. > They may be more morally, aesthetically, and technologically advanced in > some ways - but they were still defeated by the inhumi. Not to go all > Campbellian, but perhaps there's a reason why the humans end up in > possession of Blue. Heh, sure that's how it always is- your own race is always the winner, is always the superior one (just like on St. Anne ;- ) ). Sometimes victory is actually slavery in disguise. Given the assault on the wedding party by an army of inhumi that will only get larger, I'm not sure "humans end up in possession of Blue" is the only way to look at it. I suppose cows can be said to be in possession of the field they graze upon. But McDonalds views the situation a bit differently. > That seems quite wrong. The Neighbours failed utterly to control them. The > inhumi destroyed the Neighbours. Not completely. Horn encounters them in a certain form. And I supect we can find Neighbors in other forms. Wolfe gave them limb, body and head multiplicity for a reason. I think it is symbolic. What is the source of giant creatures like The Mother and Great Scylla who can produce multiple copies of human-like forms? You can't ignore these guys and their place in the ecosystem. What does The Mother use Seawrack for? What do Scylla, Erebus, Abaia et al. use humans on Urth for? I guess it can be pleasant to think of one's own race as the ultimate top of the food chain or whatever, but can we be sure that is humanity's place in the Sun Cycle? Top Dog? --- ### DAVID STOCKHOFF *09 Feb 2011, 21:13 · in reply to Lee Berman* > --- On Wed, 2/9/11, Lee Berman wrote: > From: Lee Berman > Subject: (urth) Inhumi in the Whorl > To: urth at lists.urth.net > Date: Wednesday, February 9, 2011, 3:30 PM > > > What does The Mother use Seawrack for? What do Scylla, > Erebus, Abaia et al. use humans on > Urth for? > > I guess it can be pleasant to think of one's own race as > the ultimate top of the food chain or > whatever, but can we be sure that is humanity's place in > the Sun Cycle? Top Dog? ??? ??? One interpretation of the Urth/Whorl universe is that a ladder stretches from us to the Increate, with an "angel" of increasing purity on every rung. Another is that a ladder stretches downward to the lowest sentient prey/host (us), with a predator (wolf?) on every rung. It's all in your point of view. Or how you spell "pray." Either way, the universe is a dangerous place, where sentient beings are only as [in]humane to us as we are to one another. "Man Is Wolf To Man," as the title of the autobiography of an WW2 Eastern Front survivor has it. --- ### James Wynn *09 Feb 2011, 21:17 · in reply to Gerry Quinn* > We are told [the Neighbors] boarded the Whorl. We are told they > infected the humans with inhumi. We know there were inhumi on the > Whorl. It is reasonable to assume they carried out the infection when > they boarded the Whorl. Except that it is difficult to imagine--based on the information available-- how they would do that. On the other hand, it is easy to see how they could have done it by infecting humans on Green--based on the information available. >> All they need to do is to influence some portion of humanity to make >> an expedition to Green and ensure some of them are fed on by inhumi. >> From a technical perspective, that's a much simpler operation. > You're forgetting that they would still have to get the resulting > inhumi onto the Whorl. Also, the time scale doesn't seem to work. > Windcloud said he boarded the Whorl before it arrived in their system, > which fits a lot better with the apparent length of time Quetzal was > in Viron. IIRC he said "your whorl when it neared our sun". It is not necessary assume this is "before it arrived in orbit". I don't see why this works better for Quetzal's timeline. They have been in orbit for around 40 years. Quetzal has been Prolocuter for sometime less than that. The presumption that Quetzal entered the Chapter pretending to be a young man and aged as he advanced seems contrary to our experience of them on Blue. Quetzal boarded the Whorl the same way inhumi assaulted Blue. He pretended to be an old man and was put in place by a human in power whom he had tamed--whether or not the human knew he was an inhumi is debatable. In the cases of our examples of human pets on Blue and Green, the inhumi's pets knew about them. Still, it is not a problem for the Time-traveling Neighbors to have had plenty of contact with humanity on the Whorl and on Urth _before_ the ship arrived at the system. > There's no record of such an expedition, But we _do_ have evidence of human landers with return capability. We don't have that for Neighbors in contemporary times. After having extrapolated a complex assault on the Whorl by the Neighbors in unobserved spaceships and a complex operation involving releasing and recapturing of wild inhumi on the Whorl, one cannot insist on explicit citations. > and no indication that Quetzal in particular was brought back from one. Quetzal did not need a lander to get to the Whorl. > And how would they influence people to do this anyway? How did an inhumi influence the resurrected HORN--who hated the inhumi--to pass him off as his son? How did the inhumi on Green influence humans to passionately work for them on Green? Getting humans to send an expedition to Green is not hard to imagine. Why are you making me answer questions for which you already know the answer? > How would they even get to the Whorl to influence them, without having > travelled there physically? Quetzal's irrelevant. He doesn't need a lander to get on the Whorl. However, he would probably have needed to be encouraged to make the attempt. He had a mission: to establish a thriving human colony on Green. > We have no indication that dream travel can be used to make a permant > relocation, or that dream travellers can bear children to colonise a > new planet. Just because they have cities on Green, does not require that they have their children there. If Green is only a dream away, why bother? Of course, some Neighbors had a method to physically travel to Green initially. But there is simply no evidence that that capability still exists. > Silkhorn knows all about it, and he reckons they used spaceships. Once upon a time. And if he "knows all about it" and needs to "reckon they used spaceships" then they don't have spaceships now. > Also, you say yourself here that humans cannot leave their bodies > behind for long periods - why would you expect that Neighbours could? Ummm....because they aren't human? u+16b9 --- ### DAVID STOCKHOFF *09 Feb 2011, 21:19 · in reply to Lee Berman* > --- On Wed, 