{ "export": { "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/599", "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": 599, "subject": "Birds, rats and other matters", "messages": 1, "voices": 1, "first": "1998-05-12T07:55:50+00:00", "last": "1998-05-12T07:55:50+00:00" }, "messages": [ { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Dan Parmenter", "address": "dan at lec.com" }, "date": "1998-05-12T07:55:50+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Birds, rats and other matters", "in_reply_to": null, "reply_link": null, "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "From: \"William H. Ansley\" \nQuite a while ago in this list there was a discussion about the rats in\nUltan's Library and whether they really could write. In looking back over\nthe archives, it seems that more people took this as a metaphor for rat\nmanure than took it literally. I want to join the literal camp and I have\nsome \"new\" evidence to back my position up." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Some of the shelves were disordered, some straight; once or twice I saw\nevidence that rats had been nesting among the books, rearranging them to\nmake snug two- and three-level homes for themselves and smearing dung on\nthe covers to form the rude characters of their speech." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Yes, I've been a \"smart rats\" man for a while now. How many of you\nread the book MRS. FRISBY AND THE RATS OF NIMH by Robert O'Brien as a\nyouth? I did and it blew my mind. One of its central plot points is\nthat the rats who've had their intelligence bumped up (second\ngeneration Algernon biotech, this time it \"takes\" and can be passed\non) spend time in a reasonably good personal library in a mansion and\nlearn enough to start building their own civilization. I have no idea\nif Wolfe knows the book, but the idea of intelligent rats taking up\nresidence in a library seems like a close fit, unless they both refer\nto some other thing that I've totally overlooked!\n\nAnd how about those two and three level homes?" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Now, this is hardly definitive; perhaps he means talking birds which\n(unlike Oreb) don't know what they are saying, although those are not among\nwhat are generally understood to be domestic animals. Neither are rats, for\nthat matter, although rats are as bound to (and, to some extent at least,\nshaped by) man as domestic animals are. And if domestic livestock has been,\nin some cases, genetically engineered to speak, it is not terribly unlikely\nthat this genetic material might be transferred to rats via viruses or\ntransposons." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "And while we're on the bird topic, how about this bit from CLAW,\nCh. 18:\n\n\"The wheeling birds traced their hieroglyphics in the air, but they\n were not for me to read.\"\n\nSeverian is musing on these very hawks and how they cannot have\nlearned to build nests based purely on instinct. There had to have\nbeen a time when the birds didn't have the instinct and there was a\n\"first nest\". This may also fall under Wolfe's defenses of\nLamarck-style evolution. So in the context of birds gaining new\nskills, he then gives us a passage that may be metaphor (the random\npatterna are hieroglyphics in some vague sense) or may be description\n(the birds are communicating, possibly in a way more sophisticated\nthan the birds of our time)." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "From: m.driussi at genie.geis.com\nRe: Hethor as cannibal survivor. Interesting! Feeding sick\npets--one continues to wonder: where does he keep these pets; how\ndoes he transport them; if both questions are not answered with \"he\nteleports them in via some obviously very small and portable magic\nmirrors\"? Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner as well as possibly The\nWandering Jew?" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Gollum?" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "And now, a hypothetical sketch of Severian the Cruel." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Finding the Old Autarch, he kills him with OEdipal glee, fulfilling\nthe Vodalarii vow. But then he turns against Vodalus, now that\nSeverian is autarch." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "And when does he become a sailor?" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "No drowning, no fairy godfather, no dog, no Thecla. No softness, no\nlove, just a savagery approaching that of Jenghis Khan; created from\nhis feelings of rejection from/abandonment by parents, compounded by\nthe nature of his upbringing." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I suppose, but I think I prefer the idea that the firsat Severian was\na near miss. The same events, but perhaps a bit hollower. I like to\nimagine that he left the guild, had his stay in Thrax and perhaps even\nfreed Cyriacca and did one or two nice things, but never really\nrenounced being a torturer. He became Autarch, failed to bring the\nnew sun and so instead, named a new Autarch (or maybe Baldanders\nsimply took over) and became a sailor (a nice alternative to being\nunmanned) for a while and was eventually buried near his childhood\nhome." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "So they show Sev2: here is your mother, here is your aunt, here is\nyour grandmother, here is your sister; here is a dog; here is your\nfather, here is your grandfather, here is your fairy godfather; here\nis a very bad girl that your grandmother warns you against, and here\nis the good girl next door." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "He also made some friends (can it be any coincidence that Jonas begins\nwith the first letter \"J\", just like Jughead, the \"universal pal\". I\nsuppose Agia is Veronica and Dorcas is Betty then, with Reggie as\nVodalus and Big Moose as Baldanders).\n\nD" } ] } ] }