Drotte-Roche mixup (was: Introduction and Breath)

and Ant?nio Pedro Marques:

A few reasons why I feel this way: Firstly, because substituting one name for another is an easy mistake for a writer to make, and a hard one for an editor to spot. Mistakes get published all the time. Secondly, because substituting one word for an associated one is a common error not of memory, but of language. We all do it. You mentally reach for a word, and because your attention is elsewhere, you don't notice that you've taken the one that was lying next to it instead. If a journalist writes that 'the sherrif opened the new sports field' when he meant to write 'the mayor opened the new sports field', it isn't because he remembers a man with a pointy badge and a ten-gallon hat cutting the ribbon. If Severian consistently recalled that Roche was the one who said he saw the pikes, and then three books later, in a chance remark, Drotte remembered saying it, that would be a good way to show that Severian's memory was suspect. But that doesn't happen. Severian says Roche said it, then almost immediately he says Drotte said it. If that's an error of memory, then Severian has not only remembered an incident in two completely different ways in the space of a couple of paragraphs, but he's forgotten what he wrote just two paragraphs ago. That's not imperfect memory. That's serious brain damage.

[...]

We do know that various office functions are still being expected of Sev as he writes. Time passes, Dr Talos comes and goes. Sev could as easily gone a final weekend trip, moved his bowels, and approved a dozen executions between writing "Roche" and "Drotte".

This is the part I find unbelievable. A mistake such as this doesn't happen on such a passage from such an author. First, it'd be much of a coincidence; second, it's the kind of stuff I'm positive he cares more about in his proof-readings; third, it's too conspicuous, I got it outright, dense as I am, and absolutely not on the lookout for such stuff at the time; fourth, it's right in the beginning of the book(s), with all the spotlights on it. (And from the moment I don't find this believable, there has to be a motive for the mixup, whatever it is.)

That's a good point. But for one it doesn't completely hold. Such memory errors - in 'such' I include the proximity of paragraphs - are possible. But more importantly, it may well be a simple language error, yet it makes the point: even if his memory is perfect, even if he's not out to fool us, there are still ways in which the narrative may deceive us. If it's a GW error, well, it looks just like the best of what he usually does.

He takes a break on page two of his memoirs? In the middle of writing an exciting bit? I don't find that very persuasive. Moreover, the reason we know about these little interruptions is because Severian tells us when they happen. If Wolfe wanted us to think that Severian had made a memory slip across such an interruption, he could have written it that way. Antonio Marques:

Wolfe is as fallible as every writer, and every writer makes mistakes. And it doesn't matter how much Wolfe cares about getting it right. You can't strap-on a larger brain just because you care. Vigilance will net you 99% of the mistakes in a manuscript. But doubling that vigilance will only net you 99.1%. Why? Because the mistakes you miss are the ones where your brain doesn't see a mistake at all. Wolfe spelt correctly all sorts of obscure and archaic words in TSotT, but he still got a basic one, 'onagers', wrong. Why? Because he thought it was the right spelling. Why did the copy-editor miss it? Because he assumed that clever Mr Wolfe knew what he was talking about. This is how mistakes get through. I proofread for a living, and you wouldn't believe the things I see, or the things that both I and the editor miss. I remember a writer who wrote 'inseminate' when he meant 'estimate', and I'm not making that up. Yesterday evening - and British TV viewers could back me up on this one - I heard a BBC 2 announcer inform us that in a few minutes we'd see a documentary in which Ernest Shackleton's ancestors retraced his fateful journey to the Antarctic. I watched, but there was a disappointing lack of zombies. The fact that the Drotte-Roche mixup is in chapter I doesn't impress me much either. Who are Drotte and Roche to us then but interchangeable cyphers, the Merry and Pippin of future-earth? Here's something else that's in Chapter I: a line that goes 'While he shifted his ground I saw Vodalus wrench the knife free and drive it into the leader's throat.' Except that in my copies of TSotT, the letter 'f' is missing from the third word. I kid you not. Again, British readers could back me up on this. I have the 1981 Arrow paperbacks, but I vaguely recall seeing the same mistake in later imprints. I assume this is a typesetter's error and not found in US editions, or someone would have mentioned it by now. Finally, purely as a point of interest, in the manuscript Wolfe submitted chapter I wasn't the beginning of the book anyway. It was chapter II. It was moved because it made for a punchier opening. So maybe everyone really was super-vigilant at proofreading the start of the novel, and the mistake was missed when they all kicked back and relaxed in chapter II. Only joking. :-)

Some supporting evidence that Severian is hard to interrupt when he gets into the flow of writing: "I have also ordered that Nicarete be brought to me, and when I was writing of our capture, a moment ago, my chamberlain entered to say she waited my pleasure." (The Claw of the Conciliator) The capture was some 25-30 pages earlier. Hopefully some functionary of Severian's made sure that Nicarete was supplied with tea and buns while she waited in Severian's antechamber... - Gerry Quinn

I have seen plenty of blatant errors in novels, including when a character's name is wrong, albeit usually in worse and cheaper books than Wolfe's. It is quite possible for an editor to simply miss the significance of what we regard as plain clues. As an example, in the audio version of Calde of the Long Sun, the narrator (who does great voices even if he occasionally misses an easy pronunciation!) gives Blood a new voice at Maytera Mint's sacrifice, when Blood plainly appears as himself (his approximate age, weight, perfume, shorter dark young man with him) but is not named. It is clear that the narrator simply didn't realize this person was Blood. (Too bad, because his voicing of Blood is tremendous.) And Tony is right that Drotte and Roche mean nothing to the reader at this point, perhaps especially because the chapter might have been insufficiently rewritten to make it serve as chapter 1. It could have been worse: In one of the other such errors I have seen, there is a love triangle between two men and a woman. Man #1 is arguing with the woman in her house when suddenly his part of the conversation is taken over by Man #2. It's quite disorienting. And it wasn't science fiction. I have thought many times since then that an experimental novel of creeping errors indicating the true chaotic nature of the universe (in the vein of /At Swim-Two-Birds/) might be fun to write, but this was not that novel. I am not sure Wolfe would have had Severian say anything as plain as "Well, as I was saying before the chambermaid came to empty the chamberpot, Drotte said...." Severian's bona fides as having eidetic memory must be established before such games can be played, but even then he cannot be portrayed as being so easily thrown off as that. His errors are less easily discovered, and should be expected to be deliberate ones (on Severian's part), such as pretending he didn't know he was sleeping with his grandmother.

