{ "export": { "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/5960", "note": "Exported from an unofficial mirror of a public mailing list. Copyright in each message remains with the person who wrote it. Email addresses are obscured as `user at host`, the form the original archive published. This file was rebuilt from parsed fields rather than retained headers, so it is faithful in content but not byte-exact.", "addresses": "obscured as 'user at host'" }, "archive": "urth", "thread": { "id": 5960, "subject": "Miles, Jonas and that sailor guy", "messages": 3, "voices": 2, "first": "2011-02-09T23:27:49+00:00", "last": "2011-02-10T00:51:19+00:00" }, "messages": [ { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Andrew Mason", "address": "andrew.mason53 at googlemail.com" }, "date": "2011-02-09T23:27:49+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Miles, Jonas and that sailor guy", "in_reply_to": null, "reply_link": null, "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Marc Aramini wrote:\n\nYou 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." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "No, I've always doubted it. Severian thinks Miles is Jonas because he\nuses Wellerisms, and even works out a theory which would explain why\nrobots do so. But later we discover this way of speaking is common\namong sailors, used by Maxellindis' uncle, several sailors on\nTzadkiel's ship, and even Eata in later life.\n\n(I suppose Urth-bound sailors might have got it off interplanetary\nsailors, who got it off robots. But it may just be that Miles' parents\nwere sailors.)\n\nIt's a puzzling question when we should trust Severian and when we\nshouldn't. People seem very ready to accept his Miles-Jonas theory\n,and his 'first Severian' theory - which is proved to be at least\npartly wrong, in connection with Apu-Punchau. Yet his claims that\nTyphon is lying, and that Merryn and the Cumaean are _not_ the two\nwitches he met as a boy, are generally dismissed." } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Andrew Mason", "address": "andrew.mason53 at googlemail.com" }, "date": "2011-02-09T23:40:35+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Miles, Jonas and that sailor guy", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Jeff Wilson wrote:\n\nWhere does Severian retrieve Jonas' spirit from? Does the tin-drover\nbody fall over dead in some distant galaxy when he does this?" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "It's part of Severian's theory that the mirrors are _not_, as he first\nthought, simply space-travel devices. So if Miles is Jonas - which I'm\nnot sure about - he presumably never was in a distant galaxy. (I'm not\nsure where he was, as Severian doesn't elaborate.)\n\nIn any case, in the light of _Long Sun_, it seems that in that\nuniverse a spirit can be in two places at once - Typhon both on the\nWhorl and on Urth, Silk both in Mainframe and in his body. (Once the\nseparation has taken place, they may really be two spirits, but they\nhave the same origin.)" } ] }, { "message_id": "<815D916CC20E4898B77F6FCCB758B6D1@jill>", "from": { "name": "Gerry Quinn", "address": "gerryq at indigo.ie" }, "date": "2011-02-10T00:51:19+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Miles, Jonas and that sailor guy", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "From: \"Andrew Mason\" \nMarc Aramini wrote:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "You know, I've never been really sold on the idea that the soldier Miles \nor whatever is really a returned Jonas, and yesterday for the first time \nin a long time I was reading the ending of Citadel (what wonderful \nimagery) and the description of the masculine voice and the feminine \nvoices under the water by the sailor who used Jonas' Wellerisms kind of \nmade me wonder once again if there is a universal consensus that Severian \nis right in believing that soldier guy is Jonas." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "No, I've always doubted it. Severian thinks Miles is Jonas because he\nuses Wellerisms, and even works out a theory which would explain why\nrobots do so. But later we discover this way of speaking is common\namong sailors, used by Maxellindis' uncle, several sailors on\nTzadkiel's ship, and even Eata in later life." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "He also dreams of a woman with red-gold hair, whom Severian identifies with \nJolenta." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "It's a puzzling question when we should trust Severian and when we\nshouldn't. People seem very ready to accept his Miles-Jonas theory\n,and his 'first Severian' theory - which is proved to be at least\npartly wrong, in connection with Apu-Punchau. Yet his claims that\nTyphon is lying, and that Merryn and the Cumaean are _not_ the two\nwitches he met as a boy, are generally dismissed." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I certainly don't dismiss the latter. I'm not sure how he'd know anything \nabout Typhon, though.\n\nAs for Miles, I really don't know. One idea that has occurred to me is that \nhe resurrected the body of the guy who was killed when Jonas's ship crashed, \nand whose parts were taken to repair Jonas. But then why would he have \nanything of Jonas's personality?\n\nOn the other hand, Jonas is a machine, so shouldn't he have been resurrected \nas one, if indeed he is resurrectable?\n\nIt's a puzzler.\n\n- Gerry Quinn" } ] } ] }