2/9/11, Lee Berman wrote: > From: Lee Berman > Subject: (urth) miles, jonas, and that sailor guy, and sea/interplanetary vessels > To: urth at lists.urth.net > Date: Wednesday, February 9, 2011, 1:21 PM >> I guess the weird ship of pandours the guy ran into was >> from the moon or something. Sev asks if they >> are starved looking or big eyed. — I dunno ? > > I'm pretty sure Severian asks about "starved-looking" etc. > because he is wondering if there were Ascians > on that ship. He asks because Ascians are supposed to be > the slaves of Erebus and Abaia and the male > and female voices below the water are meant to represent > Abaia and undines. > > The ship itself probably represent Erebus, like the > Naviscaput (I'm not so sure Abaia and Erebus are > entirely separate beings). Erebus has an abode in the > Antarctic and has "pale, cold warriors" at > his command. The pandours on the ship would seem to > represent these. Do you actually think Erebus was sending a troopship of warriors up the Gyoll to Nessus? That had never seriously occurred to me, although it explains their eery presence. It seems certain they would lose if they attacked the Citadel---or were they there in some way in support of Severian as Autarch? --- ### Jeff Wilson *09 Feb 2011, 22:22 · in reply to Lee Berman* > On 2/9/2011 12:21 PM, Lee Berman wrote: >> Marc Aramini: I've never been really sold on the idea that the soldier Miles or whatever >> is really a returned Jonas > Well, I think it is assumed that the soldier was dead, but Severian reanimated him, in part > with his memory of his friend Jonas, whom he missed. Sorta like the reanimating Thecla in his own > mind. Miles was never a sailor; he only talks that way because of Jonas inside him. And Jonas is > motivated because he thinks he might have a shot at Jolenta in this handsome, blond guy he > now inhabits. Jonas departs when Severian tells him that Jolenta is dead. Where does Severian retrieve Jonas' spirit from? Does the tin-drover body fall over dead in some distant galaxy when he does this? ``` Jeff Wilson - jwilson at io.com Computational Intelligence Laboratory - Texas A&M Texarkana < http://www.tamut.edu/CIL > ``` --- ### Jeff Wilson *09 Feb 2011, 22:27 · in reply to DAVID STOCKHOFF* > On 2/9/2011 3:19 PM, DAVID STOCKHOFF wrote: > Do you actually think Erebus was sending a troopship of warriors up the Gyoll to Nessus? That had never seriously occurred to me, although it explains their eery presence. > > It seems certain they would lose if they attacked the Citadel---or were they there in some way in support of Severian as Autarch? It's suspicious that the Botanic Gardens nearby also have water flowing to other places and times... ``` Jeff Wilson - jwilson at io.com Computational Intelligence Laboratory - Texas A&M Texarkana < http://www.tamut.edu/CIL > ``` --- ### Andrew Mason *09 Feb 2011, 22:50 · follows James Wynn* > James Wynn wrote: > > But there is no evidence, that they use any other means in any > contemporary sense. The Rajan has as much traffic with the Neighbors as > anyone and yet he does not know of any spaceships still in existence. > Otherwise, why go fight inhumi for a Whorl lander? It seems quite possible that there are no Neighbour ships currently on Blue, as they have used them all to transfer to their new home. (I agree that the returning Neighbours Horn meets are in astral form.) --- ### Lee Berman *09 Feb 2011, 23:06 · follows Jeff Wilson* > David Stockhoff- Do you actually think Erebus was sending a troopship of warriors up > the Gyoll to Nessus? That had never seriously occurred to me, although it explains their > eery presence. It seems certain they would lose if they attacked the Citadel---or were they > there in some way in support of Severian as Autarch? Well first let me say that this is an awfully long story about nothing much happening. I interpret such a story as being important more for the telling and who is telling it than what actually happens. (I doubt we are meant to understand the true purposes of superhuman beings). BTW, just rereading I noticed that the "manatees" are described as looking pale when they appear in (green) moonlight. What I mean is that a ship which invokes Abaia, undines and Erebus appearing on the Gyoll around the same time that Severian becomes Autarch reveals certain hidden connections between elements of the story. This is similar to the appearance of the Green Man and Agia appearing just after Severian ingests the old Autarch's brain. The narrator of the story is also important. An old grizzled sailor with an air of criminality about him on a boat with a dark complected girl with laughing eyes and a sidelong gaze. Does this pair remind you of another pair? (I mean Hethor and Agia). Note Severian first mistakes her for a slim lad. The sailor claims to be Maxellindis' uncle but Severian doesn't believe that. (reminiscent of another mysterious "uncle" in my opinion, Cyriaca's). > Jeff Wilson: It's suspicious that the Botanic Gardens nearby also have water flowing > to other places and times... I agree. And in the Botanic Gardens we have a bent, old boatman also telling stories about "manatees" Again, I think the narrator is as important as the story being told. --- ### Andrew Mason *09 Feb 2011, 23:07 · follows Andrew Mason* > Jame Wynn wrote: > > Seriously? Their whole civilization on Green was destroyed centuries > ago, but the Whorl arrives and they say "Here are the keys, Horn, we > found a way off the planet. S'long." Here is what the Neighbour says: ?Most of what you have said, we might say. This whorl of yours was ours. We, the remnant of our race, have abandoned it, giving it to no one and making no provision to keep it for ourselves. We found a way to leave and we left, seeking a new and a better home. He turned from me, his face lifted to the western stars. ?Some of you call the place where we are the Neighbor Whorl. It does not matter what we call it, or what we once called this one. This whorl is yours now. It is called Blue. It belongs to your race. This doesn't sound as if they are just now abandoning it. They did so a while ago, and are now coming back to hand the keys over. It may be that they left just twenty years ago, as the humans started to arrive. But it may be that they left much earlier. Indeed 'giving it to no one' might well be taken to mean that they had left before the humans turned up, since once they did the Neighbours started thinking of them as possible inheritors. --- ### Andrew Mason *09 Feb 2011, 23:11 · follows Andrew Mason* >> Gerry Quinn wrote: >> No need to bore. There are passages