Good catch! (bonus points for antechamber reference, except I recall matte and chocolate being the two choices---???)

That's all well, Troy, but aside from the chapter having not been the original first, it's nothing you hadn't said before. I'm certainly not about to change your opinion, but mine hasn't changed either. I'm afraid that if we have to admit authorial mistakes without definite evidence as an explanation for this kind of stuff, we may as well not discuss half of Gene Wolfe's work.

No dia 2011/04/17, ?s 21:28, David Stockhoff <dstockhoff at verizon.net> escreveu:

I vehemently disagree. I think this kind of analysis is just what Wolfe as a writer has been working against since forever.

Wolfe as a writer has been working against the kind of analysis that allows for authorial error in the case of obvious discrepancies that have no possible meaning consistent with the rest of the work? That, i.e., authors are infallible? Or was Drotte momentarily Roche, or Roche Drotte? Is Severian to be seen, on the basis of one passage, as a clumsy bumbling oaf who can't remember anything? Does it mean that he really doesn't have a good memory at all but that he pretends and makes things up and isn't even very good at it, except that 100% of the rest of the time he's extremely good at it? Hey, maybe he made up the whole acid-trip to Yesod. It's not OUR theory that would make analysis of BOTNS impossible---it's yours. It's certainly possible that we could discover "errors" that are explained by Thecla's or some other's presence in his brain, but this is not one of them. YOU are going to have to convince US, Antonio. Or maybe we could agree that GW the translator screwed up, but Wolfe can commit no error.

Dude, he's the pope-king of the world and there's war on. Anything could come up at any time. Not that we know for sure this is his first draft, it could easily be one page among thousands writ and thousands yet to come.

Towards the end, he mentions that he has spent days before his departure writing his autobiography. He does not mention making water during this time. Are we to assume that class of unrecorded interruption also does not happen?

I'm a fact-checker, peer-reviewer, and a computer programmer, so I might give you a bit more credulity than that. It remains that that less one says explicitly, the more one may mean implicitly. Regards, Jeff

I wasn't even commenting on that, rather on your 'the chapter might have been insufficiently rewritten' bit. Wolfe has been working against the kind of analysis that wants art to be shaped according to certain parametres. The chapter is what it is; barring some strong evidence to the contrary, it is just how the author intended it to be. I'm talking about critics who go on about how a particular work should have more of this or less of that based on what they think would be more didactical to the target audience. Do they think when the author reads their critic, he'll slap his forrid like 'Damn, if only I'd though of that!'? Certainly it's a rare work of art that its author will think is perfect; but if there should have been anything different - and most of the time there isn't any identifiable thing - it's seldom if ever what such critiques suggest. Certainly I think the Book of the Long Sun has 135% the length it should have, but I wouldn't know how to correct that. 'Editing' isn't an answer, unless it means returning the manuscript with the single recommendation of 'shorten it' until the author could find out how to do it himself.

No, he isn't. His memory is convincingly good in what regards recollecting even minor events, but can be faulty when it comes to the details of those events (usually the unimportant ones, but who knows).

I am going to have to convince YOU in order for ME to remain convinced of what I am convinced?

You seem hung up on the idea that the opposition to the idea that this is a mistake entails the belief that GW the real person doesn't make mistakes. I'm yet to see where you got that idea from.

That's an objection in search of an argument.

It may very well have been, but I've slept since I wrote it.

How do you know "Wolfe has been working against the kind of analysis that wants art to be shaped according to certain parametres"? Seriously. Certainly he struggles against assumptions of what SF is. But these topics have little to do with one another. If characters are introduced and described in chapter 1 and chapter 2 does not repeat these descriptions, and subsequently chapter 2 becomes chapter 1 (by the publisher's decision), then the author faces a very practical problem of reworking the text so that readers aren't confused in a way that is not "intended" by the author. ("INTENDED.") Your assumption that the chapter is always "just how the author intended it to be" regardless of actual historical fact is what I was satirizing as an assumption that the author is infallible even when in error. The first assumption leads to the other. In fact it's possible the error was introduced in just such a reworking.

I think if Severian can't keep his sole boyhood companions apart then he's a bit more far gone than you allow. Their identity is not an "unimportant detail." But can you give an example of such an error? Such an example might help your case.

Now that's just weird. First, I am suggesting that you proffer your own theory explaining the discrepancy, since you are "unconvinced" by the one presented. Second, I am pointing out that the bad result you say follows from Tony's assumptions actually follows from your own.

From you, Antonio. Although you are exaggerating it for effect.

And David Stockhoff:

It certainly doesn't address the argument I was making.

I don't think that's true, Antronio, but it's not worth arguing over.

We don't make life any easier for ourselves if we admit undetectable toilet-breaks during which Severian fabricates memories. It occurs to me that a fun way to resolve this would be for us all to write in to Wolfe's publishers, disingenuously complaining about the 'error' we found on page 2, then see what happens in the next reprint. :-)

When I get home, I intend to see if the Marble/Mint mix-up in the "The Book of Long Sun" was replicated in the "Epiphany of the Long Sun" re-release. Wolfe seemed quite annoyed by mistakes like that when he was asked. If it is there, I will accept it as possible that an editorial mistake like that could be considered Set In Stone and reproduced in all subsequent volumes. If it was fixed in subsequent volumes, then I will have ask why the Drotte/Roche error was never fixed in all the re-releases in that last 31 years. J

Which Marble/Mint mixup is that? I'm pretty sure I fell for it myself, but I don't recall where it is. It's certainly an understandable error.

I think it is in Exodus of the Long Sun. There is a passage where "Mint" is mistakenly says "Marble" and another in a different place where "Marble" is mistakenly says "Mint". It was moderately confusing since it was as though the two had momentarily switched places in the story. J

I think I remember that---thanks. I always had trouble with them anyway. If I recall, Mint is a bio, Marble is a chem with fleshy prostheses, and Rose was an old bio with metal prostheses.

James Wynn wrote (18-04-2011 22:17):

The Marble/Mint mixup `does look like a mistake. Though at that point anything goes...