connecting the surface of the >> Whorl to the interior, as part of the cooling system. > And to the landers as well. ?And perhaps other stuff. > > But there wouldn't be just holes open to space - they'd have to break in > somehow. Can anyone remember where the passage comes in which the cooling system is explained? (It's filling up with water, which is why the Whorl is getting overheated.) I want to check just what it says, but I can't find it. --- ### Lee Berman *09 Feb 2011, 23:11 · follows Lee Berman* > Jeff Wilson: Where does Severian retrieve Jonas' spirit from? Does the tin-drover > body fall over dead in some distant galaxy when he does this? I really don't know. But if I have to make a guess, based on the text, I'd have to guess that like aquastors/eidolons Triskele and Malrubius, the persona/spirit of Jonas was created from Severian's own memory of him. --- ### Jeff Wilson *09 Feb 2011, 23:20 · in reply to Lee Berman* >> On 2/9/2011 5:06 PM, Lee Berman wrote: >> Jeff Wilson: It's suspicious that the Botanic Gardens nearby also have water flowing >> to other places and times... > I agree. And in the Botanic Gardens we have a bent, old boatman also telling stories about "manatees" > Again, I think the narrator is as important as the story being told. Are the undines soldiers who want love like Eckhart's devil-angels, do you think? ``` Jeff Wilson - jwilson at io.com Computational Intelligence Laboratory - Texas A&M Texarkana < http://www.tamut.edu/CIL > ``` --- ### Gerry Quinn *09 Feb 2011, 23:20 · in reply to James Wynn* >> From: "James Wynn" >> We are told [the Neighbors] boarded the Whorl. We are told they infected >> the humans with inhumi. We know there were inhumi on the Whorl. It is >> reasonable to assume they carried out the infection when they boarded the >> Whorl. > Except that it is difficult to imagine--based on the information > available-- how they would do that. On the other hand, it is easy to see > how they could have done it by infecting humans on Green--based on the > information available. I don't see why. Certainly if humans had gone to Green they could have been bitten. But the Neighbours would still, surely, have had to bring the progeny such as Quetzal to the Whorl? If they can go to the Whorl once, they can go twice. >>> All they need to do is to influence some portion of humanity to make an >>> expedition to Green and ensure some of them are fed on by inhumi. From >>> a technical perspective, that's a much simpler operation. >> You're forgetting that they would still have to get the resulting inhumi >> onto the Whorl. Also, the time scale doesn't seem to work. Windcloud >> said he boarded the Whorl before it arrived in their system, which fits a >> lot better with the apparent length of time Quetzal was in Viron. > IIRC he said "your whorl when it neared our sun". It is not necessary > assume this is "before it arrived in orbit". Technically it probably is IMO. But it's a minor point anyway, so let it pass. > I don't see why this works better for Quetzal's timeline. They have been > in orbit for around 40 years. Quetzal has been Prolocuter for sometime > less than that. The presumption that Quetzal entered the Chapter > pretending to be a young man and aged as he advanced seems contrary to our > experience of them on Blue. Quetzal boarded the Whorl the same way inhumi > assaulted Blue. He pretended to be an old man and was put in place by a > human in power whom he had tamed--whether or not the human knew he was an > inhumi is debatable. In the cases of our examples of human pets on Blue > and Green, the inhumi's pets knew about them. Hold on - you are saying Quetzal *flew* to the Whorl? Even if it was very close to Green (which doesn't seem to be the case at the end of Exodus when the colonists travel to Blue) how would he have got in? Also, you're ignoring the fact that Windcloud said he and his team boarded the Whorl. > Still, it is not a problem for the Time-traveling Neighbors to have had > plenty of contact with humanity on the Whorl and on Urth _before_ the ship > arrived at the system. Time-travelling Neighbours? I will confess I only read the Short Sun trilogy once, but I don't remember any of that. On what basis do you say the Neighbours were time travelling? If they could travel ion time, why didn't they use this ability against the inhumi? >> There's no record of such an expedition, > But we _do_ have evidence of human landers with return capability. We > don't have that for Neighbors in contemporary times. We are told they boarded the Whorl. And infected it with inhumi. > After having extrapolated a complex assault on the Whorl by the Neighbors > in unobserved spaceships and a complex operation involving releasing and > recapturing of wild inhumi on the Whorl, one cannot insist on explicit > citations. Not that complex, surely! They just get there and drill / cut a hole. The landers are on the surface of the Whorl, so they might be the easiest way in. There's no need to release and recapture inhumi in the Whorl - they can simply capture and release humans. >> and no indication that Quetzal in particular was brought back from one. > Quetzal did not need a lander to get to the Whorl. Even if he flew there (and it's *way* further than Blue), how did he get in? >> And how would they influence people to do this anyway? > How did an inhumi influence the resurrected HORN--who hated the inhumi--to > pass him off as his son? How did the inhumi on Green influence humans to > passionately work for them on Green? Getting humans to send an expedition > to Green is not hard to imagine. Why are you making me answer questions > for which you already know the answer? The above examples were done in a variety of ways, none of which seem to apply here. Seriously, what scenario are you implying? I think you suggested that Tussah went - so what did the Neighbours do to make him go? >> How would they even get to the Whorl to influence them, without having >> travelled there physically? > Quetzal's irrelevant. He doesn't need a lander to get on the Whorl. > However, he would probably have needed to be encouraged to make the > attempt. He had a mission: to establish a thriving human colony on Green. How did the neighbours influence Tussah, in Viron, a city in the Whorl. Did they go there and talk to him? >> We have no indication that dream travel can be used to make a permant >> relocation, or that dream travellers can bear children to colonise a new >> planet. > Just because they have cities on Green, does not require that they have > their children there. If Green is only a dream away, why bother? Of > course, some Neighbors had a method to physically travel to Green > initially. But there is simply no evidence that that capability still > exists. "I was one of those who boarded your Whorl as it neared our sun" - does that not count as evidence? It's testimony, at least. And Quetzal is evidence for its truth. - Gerry Quinn --- ### Lee Berman *10 Feb 2011, 00:21 · follows Gerry Quinn* > Andrew Mason: This doesn't sound as if they are just now abandoning it. They did so > a while ago, and are now coming back to hand the keys over. It may be > that they left just twenty years ago, as the humans started to arrive. > But it may be that they left much earlier. I think the evidence in at the crater Horn finds. It is ringed with a circle of blue glass and the plant growth in circle is newer growth shrubbery compared to the surrounding mature trees. I think that's where the ship took off. So how long does it take a barren, burnt blast crater to grow shrubbery? I guess 20 years might work though perhaps somewhat fewer in Blue years? --- ### Lee Berman *10 Feb 2011, 00:33 · follows Jeff Wilson* > Jeff Wilson: Are the undines soldiers who want love like Eckhart's devil-angels, do > you think? The undine says she only wants Severian's love. But they have to sneak off underwater somewhere to do it and Severian is ambivalent about the whole thing. Eckhart says: > "Tests for the devil and angel are as follows. Anything an angel does is done in the > light, orderly and clearly and the soul rejoices in the amiable presence of an angel; > also it is a sign to know him by that she is left with a sense of pleasure. In > counterfeiting this, the devil makes it vague, confused, ambiguous, and the soul, > affrighted at the haunting of the fiend, is restless and depressed and by this she may > know it is the devil." So I don't know what to think. What do you think? --- ### Gerry Quinn *10 Feb 2011, 00:43 · in reply to Lee Berman* > From: "Lee Berman" >> Andrew Mason: This doesn't sound as if they are just now abandoning it. >> They did so >> a while ago, and are now coming back to hand the keys over. It may be >> that they left just twenty years ago, as the humans started to arrive. >> But it may be that they left much earlier. > I think the evidence in at the crater Horn finds. It is ringed with a > circle of blue > glass and the plant growth in circle is newer growth shrubbery compared to > the surrounding > mature trees. I think that's where the ship took off. So how long does it > take a barren, > burnt blast crater to grow shrubbery? I guess 20 years might work though > perhaps somewhat > fewer in Blue years? Indeed, it had also occurred to me that the pit might well be a blast pit for one of the Neighbours' space vehicles. However I'd be inclined to expect a blast pit to have vent chambers to the sides which weren't mentioned, so I didn't put it forward as a suggestion. I'm not sure they went to their new place in ordinary space vessels, though... It's almost as if they went to another dimension... - Gerry Quinn --- ### James Wynn *10 Feb 2011, 02:35 · in reply to Andrew Mason* >> Seriously? Their whole civilization on Green was destroyed centuries >> ago, but the Whorl arrives and they say "Here are the keys, Horn, we >> found a way off the planet. S'long." > Andrew Mason- > Here is what the Neighbour says: > “Most of what you have said, we might say. This whorl of yours was > ours. We, the remnant of our race, have abandoned it, giving it to no > one and making no provision to keep it for ourselves. We found a way > to leave and we left, seeking a new and a better home.” > He turned from me, his face lifted to the western stars. “Some of you > call the place where we are the Neighbor Whorl. It does not matter > what we call it, or what we once called this one. This whorl is yours > now. It is called Blue. It belongs to your race.” > > This doesn't sound as if they are just now abandoning it. They did so > a while ago, and are now coming back to hand the keys over. It may be > that they left just twenty years ago, as the humans started to arrive. > But it may be that they left much earlier. Indeed 'giving it to no > one' might well be taken to mean that they had left before the humans > turned up, since once they did the Neighbours started thinking of them > as possible inheritors. If they left when the Whorl arrived, it was more like 60 years ago, that is, around 40 years before the Exodus. However, your point is taken. I was overly glib in that response. This quote, though, in my opinion, proves that the Neighbors have left through the Whorl, traveling back in Time all the way to Urth. Did they end up there? I'm not sure. Here is my point: The Neighbor says that the place they went "Some of you call [...] Neighbor Whorl." Well, other that right here, that term is never used from 'Nightside of the Long Sun' to 'Return to the Whorl". Who calls it that? I believe that Wolfe chose the term 'neighbor' deliberately as a synonym for "fairy". We know Wolfe is fully aware of this meaning because he has a character point it out in "An Evil Guest". Who calls it Neighbor Whorl? WE do. Only we call it Fairyland, that is, Faerie. Where the Neighbors ultimately ended up, I'm not sure. Perhaps in Urth's ancient pre-history. u+16b9 --- ### James Wynn *10 Feb 2011, 02:40 · in reply to Gerry Quinn* > Gerry Quinn - > Time-travelling Neighbours? I will confess I only read the Short Sun > trilogy once, but I don't remember any of that. On what basis do you > say the Neighbours were time travelling? If they could travel ion > time, why didn't they use this ability against the inhumi? Dream-travel involves Time travel. The Rajan's appearance in the grandmother's tale proves it. The appearance of the astral traveling Oreb and the Rajan (as Pike's ghost) proves it. The screwed up time-line in 'The Book of the Short Sun' proves it. u+16b9 --- ### David Stockhoff *10 Feb 2011, 03:20 · in reply to James Wynn* Exactly. That interpretation of "Neighbor" has been with me from my first reading. But I don't have any idea what to do with it. I tend to consider conclusions like these to be too literal and not literary enough; that is, they try to make too much of references. For all we know, we are to understand that the Neighbors went sideways when they left. But, borrowing from the parallel discussion of astral projection, it seems an argument could be made that the Neighbors somehow co-opted the Inhumi ability to astral project as humans, combined with time travel, to go back to old Earth and become our gods. > On 2/9/2011 9:35 PM, James Wynn wrote: > This