Correction: Marble is a chem. Although she used to have facades that looked generally realistic or possibly very realistic, they have long-ago worn away. Rose is an old bio with many prostheses. In addition she has prosthetic hands that have been made to look realistically old and veiny. When Rose dies, the hands fit just fine on Marble's arms. Rose's memories and identity have been downloaded effortlessly into the hands. I think all of that is significant, but there are detractors. J

Ahhh ... that makes sense. I did not know Rose was actually in Marble's hands, or that her hands were not flesh. That explains my confusion. Wolfe has a thing for that, doesn't he---Sidero, for example?

and Jonas, and Thecla, and Chelle, and Nicky De Vore....

Dear James and David, I am not so sure that this explanation is right. Please, remind, James, where it is said that Rose's prosthetic hands are not flesh? In the "Book of the New Sun" Severian has a friend Jonas, who is a chem (at Urth at this time they are not called so), but Jonas has one hand and some other parths taken from a bio - he explains it himself to Severian. So the combination is possible. I don't remember where it was said, maybe it is your own deduction that they (Rose's hands) are not flesh, only "realistically veined", because they could be "grafted" to Marble? Best regards Sergei Soloviev

Sorry, I forgot to actually say what I was talking about. I meant the wrapping-a-body-in-a-body thing specifically. (If a body meet a body wrapped in a body coming through the rye...) Rose's hands appear to be gloves of a kind, that seem to work on both bios and chems by covering the limb, not replacing it. That is, I doubt Rose actually lost her limbs and needed new ones---she merely lost the use of them due to extreme age. But of course this kind of thing is just a subcategory of prostheses and cyborg-robotics in general among Wolfe's characters.

I'd like to see James' evidence too. But Rose is a bio---that's certain. My assumption was the same as yours, that her hands were (cyborg) flesh. But Marble's easy use of them is a bit hard to understand. How is it kept alive when it is not attached to Rose's circulatory system? Bios need new limbs for 2 reasons: (1) loss of the original, often due to accident (Jonas) or combat; (2) loss of use of the original. It is far more likely that an ancient sibyl would lose the use of her hands than that she would get them blown off. Of course I'm just realizing this now. It's a variation on the same theme.

Well, in "Exodus of the Long Sun", in chapter 14, "The Best Thieves in the Whorl", page 313 (HB version), Siyuf is having a discussion with Mint. Marble is not there. A paragraph starts: Siyuf looked back to Maytera Marble. "You wish to tell me of the Charter of your city before this man have interrupt you. I find this of interest." In "Epiphany of the Long Sun", this typo is repeated. There is another typo in the book that does the same thing but I don't need to look it up. It is surely there. Consequently, it is reasonable to assume that the Roche/Drotte mix-up c

Rose lost her hands due to amputation required from some slow flesh-destroying disease. Leprosy, to take a guess. When she visited Blood at his foster home when he was a child, she only had one of them. " 'I remember when she lost her arm,' Blood told her. 'She used to pat me on the head and say, you know, my, he's getting big. One day it was a hand like yours--' 'It was this one.' Maytera Marble displayed it." ~ Chapter 10, Calde of the Long Sun

Who would graft them on to Marble? She did it herself. There is no reason to believe Marble had the medical knowledge to graft bio hands to her body. " 'Is that really the same hand?' Blood eyed it curiously. 'Yes, it is. It's hard to change hands yourself, Bloody, because you have to do it one-handed. It was particularly hard for me, because by then I already had a great many new parts. Or rather, I had RECLAIMED a great many old ones.' ~ Ibid (emphasis added. See the link below for why). What I believe about chems and Marble/Rose is this: 1) Rose's prostheses are old chem parts. 2) The hands originally were used by old Maytera Betel, and that is why they were mocked to look old old ~ because there was a certain shame in where they came from. (Whatever one believes about those hands, a speculative theory is required to explain why a prosthesis made for a forty-something sibyl --when Rose lost her first arm--would have been mocked to look old. No woman is going to prefer such a thing.) See here for my full explanation of Rose's hands http://www.urth.org/whorlmap/molybdenum.htm And, yes, Roy does has a visceral aversion to my explanation, but I'm not willing to accept that the trouble passages he himself acknowledges are a result of Marble lying or being confused. Nor do I find it credible that the hands were mocked to look old in order to keep Rose humble). 3) I believe chems/robots were designed to be ensouled by mind-wiped/manipulated scans of humans. And that is why a) Rose's hands so happily absorbed her identity and memories, b) why the chems were so easily configured to receive the Ayuntamiento's consciousness, and c) why Marble remembers Urth's Short Sun but appears to have no actual memories of her service on Urth. This is also why female chems use perfume even though there is no reason to program such aesthetic desires into them. And, finally, that is why chems are persons. As Rose-in-Marble said, "I am still a person, because I always was." J.

Looks like I cut my own response. To continue: "Consequently, it is reasonable to assume that the Roche/Drotte mix-up could be a typo and that copyrights and Library of Congress submissions being what they are, it is too much trouble to fix it in subsequent editions. Or perhaps it is a philosophical issue with Wolfe: "After publication, the tree lies where it falls." J

Great explanation, James. I also appreciate the discussion of the nature of chems---it explains half a dozen minor mysteries, not just one. And raises new ones for me: Were Mamelta and Marble bio and chem versions of the same thing? empty vessels filled with stored souls with only the vaguest memories of Urth? Or did Typhon take existing brainwiped bios and put some in the Whorl and others into storage? What was (who were?) the source of chem personalities? can personalities be reproduced like an mp3 file, or is it only 1 per body? And you must be right about leprosy. It's about the only thing I can think of that would cause a sibyl to lose a hand and certainly the only disease. Maybe syphilis, but that's unlikely for a sibyl---or is it? Either one would tend to shorten a life span, when we know Rose was old (or was that merely my impression based on her hands?), and then there is the question of how either would ultimately be cured in a world where either would be a problem in the first place. I guess preemptive amputation might stop leprosy. Maybe sometimes it just stops. More new mysteries: did Betel and Rose therefore have the same disease? or was Betel a chem? If she was a chem, why was she made old? if not, what chem did the hands come from? Were all female chems made to look human? Were some made to look old? Were the first sibyls chem crones? How does one get to be a sibyl anyway--can you have a shameful past life? I think Rose would have been quite happy to accept crone arms, and as a sibyl she is supposed to be uninterested in the vanities of flesh anyway.