quote, though, in my opinion, proves that the Neighbors have left > through the Whorl, traveling back in Time all the way to Urth. Did > they end up there? I'm not sure. Here is my point: > > The Neighbor says that the place they went "Some of you call [...] > Neighbor Whorl." > Well, other that right here, that term is never used from 'Nightside > of the Long Sun' to 'Return to the Whorl". Who calls it that? I > believe that Wolfe chose the term 'neighbor' deliberately as a synonym > for "fairy". We know Wolfe is fully aware of this meaning because he > has a character point it out in "An Evil Guest". Who calls it Neighbor > Whorl? WE do. Only we call it Fairyland, that is, Faerie. Where the > Neighbors ultimately ended up, I'm not sure. Perhaps in Urth's ancient > pre-history. > > u+16b9 > _______________________________________________ --- ### James Wynn *10 Feb 2011, 03:33 · in reply to David Stockhoff* > On 2/9/2011 9:20 PM, David Stockhoff wrote: > But, borrowing from the parallel discussion of astral projection, it > seems an argument could be made that the Neighbors somehow co-opted > the Inhumi ability to astral project as humans, combined with time > travel, to go back to old Earth and become our gods. I've thought about that regarding the Rajan and his association with Dionysus. It is Quetzal's parallel association with Dionysus that confirms for me that he was ensouled by Tussah and that Tussah is a clone of Pas. u+16b9 --- ### Lee Berman *10 Feb 2011, 03:44 · follows James Wynn* > James Wynn: that is, Faerie. Where the Neighbors > ultimately ended up, I'm not sure. Perhaps in Urth's ancient pre-history. > David Stockhoff: Exactly. That interpretation of "Neighbor" has been with me from my > first reading. But I don't have any idea what to do with it. > I tend to consider conclusions like these to be too literal and not > literary enough; that is, they try to make too much of references. For > all we know, we are to understand that the Neighbors went sideways when > they left. > But, borrowing from the parallel discussion of astral projection, it > seems an argument could be made that the Neighbors somehow co-opted the > Inhumi ability to astral project as humans, combined with time travel, > to go back to old Earth and become our gods. Old Earth or Urth? Well, either way I think you and James have a good idea on the right way to go with all this. Hm..."not literary enough"? You can't mean Wolfe displays a poor use of the English language I think.... Aside from that, isn't the thing that turns a story into literature the ability of the author to use his characters to address timeless themes of human existence? Isn't the origin of western literature rooted in the mythology and religion of ancient people? I can't imagine a more literary subject than trying to illustrate the mindset of the people who actually created those mythologies and religions. Isn't that essentially what happens throughout the whole SUn Series- human beings contending with powers a bit too great, complex and advanced to fully comprehend but trying to use the written word to describe the situation anyway. --- ### David Duffy *10 Feb 2011, 03:51 · in reply to Lee Berman* > On Wed, 9 Feb 2011, Lee Berman wrote: > Eckhart says: >> "Tests for the devil and angel are as follows. Anything an angel does is done in the >> light, orderly and clearly and the soul rejoices in the amiable presence of an angel; >> also it is a sign to know him by that she is left with a sense of pleasure. In >> counterfeiting this, the devil makes it vague, confused, ambiguous, and the soul, >> affrighted at the haunting of the fiend, is restless and depressed and by this she may >> know it is the devil." > So I don't know what to think. What do you think? So you think Gene Wolfe might be a devil? --- ### Jeff Wilson *10 Feb 2011, 05:39 · in reply to David Duffy* > On 2/9/2011 9:51 PM, David Duffy wrote: > On Wed, 9 Feb 2011, Lee Berman wrote: >> Eckhart says: >>> "Tests for the devil and angel are as follows. Anything an angel does >>> is done in the >>> light, orderly and clearly and the soul rejoices in the amiable >>> presence of an angel; >>> also it is a sign to know him by that she is left with a sense of >>> pleasure. In >>> counterfeiting this, the devil makes it vague, confused, ambiguous, >>> and the soul, >>> affrighted at the haunting of the fiend, is restless and depressed >>> and by this she may >>> know it is the devil." >> So I don't know what to think. What do you think? > So you think Gene Wolfe might be a devil? I was thinking there might be some kind of doublethink to the undines. The JACOB'S LADDER movie riffs on Eckhart: "You ever read Meister Eckhardt? . . . Eckhardt saw hell, too. You know what he said? He said the only thing that burns in Hell is the part of you that won't let go of your life. Your memories, your attachments. They burn 'em all away. But they're not punishing you, he said. They're freeing your soul. . . . So the way he see's it, if you're frightened of dying and you're holding on, you'll see devils tearing your life away. But if you've made your peace, then the devils are really angels, freeing you from the earth." ``` Jeff Wilson - jwilson at io.com Computational Intelligence Laboratory - Texas A&M Texarkana < http://www.tamut.edu/CIL > ``` --- ### David Stockhoff *10 Feb 2011, 12:28 · in reply to Lee Berman* I simply meant that sometimes an allusion is just an allusion. If one extrapolates a concrete theory from every allusion in Wolfe, it's like pulling a thread and unraveling the universe. > On 2/9/2011 10:44 PM, Lee Berman wrote: >> David Stockhoff: Exactly. That interpretation of "Neighbor" has been with me from my >> first reading. But I don't have any idea what to do with it. >> I tend to consider conclusions like these to be too literal and not >> literary enough; that is, they try to make too much of references. For >> all we know, we are to understand that the Neighbors went sideways when >> they left. >> But, borrowing from the parallel discussion of astral projection, it >> seems an argument could be made that the Neighbors somehow co-opted the >> Inhumi ability to astral project as humans, combined with time travel, >> to go back to old Earth and become our gods. > Hm..."not literary enough"? You can't mean Wolfe displays a poor use of the > English language I think.... > > Aside from that, isn't the thing that turns a story into literature the ability > of the author to use his characters to address timeless themes of human existence? > > Isn't the origin of western literature rooted in the mythology and religion of ancient > people? I can't imagine a more literary subject than trying to illustrate the mindset > of the people who actually created those mythologies and religions. > > Isn't that essentially what happens throughout the whole SUn Series- human beings contending > with powers a bit too great, complex and advanced to fully comprehend but trying to > use the written word to describe the situation anyway. > _______________________________________________ --- ### Lee Berman *10 Feb 2011, 13:01 · follows Jeff Wilson* > David Duffy- > So you think Gene Wolfe might be a devil? > Jeff Wilson- "You ever read Meister Eckhardt? . . . Eckhardt saw hell, too. You know > what he said? He said the only thing that burns in Hell is the part of > you that won't let go of your life. Your memories, your attachments. > They burn 'em all away. But they're not punishing you, he said. They're > freeing your soul. . . . So the way he see's it, if you're frightened of > dying and you're holding on, you'll see devils tearing your life away. > But if you've made your *peace*, then the devils are really angels, > freeing you from the earth." That is funny. Because David Duffy's question made me think of nothing else more than Wolfe's Peace. Jeff's quote seems quite germaine to that novel also. Anyway, I think Gene Wolfe might consider himself a form of devil. In part because he addresses many of his personal demons through his work. And in part because he recognizes that an author is a demiurge. A false god who appears to create everything in the universe of his stories but is, in fact, working entirely with substance from the true Creator and God. --- ### James Wynn *10 Feb 2011, 14:02 · in reply to David Stockhoff* I get what you mean about allusions, heaven knows. But I think this is different. We know the Neighbors left for some actual place, and the Neighbor says the _some_ of humanity call it "Neighbor Whorl". But the humanity he is talking about is not the humanity on the Short Sun whorls. Assuming "Neighbor Whorl" means "Faeri", the Neighbor has to be talking about people of Western France to Ireland 1000-2000 years ago. It doesn't feel like an allusion. An allusion in my mind is Quetzal as a demon-Dionysus on the Whorl ship. This statement by the Neighbor seems to be a statement of fact. u+16b9 > On 2/10/2011 6:28 AM, David Stockhoff wrote: > I simply meant that sometimes an allusion is just an allusion. If o > ne extrapolates a concrete theory from every allusion in Wolfe, it's > like pulling a thread and unraveling the universe. >>> David Stockhoff: Exactly. That interpretation of "Neighbor" has been >>> with me from my >>> first reading. But I don't have any idea what to do with it. >>> I tend to consider conclusions like these to be too literal and not >>> literary enough; that is, they try to make too much of references. For >>> all we know, we are to understand that the Neighbors went sideways when >>> they left. >>> But, borrowing from the parallel discussion of astral projection, it >>> seems an argument could be made that the Neighbors somehow co-opted the >>> Inhumi ability to astral project as humans, combined with time travel, >>> to go back to old Earth and become our gods. >> Hm..."not literary enough"? You can't mean Wolfe displays a poor use >> of the >> English language I think.... >> >> Aside from that, isn't the thing that turns a story into literature >> the ability >> of the author to use his characters to address timeless themes of >> human existence? >> >> Isn't the origin of western literature rooted in the mythology and >> religion of ancient >> people? I can't imagine a more literary subject than trying to >> illustrate the mindset >> of the people who actually created those mythologies and religions. >> >> Isn't that essentially what happens throughout the whole SUn Series- >> human beings contending >> with powers a bit too great, complex and advanced to fully comprehend >> but trying to >> use the written word to describe the situation anyway. >> _______________________________________________ --- ### Gerry Quinn *10 Feb 2011, 15:28 · in reply to James Wynn* > From: "James Wynn" > > I get what you mean about allusions, heaven knows. But I think this is > different. We know the Neighbors left for some actual place, and the > Neighbor says the _some_ of humanity call it "Neighbor Whorl". But the > humanity he is talking about is not the humanity on the Short Sun whorls. > Assuming "Neighbor Whorl" means "Faeri", the Neighbor has to be talking > about people of Western France to Ireland 1000-2000 years ago. > > It doesn't feel like an allusion. An allusion in my mind is Quetzal as a > demon-Dionysus on the Whorl ship. This statement by the Neighbor seems to > be a statement of fact. I don't believe "Neighbour Whorl" means Faerie. The words themselves don't really carry any strong weight. After all, one obvious interpretation is that it just means "the whorl where the neighbours live" just as the "Human Whorl" could mean Urth. And it's not at all obvious that he is referring to huimanity in general (on Urth and the many other colonised planets) rather than humanity on the Short Sun whorls. I do get the impression that they have moved to another dimension rather than another star. Silkhorn gives us no indication, however, as he tosses out both possibilities at different times. At one time he suggests a whorl circling another short sun, at another he says "the place beyond this place". My main reasons for thinking it is not Faerie: 1. Why should it be a particular mythological dimension on distant a unrelated planet, a mythological dimension that is not mentioned anywhere in the Solar Cycle? 2. The Vanished People don't have major characteristics in common with fairy folk. [Now somebody is going to come up with some obscure four-legged Croatian river demon and argue that this is what Wolfe was talking about...] They went somewhere; we don't know where. If Wolfe wanted to tell us where, he would have. - Gerry Quinn --- ### Gerry Quinn *10 Feb 2011, 16:38 · in reply to James Wynn* ----- Original Message ----- > From: "James Wynn" > To: "The Urth Mailing List" > Sent: Thursday, February 10, 2011 2:40 AM > Subject: Re: (urth) Inhumi in the Whorl >> Gerry Quinn - >> Time-travelling Neighbours? I will confess I only read the Short Sun >> trilogy once, but I don't remember any of that. On what basis do you say >> the Neighbours were time travelling? If they could travel ion time, why >> didn't they use this ability against the inhumi? > Dream-travel involves Time travel. > The Rajan's appearance in the grandmother's tale proves it. > The appearance of the astral traveling Oreb and the Rajan (as Pike's > ghost) proves it. > The screwed up time-line in 'The Book of the Short Sun' proves it. Silk's appearance (with Oreb) in the grandmother's tale certainly suggests time travel of some kind. I don't agree that it completely proves it - it was a story told at a table where at least one story was false and another was a mythologisation. The grandmother could have read the image from Silk's mind and inserted it for some reason. Better still, she may have read the Book of Silk and inserted it deliberately in order to see if she could get a reaction from Silkhorn! But let that pass, we will accept that there is a suggestion that Silk will at some point be able to travel in time, at least as a speaking image, and bring Oreb along, and that the Vanished People could do the same. [I don't think the evidence from Oreb and Pike is strong, and I think the Short Sun timeline is okay. Indeed I noticed that Silkhorn at one point mentions that Quetzal had been living on the Whorl in disguise for "thirty or forty years", which is probably intended to eliminate any speculation that it was fifty or sixty, which would have caused certain timeline problems.] But... we still have no real evidence that the VP can travel back in time and move physical objects. And using time travel as an explanation doesn't really solve anything. It makes Windcloud a liar when he says he and others boarded the Whorl. And even if for some reason the Neighbours did not go to the Whorl as they said but inveigled some inhabitants to Green by some mysterious time manipulation - it still does not explain how Quetzal got *into* the Whorl. (And him flying to it is very questionable too as it does not appear to have been orbiting very close to Green.) - Gerry Quinn --- ### James Wynn *10 Feb 2011, 17:20 · in reply to Gerry Quinn* > On 2/10/2011 10:38 AM, Gerry Quinn wrote: > But... we still have no real evidence that the VP can travel back in > time and move physical objects. "Pike's Ghost" went to Pike's room, wore his callote, made noise. The fighters with the Rajan on Green fought and killed inhumi there. If the the Rajan can astral-travel, so can the Neighbors. It is certainly not a > It makes Windcloud a liar when he says he and others boarded the Whorl. Why? Do you think "boarded" has to mean walking up a ramp onto a ship as loved-one wave to you from the dock? Why can't boarded mean "got onto the ship by astral travel? You can't just limit terms to mean what you arbitrarily decide you want them to mean. > And even if for some reason the Neighbours did not go to the Whorl as > they said but inveigled some inhabitants to Green by some mysterious > time manipulation - it still does not explain how Quetzal got *into* > the Whorl. (And him flying to it is very questionable too as it does > not appear to have been orbiting very close to Green.) I don't believe there is any evidence on this either way. Most of the time Green was far from Blue and then at certain times of the year it was within a 100,000 miles. I'm sure the same was true for the Whorl regarding Green and Blue. u+16b9 --- ### James Wynn *10 Feb 2011, 17:34 · in reply to James Wynn* > On 2/10/2011 11:20 AM, James Wynn wrote: > If the the Rajan can astral-travel, so can the Neighbors. It is > certainly not a Clipped. Should be... If the the Rajan can astral-travel, so can the Neighbors. It is certainly not a HUMAN ABILITY. --- ### Gerry Quinn *10 Feb 2011, 19:10 · in reply to James Wynn* > James Wynn wrote: > On 2/10/2011 10:38 AM, Gerry Quinn wrote: > It's impossible to fix up whatever you've done to the formatting] >> But... we still have no real evidence that the VP can travel back in time and move physical objects. > "Pike's Ghost" went to Pike's room, wore his callote, made noise. The fighters with the Rajan on Green fought and killed inhumi there. If the the Rajan can astral-travel, so can the Neighbors. It is certainly not a There's no particular reason to believe that Pike's ghost was a time traveller. Also, if Neighbours fought with Horn on Green there is no reason to believe they were engaged in dream travel - it seems more likely that they phased in from the parallel universe in which their Neighbour Whorl is located. And they obviously didn't get to the Neighbour Whorl by dream travel, because where are their sleeping bodies? [In fact, there no real reason to suppose that the Neighbours can dream travel at all, or even sleep. All the dream travel we see in the story involves humans and inhumi.] >> It makes Windcloud a liar when he says he and others boarded the Whorl. > Why? Do you think "boarded" has to mean walking up a ramp onto a ship as loved-one wave to you from the dock? Why can't boarded mean "got onto the ship by astral travel? You can't just limit terms to mean what you arbitrarily decide you want them to mean. Even if the Vanished people can dream travel like Silkhorn, they can't do it without already having been there, or having someone with them who was there. Since the Whorl was still approaching their star, no lander carrying humans could have yet arrived on Green or Blue. So they must have gone there physically. We are also told the Vanished People left inhumi on the Whorl - that doesn't seem possible with dreak travel as we know it.. >> And even if for some reason the Neighbours did not go to the Whorl as they said but inveigled some inhabitants to Green by some mysterious time manipulation - it still does not explain how Quetzal got *into* the Whorl. (And him flying to it is very questionable too as it does not appear to have been orbiting very close to Green.) > I don't believe there is any evidence on this either way. Most of the time Green was far from Blue and then at certain times of the year it was within a 100,000 miles. I'm sure the same was true for the Whorl regarding Green and Blue. I don't see why the Whorl would have gone in so close when it was much further away at the time the landers were axtually despatched at the end of BotLS. But anyway, the question still remains. Let's assume Quetzal has somehow been born on Green, and that he flies to the Whorl and lands on its rocky and desolate surface. How does he get in? - Gerry Quinn --- ### David Stockhoff *11 Feb 2011, 01:11 · in reply to James Wynn* It does seem more like a real clue than some of the correspondences discussed here. But allusions aren't just for mixing up and tying together all the world's mythologies. Consider that Faerie might be a mythology you and I share, as opposed to that the Greeks or Norse shared and which we observe