I've never really understood this problem. When you do a new edition, you change what feel you need to change, and that ought to include obvious errors. The copyright owner and publisher decide together, of course. It's not the technology. You make the changes, repaginate according to the format (size and length) of the new edition, slap a new cover on it, and print. This has been done at least semi-electronically for decades with increasing ease and still the typos remain, so it can't be blamed entirely on the fact that each new typesetting introduced new errors. It might depend on the file format of the "master" files, though, and who knows what that means for the Sun books. Certainly a living author has to agree to these corrections (and it's difficult to convince a dead author), but this is something you see so often I can't believe Wolfe is very special in this regard. Maybe it's the agents who are to blame, or the lawyers. The Library of Congress doesn't care as long as you submit your paperwork (which is now done online).

I don't understand the reason for perpetuating the error. But in the List Q&A Wolfe confirmed that the Marble/Mint mix-ups were typos and that he was very annoyed about them. He also mentioned that such errors inevitably get through.

I'm glad it helped, David. My answers to a lot of your questions are implied by my explanation at the link I gave. I'll take a shot a few of them anyway. 1) I believe we are tipped about origins of some of the chem's souls. I think Sand for example is Typhon himself. I think that is the source of Silk's speculation in Blood's house about he and Sand being "brothers" in some broader Outsider's world. I think Silk and Sand being --in a way-- Typhon is why they were key to resurrecting him. If you buy that Mamelta was the original Kypris then she is a good candidate for Marble (if you accept this, then there are references that will buttress that Mamelta/Kypris was the mother of the original Silk). If one accepts that Auk is also a clone, then there are references to argue that Auk/Hammerstone are sort-of twins in a similar way that Silk and Sand are twins. 2) It is theoretically possible for Mamelta be possessed by the Marble's scan. The possibility is suggested by the ability of Whorl gods to possess bios. It is simpler to just say that Kypris is a scan of Mamelta. 3) There is no reason that a single scan could not be used for multiple chems. That would be more efficient. 4) I do not believe Betel was a chem. For my answer to that and as for where the hands came from, see the link.

Looking at that link again. I should say that I no longer believe Molybdenum's unused parts ever went anywhere except the attic in the cenoby. They had to be there for Rose to continuously claim them as she required replacement prostheses. Until there was barely any human parts left of her. J

And Moly was Hammerstone's girlfriend ... ? I will read your link. Thanks!

Diabetes is perhaps a more likely disease than leprosy (and Betel was fat), but it tends to strike the lower limbs before the hands. I suppose if Rose had access to legs, no one would have known she had a problem at all ... you'd think the hands would have been replaced much later, but she was 40 when she lost one arm. I suspect that Betel was diabetic but Rose had another condition.

I wouldn't go so far as to say it couldn't be a typo. But one reason I lean toward Antonio's view and why Drotte-Roche might need a somewhat higher level of typo evaluation than the Maytera Marble example is the obvious- Severian is (self-) purported to have a perfect memory. I would expect an author to find ways to support and/or undercut the "perfect memory" assertion in the first few chapters. So it could be purposeful. Horn makes no such claim and Wolfe has openly identified the "Marble" mistake as a typo. If Drotte- Roche was also a typo, why has he not made the same identification? It has received so much more attention. Perhaps a third possibility exists..that it was originally a typo but it was not corrected, being seen as a happy accident that served Wolfe's purposes nicely. (Does an observed but purposefully uncorrected typo cease to be a typo?)

Well, Wolfe was specifically asked about the Mint/Marble typos. Has anyone done so regarding this one? I think it would be a good idea. It is true that it occurs in the first 5 paragraphs when proof-readers would be expected to still be paying close attention, but the Mint/Marble errors do not even require anyone to be paying close attention. Conclusion: It's either a typo and means nothing, or it is NOT a typo and re-focuses the whole book. Reason: 1) This "error" occurs immediately after Severian makes his first claim to a perfect memory --in highly lyrical form. 2) Sev is told by the Heirogrammates that it is his perfect memory that makes him a worthy "epitome" for mankind. If he does not have a perfect memory, then either Heirogs are LYING (ala Peter Wright) or Wolfe is saying something about what is happening when Severian tinkers with the Time streams and using Sevs perfect memory to clearly identify that that is happening.

But then we must know what that purpose was. Still, we must accept (based on the "Long Sun" examples) that Tor has an established pattern of simply not correcting overt typos in Wolfe's novels even when they serve no narrative purpose. Even when they have proved to be confusing to the readers. Even when the errors greatly annoy the author. So without the author or publishers weighing in, it is impossible to know for sure. J.

I think it might be part of his theme about how a single action can serve many purposes, variously good and evil, ultimately doing the will of the Increate. Even Nicky, who wears his own hands in "The Death of Dr Island", has a divided self. The non-speaking Nicky crassly gropes , but considering how the speaking Nicky can gratuitously simulate the rage denied him by medication, it may really be an act of kindness to discourage the girl from being too close to his dangerous self.

While this sort of thing is possible, chatter in the spec-fic forums leads me to think it's often skipped or done with minimal amounts of underinformed entry-level labor, as it can't be shown that any money spent on fiddling typo corrections will sell more books.

I'm not sure where the LC comes into it; since 1978, copyright vests upon creation in a tangible form, and few typos aren't going to affect what is a derivative work or not.

Probably no one asked him. I'd assume each series has a couple of bloopers. If the rate of "errors" is found to be the same throughout the books, that is merely as would be predicted by the "error" hypothesis.

Interesting. So the basic idea is body-as-a-tool? That is, a tool can be used for good or evil, and therefore so can a person? In addition, I'm sure, to the whole question of what-is-a-person and what-is-a-soul.

Right, the LoC doesn't care if you fix typos. But you do need to buy a new ISBN and apply for CIP info for any new edition. Which can get burdensome when you own thousands of titles ... but I think it's all basically art vs commerce at this point. They'd fix Harry Potter if Rowling asked for it. Wolfe is an award-winner, not a money-maker.

Viron has a desert to the south, cities to the north, and a long lake nearby. Which may or may not be a salt lake, depending on whether Typhon wanted to send any Urth saltwater species along (it seems to be large for the Whorl, although Wolfe doesn't say whether there are other lakes like it). Is anyone else reminded of a certain place on Earth?