from a distance. If so, then instead of "Here's a minor character named X who is the lover of Y, and Y is killed by fire; X is a Greek name of a god who loved someone killed by fire so Y must be like that person, who is Z, etc." we might expect something simpler like "Look for me east of the sun and west of the moon," i.e., nowhere you will ever find me. Fairies always live right next door, but where most people can't see them. They make themselves visible to those they want to have discourse with, especially near their haunts or "sacred" places. In this they are like the gods in Soldier of the Mist, but that doesn't mean they are directly related. They just work by the same logic. My working hypothesis, therefore, has always been that the Neighbors weren't really leaving in the sense we would know. They're just going "next door." (Kind of like the Elves leaving from the Grey Havens, from another mythology you and I share.) Naturally, I don't have any further evidence for this. > On 2/10/2011 9:02 AM, James Wynn wrote: > > I get what you mean about allusions, heaven knows. But I think this is > different. We know the Neighbors left for some actual place, and the > Neighbor says the _some_ of humanity call it "Neighbor Whorl". But the > humanity he is talking about is not the humanity on the Short Sun > whorls. Assuming "Neighbor Whorl" means "Faeri", the Neighbor has to > be talking about people of Western France to Ireland 1000-2000 years ago. > > It doesn't feel like an allusion. An allusion in my mind is Quetzal as > a demon-Dionysus on the Whorl ship. This statement by the Neighbor > seems to be a statement of fact. > > u+16b9 --- ### David Stockhoff *11 Feb 2011, 01:14 · in reply to Gerry Quinn* > On 2/10/2011 10:28 AM, Gerry Quinn wrote: > From: "James Wynn" >> I get what you mean about allusions, heaven knows. But I think this >> is different. We know the Neighbors left for some actual place, and >> the Neighbor says the _some_ of humanity call it "Neighbor Whorl". >> But the humanity he is talking about is not the humanity on the Short >> Sun whorls. Assuming "Neighbor Whorl" means "Faeri", the Neighbor has >> to be talking about people of Western France to Ireland 1000-2000 >> years ago. >> >> It doesn't feel like an allusion. An allusion in my mind is Quetzal >> as a demon-Dionysus on the Whorl ship. This statement by the Neighbor >> seems to be a statement of fact. > I don't believe "Neighbour Whorl" means Faerie. The words themselves > don't really carry any strong weight. After all, one obvious > interpretation is that it just means "the whorl where the neighbours > live" just as the "Human Whorl" could mean Urth. And it's not at all > obvious that he is referring to huimanity in general (on Urth and the > many other colonised planets) rather than humanity on the Short Sun > whorls. > > I do get the impression that they have moved to another dimension > rather than another star. Silkhorn gives us no indication, however, > as he tosses out both possibilities at different times. At one time > he suggests a whorl circling another short sun, at another he says > "the place beyond this place". > > My main reasons for thinking it is not Faerie: > > 1. Why should it be a particular mythological dimension on distant a > unrelated planet, a mythological dimension that is not mentioned > anywhere in the Solar Cycle? > > 2. The Vanished People don't have major characteristics in common with > fairy folk. [Now somebody is going to come up with some obscure > four-legged Croatian river demon and argue that this is what Wolfe was > talking about...] > > They went somewhere; we don't know where. If Wolfe wanted to tell us > where, he would have. Just how I see it. Except the "dimension" is merely "like" Faerie, in that its inhabitants are never really completely gone, until the time comes that they really are gone. --- ### Andrew Mason *11 Feb 2011, 13:35 · follows David Stockhoff* >> David Stockhoff wrote: >> They went somewhere; we don't know where. ?If Wolfe wanted to tell us >> where, he would have. > Just how I see it. Except the "dimension" is merely "like" Faerie, in > that its inhabitants are never really completely gone, until the time > comes that they really are gone. The Neighbour looks towards the Western stars when he says this, which suggests to me that he is thinking of an actual place you can travel to by physical means. That no one else in the series uses the term 'Neighbour Whorl' is not too surprising from an in-story point of view; the people who would use the term would be those of the Western continent, who say 'Neighbours', and have more to do with them, while most of the action takes place on the Eastern continent, where they say 'Vanished People'. Still, the way it's said sounds a bit like a a clue to me. Is it possible that they have gone to Lune? That's a neighbour whorl in a very obvious sense. --- ### Gerry Quinn *11 Feb 2011, 15:04 · in reply to Andrew Mason* > From: "Andrew Mason" > Still, the way it's said sounds a bit like a a clue to me. Is it > possible that they have gone to Lune? That's a neighbour whorl in a > very obvious sense. Not to Blue... - Gerry Quinn --- ### Andrew Mason *11 Feb 2011, 23:11 · follows Gerry Quinn* Gerry Quinn wrote:> >> Still, the way it's said sounds a bit like a a clue to me. Is it >> possible that they have gone to Lune? That's a neighbour whorl in a >> very obvious sense. > Not to Blue... Oh no, clearly not. You'd have to take 'you' to mean just 'humans', not 'humans on Blue'. To clarify: I'm sure the plain, literal meaning of the remark is that some humans on Blue call the place the Neighbours have gone the Neighbour Whorl, because the Neighbours have gone there. But there _might_ be a secondary, hidden meaning, which might refer to Lune, fairyland, or something else we haven't spotted yet. Then again, there might not. --- ### Roy C. Lackey *12 Feb 2011, 02:59 · in reply to Andrew Mason* > Andrew Mason wrote: > To clarify: I'm sure the plain, literal meaning of the remark is that > some humans on Blue call the place the Neighbours have gone the > Neighbour Whorl, because the Neighbours have gone there. But there > _might_ be a secondary, hidden meaning, which might refer to Lune, > fairyland, or something else we haven't spotted yet. Then again, there > might not. Of the Neighbors Silkhorn said: "As for me, I have walked with them, and sat with them around their fire. Thus I know that they exist. They have gone elsewhere -- found a new home circling another short sun. But they have our permission to revisit this one whenever they choose." (IGJ, 72) -Roy ---