I think it would be more than demanding than that: Wolfe gives the reader a peek behind the veil, a glimpse both of how separate things are connected and of how connected things can be separate in purposes, which complicate the question of whether any given act accomplishes more of good or of evil. A human being can make and use a tool mostly reliably because he gives it purpose and knows its makeup, but only the Increate can truly make use of human beings the way we use tools because only the Increate can know their true nature and purpose (according to Wolfe via Tzadkiel). It follows that it would be hubris for humans to attempt the same without that divine insight; the best they can do is to avoid what is plainly more harmful than beneficial, and remain open to progressively improving in this fashion. It may also be a more literal comment on integrity, duplicity, or equivocation.

Perhaps if this were Orson Scott Card, I would think you were on to something. J.

Judea? Sent from my iPhone

Perhaps if this were Orson Scott Card, I would think you were on to something.

Haha! DOJP

Very roughly, yes. Not that it would mean much anyway. But Silk seems to be the closest thing to an overtly Christian character anywhere in Wolfe. His world seems more than vaguely Mediterranean in climate and culture as well. If the Commonwealth is patterned in part after South America, then surely the Whorl could have had another model that we can identify. I could be wrong about the shape of the lake anyway. But I recall the town is at one end of it.

I'm pretty sure that Viron's culture is South American--presumably that of the Commonwealth. The "ball game" is based on the Nahuatl game. It's an analogous Catholic culture. Still, that doesn't mean that Viron couldn't be based on Jerusalem of course.

True.

I agree that it is plausibly South American, though I'm not terribly convinced by the above points. The Commonwealth did not exist when the Whorl was launched, and the Whorl contains elements from numerous cultures (e.g. an Indian culture which provided the forebears of Gaon). The religion of the Whorl is allegedly a parody of the state religion of Typhon's time, which would have been worldwide - and anyway the Catholic religion is hardly confined to South America . The ballgame is not specifically the aforementioned game, in which catching the ball in one's hand is illegal, though it has elements of it. On the other hand, the coloration of the people fits, and Mamelta had a pet parrot named Chiquita. - Gerry Quinn

Dear participants of the thread - my impression is that this discussion is based on slightly distorted premisses - as if some perfect correspondence between different places in our world and in the Whorl is to be expected. Would this correspondence be the main secret of the universe described by GW? Urth itself is in some correspondence to our Earth, in geography as well, but this correspondence is not an isomorphism. It looks like Nessus is somewhere in southern hemisphere, like Buenos-Aires (there are pampas, mountains like Andes), there are Ascians coming from another continent, but at the same time there are hints that the continents are different; it is some sort of "parallel Earth". I think the geography of URTH was discussed before but I had no time to look. It is not the main point. Was such correspondence a prime concern of GW himself? I don't think so. I think much more important is the idea that Pas is a sort of an impostor, a demiurge trying to substitute himself for the Increate or Outsider, and as such his creation cannot be perfect. It looks much more plausible that he (Pas-Typhon) tried in some imperfect way to put in his cosmic Arc the representatives of all main human cultures. It seems that the question about the role of Pas is much more important, AND GW illustrated it in particular using this imperfect correspondence between cultures and places. By the way, the story of Silk and Hyacinth in Viron reminds also Romeo an Juliet in Verona. At the same time the culture and institutions are more hispano-american as it was mentioned. I believe that the absence of perfect correspondence was intended by GW, and it is useless to look for 'ultimate truth" in this - the possibilty to establish perfect correspondence would be contrary to his intentions. The language of the Trivigauntis is semitic, (maliki etc). At the West pole (sick bay) there are people of african descent. The people in Pajarocu and Wichote are amerindians. All this makes sense if the Whorl was filled up in haste, probably when the revolts against Typhon already started. Severian meets Typhon twice - first time as a mummy that resuscitates afterwards, and second as the Conciliator just before his demise. We get the information that Typhon had two heads (before going to mummified state) only during relatively short period, about one year. He had no time to take under control all the functions of the body belonging to his slave Piaton, and he obviously was scanned for the Whorl during this short period. So the Whorl was launched in the last year before the end of his rule. Scylla (a copy from Whorl) says that she died young, when she looked at her coffin, less that a year after her scan. Implication: the family of Typhon was probably killed in the same revolts. One more thing: duco Rigoglio mentions the same "Loganstone" (some cosmic vessel) as Hethor in the "Book of the New Sun". A vessel used to fill the Whorl? Best regards, Sergei Soloviev

I agree that there is no special importance in any correspondences between places on Urth and present-day Earth. Likewise it is unimportant where the various individual cultures of the Whorl cities came from. I agree with you abouty the imperfection of the Whorl - Typhon arguably made about as good aWhorl as is humanly possible to make, yet it is lamentably imperfect compared with the outside universe.

I don't quite see the Romeo and Juliet correspondence! But indeed, I agree that there is no intended mirror of any culture, event or myth. Wolfe uses fragmentary reflections of many other stories for various purposes, including humour. But his stories are always his own - they are never retellings of some earlier story.

Obviously the timescale of Typhon's life is finite, and many things must have happened fast. Your argument above makes a lot of sense, and yet I have a feeling that it should not be pushed too far in matters of detail. The iconography of two-headed Typhon seems to have been very strongly established among the early colonists, suggesting a relatively long period of rule by him in this form, On the other hand, Mamelta talks about the royal family wandering through her dreams, as well as never having to speak - it's clear that some alarmingly intrusive brain-networking technology was prevalent on Urth at the time, so such iconography might have been established rapidly. (My pet theory is that the removal of this technology was what was done to the colonists on the Whorl - they remember it as the destruction of their memories whereas in fact they were being set free, at least partially. It is also conceivable, of course, that the two-headed iconography was implanted as a sort of joke.) As for Scylla, my impression was that she revolted against Typhon and was killed by him. But I don't know; your theory is perfectly possible also. Wolfe wasn't thinking about the history surrounding the launch of the Whorl, and probably not thinking much about the details of Typhon's story at all, when he depicted him in Sword of the Lictor. I think later when he was writing Book of the Long Sun, he saw how he could do a lot with the two-headed concept. So he used it even though logically Typhon probably had two heads for too short a time for its use to be 100% believable. Maybe I'm underestimating Wolfe, but I think picking at such threads in too much detail, or chronological logic, may lead to the construction of random unintended stuff.

It is Mamelta I recall as referring to the Loganstone, and indeed that is what it seems to be, although there is some inconsistency in her talk about it which I will put down to confusion. - Gerry Quinn

The Whorl always struck me as a kind of Tower of Babel. Does that fit? It's a monument to human ego, a "message" to the universe about human greatness, AND a kind of human cultural zoo.

There are some resemblances, but some distinct differences too. The Whorl is a momument to one man's ego; Babel was a monument to human ego. Typhon separated the Whorl into cities so the inhabitants could not conspire against him (or hs analogue Pas). This resembles God's splitting of the human race into multiple linguistic cultures as a response to Babel. Although the asteroid is probably ellipsoidal, internally I guess it could be considered a tower of sorts, if we consider it as centred on the axis of the Long Sun. - Gerry Quinn

I hope you don't think the differences rule out the correspondence in general. Yes, I'd say the "long" part of Long Sun can be taken figuratively as well as literally.

Hethor mentions the Quasar, IIRC (an appropriate name for a ship which will seek the "white fountain"). Not familiar with a connection of loganstone to Hethor.

Well, in "Exodus of the Long Sun", in chapter 14, "The Best Thieves in the Whorl", page 313 (HB version), Siyuf is having a discussion with Mint. Marble is not there. A paragraph says: "Siyuf looked back to Maytera Marble. 'You wish to tell me of the Charter of your city before this man have interrupt you. I find this of interest.' " In "Epiphany of the Long Sun", this typo is repeated. There is another typo in the book that does the same thing but I don't need to look it up. It is surely there. Consequently, it is quite reasonable to assume that the Roche/Drotte mix-up could also be a typo. Perhaps once a book has been copyrighted, it is deemed to expensive for Tor to update it. Perhaps Wolfe has a personal philosophy about these things. "Once published, the tree lays where it falls." Unfortunately, these means that we cannot hope that later editions will ever help us by separating Wolfe's errors from his intentions. J.

Why would anyone make prosthetic hands for a woman that look old? On the other hand, whatever one believes about Rose's hands, the fact that they are old-looking requires its own speculative theory. She first started wearing them when she was in her forties. In Nightside, Silk speculates how much of Rose is hers anymore. I'm already involved in compiling evidence that Hy is Fava so I might not do anything to defend it, but this is what I believe. 1) Rose's hands are from a chem. http://www.urth.org/whorlmap/molybdenum.htm 2) They are old because they belonged to Maytera Betel before they were Rose's. 3) They absorbed her personality so readily because that is what chem-technology is designed to do. That's why Marble can remember Urth's short sun.

That's an interesting take, but who would have done the grafting?

. Perhaps once a book has been copyrighted,

Epiphany certainly diverges from earlier editions at one point: the memorable line 'At that moment I burst into the room' is changed to the dull 'At that moment Horn burst into the room'..

Can you remember where that is established? If she was actually old when she got them, they can have been made to look old just to blend naturally with the rest of her. If, on the other hand, they were made for a chem, why would they be made to look old? The sense I get is that Marble looked young for as long as she had a human appearance at all. That they are, in any case, mechanical and not flesh seems to be established by the fact that, when one is severed, the talus workshop is thought to be the place to go to have it reattached. .I don't think the talus manufacturers would be able to work with flesh. Isn't there even a bit about how it's not just a matter of welding, there are wires that have to be reattached, or something like that?

I don't follow this - why in any case would Marble not remember the short sun? Wasn't she created under it?

Okay. That's really bizarre. They 'fixed' that but they didn't fix the Marble/Mint mix-up.

It is in "Calde of the Long Sun" during Rose's funeral when Echidna-in-Marble takes Musk and burns him in the flames: "This fine and living man," she pronounced slowly, "is presented to me, to Divine Echidna." Her hands, *the bony blue-veined hands of a elderly bio*, glowed crimson in the flames. "Mother of the Gods. Incomparable Echidna, Queen of the Whorl. Fair Echidna! Smile upon us. Send us beasts for the chase. Great Echidna! Put forth thy green grass for our kine..." Whatever you choose to believe about Marble's/Rose's hands, explaining them requires that you leave specific textual references. Female chems always look like young girls. That is established (although I'd have to look it up). Rose got the hands when she was in her 40s. Blood remembers when she had the first one installed and recognized it. Roy has proffered that perhaps they were mocked to look old so they would "age with her". But of course that presumes that she would get old enough for the body to match the hands. Others have suggested it was done to keep Rose humble. I say that the hands first belonged to Betel and were mocked to look old so it would not be apparent that they were prosthesis. The embarrassment was due to the origin of those hands. And where they came from was what Marble was reminding Betel of -- shaming her-- when she repeatedly asked for shriving by Betel over lying about having posed for that picture in the cenoby. She was implying "Remember Betel? I took Molybdenum's identity just as you took her hands."

Yes. They are definitely not flesh.

Does she recount a single memory regarding her life under Urth's sun as does Rigoglo? I contend her memories are from those of a bio. Additionally, there is this from Nightside. "Maytera Marble could remember the short sun, a disk of orange fire; and it seemed to her that the chief virtue of that old sun had been that no list, no menu, ever appeared unbidden beneath its rays." Either: 1) This makes no sense because until relatively recently no list or menu appeared to Marble "unbidden" under the Long Sun either. 2) The reason no such list or menu appeared to her under Urth's sun was because she was a bio. J.

First, I want to address the recently debated issue of how long it had been since the Whorl left Urth, because it may have some slight relevance to what follows. The date on the letter Quetzal had sent to all the manteions, in which he endorsed Silk as calde, was "30th Nemesis 332" (CALDE, p-173). Silkhorn, shortly after the Battle of Blanko, put the number of years at about 355 (IGJ, 323). Estimates of how much time had passed on Urth since Rigoglio had lived there ranged between 2,500 and 1,000 years (IGJ, 325).

She remembered when she first woke, naked, in what seems to be a factory or storage room containing other fem chems, and trying to boot up (EXODUS, 119-20). She was given clothes suitable for a maid (125). She remembered standing in a sun-drenched field in a line of servants as they and chem soldiers waited for the transport ship that would take them up to the Whorl: ---------------- Enormous darkness high overhead, blotting the sun-drenched field, the straggling line of servants in which she had stood, and the soldiers' precise column. She had seen it descend from the sky, at first a fleck of black that had seemed no bigger than a flake of soot; had said, "It looks so dirty." A soldier had overheard her and called, "Why don't you dust it?" Everyone had laughed, and she had laughed, too, though she had been humiliated to tears, had tears been possible for her. Angry and defiant, she had met his eyes and sensed the longing there. And longed. How tall he had been! How big and strong! So much steel! (CALDE, 285) -----------------

Apparently Marble's body had been on the fritz for quite some time. She stopped voluntarily calling up the list of defective parts a long time before, probably because there was nothing she could do about getting new parts or getting her old ones repaired: "She could bring up a list of her nonfunctioning and defective parts whenever she chose. She had not chosen to do so for close to a century; but from time to time, most often when the cenoby lay on the night side of the long sun, that list came up of itself." (NIGHTSIDE, 30)

We both know that Marble was a chem, not a bio. No list of defective parts appeared to her on Urth because she had none; she was fresh from the factory. (Hammerstone said that chems had been stockpiled for ten years before being transported up to the Whorl.) Her name, when she was the "maid-of-all-work" at the cenoby on Sun Street, had been Magnesia. Even the housemaid Molybdenum, Hammerstone's lost sweetheart, had been manufactured on Urth, so I don't see how you could conclude that either chem maid had ever been a bio on Urth. And fat Betel died some 45-50 years before the opening of NIGHTSIDE, nearly three centuries after the Whorl left Urth. -Roy

Thanks, Roy. Just a clarification and a couple of interpretations that I don't agree about.

Yes. What I assert is that the chems personalities come from scans a people using the same technology that made the gods. Their memories were wiped (to the extent they could be), skills added, and the personalities tinkered to make them better suited to their jobs. That's why the Ayunamiento was so easily able to retro-fit bodies for themselves from chems. If Lemur had known more about chems, he might not have been surprised that his body could die without him even realizing. It also explains why Rose's parts so readily absorbed her personality and memories.

The above is surely a description of a scene on the Whorl.

What is "coming down" here is the line of servants and soldiers. Because they are on the Whorl, she can see the very long line descend from the skylands.

It's from the beginning of chapter 7 for those not using a hardcover version or Epiphany: "I've been trying to remember where I came from," Maytera Marble ventured. "I don't think it was like this at all [the talus yard] ." [...] I couldn't remember a thing [about it previously], I'm sure. Not till poor Maytera Rose bequeathed me my new parts. I'm sure I must have told you about them.[...] They're much better than my old ones, but after I'd put them in, it was hard for me to keep straight which memories were Marble's and which were mine. [...] Anyway, I recollect a big room with green walls. There were pallets, or perhaps metal tables, little ones about as high as a bed. [...] I was lying on one, and I didn't have any clothes on. [...] I was trying to boot, and I remember that the girl next to me sat up and said she was naked, which she certainly was. When she did, somebody brought her a dress." Then later: "The clothes that were given to me when I woke? I didn't get to them, but you're right. After a while I sat up too, and another girl gave me my first clothes. Were you going to ask me what kind of clothes they were?" Swallow nodded. "That's right, I was." "A little black dress, very simple, with rather a short skirt. Underclothes." Maytera Marble paused to smile. "I was about to say I'd prefer not to describe them, but they were so plain that there's hardly anything to describe. Black shoes with low heels, but I don't think there were any stockings. A pretty little lace apron and a matching cap. It's easy for me to describe those clothes, because people from Ermine's came to Patera's palace just before we left, and there were young women dressed exactly as I was then, except that they had stockings." "Did they come to clean?" Swallow asked. "Sweep and dust?" "Dear Chenille and I have done that already. To wash the dishes they'll need tonight and set the table, and wash walls we haven't gotten to. At least I hope they'll wash those walls and the downstairs windows. I asked them to." Swallow nodded again. "You see, Calde, each of us is born to do certain things. Maytera was born to sweep and dust, and wash walls and floors, and she's still doing it. Did you have to urge her to?" Silk shook his head. "I would have been surprised if you'd said you did..." The text doesn't really give a clue as to whether this is on Urth or the Whorl. However, if it was on Urth, it doesn't seem she had a job on Urth prior to working on the Whorl. She says this is "where she came from". She didn't come from the "so-and-so plantation". Her first job was working on the Whorl. Aside from information about chem psychology, Swallow's analysis reflects on Silk as well since his personality was tinkered to make him a leader. J.

This doesn't seem possible. What would such a large airship be doing inside the Whorl? And surely it is a ship that appeared tiny at first.

James Wynn

Not a chance. Even a miles-long line of chems walking on the inner surface of the Whorl toward a particular sun-drenched field would not, could not blot out the light from the long sun. Marble and the other chems were standing in a field waiting for a spaceship to come down. It was the spaceship that first appeared as a fleck of black. It appeared larger and larger as it neared the chems, until its giant shadow covered them: "When had it been, that sun-drenched field? The jokes and the laughter, and the overhanging, overawing shadow that had made them fall silent?" (CALDE, 282)

[snip of long quote from talus factory scene]

No, she didn't have a job on Urth. Neither did Hammerstone or the other chem soldiers. They were being stockpiled, like he said, before being put aboard the Whorl.

I agree. Her first job was on the Whorl as the maid-of-all-work at the Sun Street cenoby. Eventually the staff there and at the manteion dwindled to just four; young Pike, Betel, Rose and herself, Magnesia. Maggie was pressed into service as a teacher. When people complained that the kids were being taught by a mere chem maid, she was made a sibyl and traded in her maid's dress with its shortish skirt for a long sibyl's habit (see wedding scene, chapter 11, p-231-32, EXODUS), but she continued to do the work of a maid. With her new clothes came her new name, Marble. No reprogramming was needed for her to become a sibyl.

Well, his genes were tinkered with. Anyway, I want to get back to the old-looking prosthetic hands, which is why I got involved. You are right that Rose got the first when she was in her forties, and young Blood saw it. It is not clear whether Betel was still alive or not at that point. Rose was forty when she gave birth, and Blood was nine when she lost track of his foster mother. This latter fact suggests to me that she lost track of the foster mother at or about the same time that she became Senior Sibyl, which she became upon the death of Betel. As Senior Sibyl, and with the manteion staff so short of personnel that a chem maid had been pressed into service as a sibyl, she may no longer have had the luxury of enough time to indulge herself with her seasonal visits with her child. I don't subscribe to your theory that chems, in general, got their personalities from scans of real people, though something like that may have happened with Potto, Lemur and other members of the Ayuntamiento. The ship had been stocked with many hundreds of thousands of chem soldiers and an untold number of civilian chems. The soldiers had been programmed to be loyal to Pas and their respective cities, in that order, and not even Incus' tinkering with Hammerstone's loyalties could alter that. Chem servants were likewise programmed for their particular jobs. Their personalities seem to have been the product of personal experiences, meaning those experiences acquired after being booted for the first time. Sidero was not a chem, but he is an example of what I mean. He and his kind started out as glorified spacesuits but eventually evolved into AIs in their own right. Hammerstone was not at all religious and I believe Marble became religious only from living and working in a manteion, the more so after she became a sibyl. Be that as it may, you have mentioned four entities in conjunction with those hands; Rose, Marble, Betel and Molybdenum. The two chem maids were manufactured on Urth. Both Betel and Rose were born more that two-hundred years after the Whorl left Urth. Therefore, I do not believe that any of the four had any personal connection to those hands that originated from any given bio on Urth. As Marble said and you pointed out, chems never look old, which is one of the reasons artists liked to use them as models, as was the case with the cenoby painting. You have asserted that Betel somehow acquired Molybdenum's hands and had them altered to look old. Whether that is true or not, trying to connect the hands to a bio on Urth is a needless complication. -Roy

No, I don't think that can be right -- the "it" that descends from the sky is the "enormous darkness", the subject of the previous sentence (ie. a ship above them, which first appeared high up as a fleck of black but is now enormous), not the line. A line of which she was herself an element couldn't appear to her like a fleck. Also, if talking of a line of chems of which she and the soldier are elements, they wouldn't say "it" was dirty. best, Mo # ~ # ~ # WolfeWiki -- a wiki about Gene Wolfe http://www.wolfewiki.com/pmwiki/

"Enormous darkness high overhead, blotting the sun-drenched field, the straggling line of servants in which she had stood, and the soldiers' precise column. She had seen it descend from the sky, at first a fleck of black that had seemed no bigger than a flake of soot; [...](CALDE, 285)

I really think you ar e both misreading this. It's "enormous darkness OVERHEAD blotting the sundrenched fields". If the darkness is overhead, then it can't blot the sun-drenched fields which --on Urth-- are below. I think you guys are thinking of "blot out" which is a different picture. If it is the shadow of a transport "blotting the fields" then it can't be overhead. What we are to envision is the blackness of the Nightside against the "sun-drenched fields" of the Dayside. It is not the line of chems that is dirty, nor a transport. It is the Whorl itself which has only recently been completed. Marble is a maid chem and so sees everything in terms of whether it needs cleaning or not.

Once again, this is the Nightside that is overawing. There are no cities that are lit up on the Nightside yet. This is a view of the dawning of creation when there are no "stars" in the Nightside skylands. That is what is significant about this memory. J.

One other thing...the "enormous darkness" is not the subject of this sentence. In fact it is not a sentence at all, but a sentence fragment. The enormous darkness carries no more weight than the "straggling line of servants" and "the soldier's precise column". But at the least the line and the column are closer to the pronoun "it" than the the darkness. The lines are "descending" from the skylands until it disappears into a little dot. Possibly that dot was the opening from which they entired the cargo area. Perhaps not. J.

I agree with Roy and Mo. They are on Urth watching a transport descend from the Whorl to pick them up. The sentence in the paragraph about the darkness may be imperfectly formed, but I think it is natural to read the transport ship as a growing black presence in the sky, and when it comes relatively close to the ground its darkness also darkens (blots) the field in which Marble and her cohorts are waiting. (Note that they are standing, not walking - so why does the dark fleck grow? It most be in motion relative to the ground on which they stand.) Further evidence comes from the circumstances in which Marble recalls this event. She is standing on the roof as the "vast dark bulk" of Saba's airship passes overhead. Just like the lander that came for her on Urth. That's why she remembers it at that moment. I don't know why the transport looks dirty, though. Maybe simply because it is so dark, and seems dirty to the inexperienced chem maid. - Gerry Quinn

Agree. Factory on Urth. Parts can be stored on the Whorl but not manufactured, hence their scarcity.

I think something like that. She has been programmed to clean up black specks without the experience to distinguish the ceiling from the sky. Like the old saying, when you are a hammer, everything looks like a nail.

I also agree. I think also that when you look up from the field against the sun the transport, as usually an object against the Sun seems much darker. What seems to me strange - sun-drenched field, if the Sun was already red. Maybe it wasn't. Did it became red so quick? Sergei finally that GW does not pay too much attention to technical details.

Typhon says the sun began to dim during his reign and that the luminosity dropped by 7 parts in 1000 while he was on Urth. That and a lack of other changes discussed suggests that in his time it was still 99.3% of its original brightness. It seems to have continued to dim and may have grown a bit larger and redder over the centuries, but there are still many pictures to compare it with and only its redness is remarked upon, so any change in angular size is probably not large. The old man in the cabin IIIRC tells of a truly bright day when the sun was as bright as people say it was in the old days, which suggests that the sun has good days and bad either from Urthly weather or solar activity or both. If course, if the moon is truly closer in, it would also appear bigger, so it is possible that the sun is larger by a like amount, and the rule of thum that the sun and moon are about the same visual width would still hold, and any solar eclipses would retain a similar character. If I were more awake I could speculate about lunar eclipses.

Your reading is not illogical, in fact it's brilliant, but I think it's counterintuitive. And I read "blot" differently: 1. Mark or stain (something) * - the writing was messy and /blotted/ 2. Obscure a view * - a dust shield /blotting/ out the sun I think your sense is #2, the obvious one, but I see it as #1. The darkness above, since it creates a shadow, "stains" the sun-drenched field below it. It does not blot it out.

David Stockhoff wrote (03-06-2011 01:58):

With all respect to JW, I find it contorted to the point of hurting.

Precisely.