{ "export": { "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/6062", "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": 6062, "subject": "Silk's origin", "messages": 82, "voices": 9, "first": "2011-10-10T19:06:44+00:00", "last": "2011-10-23T18:45:21+00:00" }, "messages": [ { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Andrew Mason", "address": "andrew.mason53 at googlemail.com" }, "date": "2011-10-10T19:06:44+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Silk's origin", "in_reply_to": null, "reply_link": null, "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Gerry Quinn wrote:\n2. We know Silk was an implanted embryo, so it is no surprise that he has\ntwo sets of parents; his genetic parents back on Urth a thousand years ago,\nand his surrogate parents in the Whorl." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I think the two sets of parents actually count against the clone\ntheory; a clone does not have genetic parents in the ordinary sense.\nOne might call the parents of his source his parents in a way; (this\nseems to be the line taken in _The Fifth Head of Cerberus_, where\nNumber Five is shown a picture of his 'mother', i.e. the mother of the\nsource of his line, back on Earth). But if Typhon was 'not born' it's\nnot clear he has parents, and if he does it's hard to see how they are\nrelevant to the story.\n\nMoreover, we are told in a couple of places that the embryos are the\nresult of selective breeding, rather than clones.\n\nRegarding who his parents are: Wolfe was once asked about Silk's\nancestry, and replied 'He is the son of the Calde and his mistress'.\nThis answer, which seems to relate to his birth-mother and adoptive\nfather, looks like a deliberate deflection of the question, not\ntelling us what the questioner wanted to know. This in turn suggests\nthat:\na. It is a significant question, which has an answer - his parents\naren't just Some Guy and Some Girl.\nb. It's not meant to be obvious from the story, since when something\nis meant to be obvious and readers don't get it, Wolfe is generally\nhappy to explain (e.g. who is Blood's father, or why did Auk kidnap\nHyacinth).\n\nI think his mother may be Mamelta. I don't know who his father is,\nthough I take it the answer is lurking somewhere. I can think of a\nplausible sequnce of events that would allow it to be Typhon, but I\ncan also see problems with that - notably, that if spirits on the\nAureate Path appear as they did when they died, Silk should have\nnoticed that his father had two heads." } ] }, { "message_id": "<1318278080.52904.YahooMailClassic@web161807.mail.bf1.yahoo.com>", "from": { "name": "Marc Aramini", "address": "marcaramini at yahoo.com" }, "date": "2011-10-10T20:21:20+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Silk's origin", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "--- On Mon, 10/10/11, Andrew Mason wrote:\n\nI think his mother may be Mamelta. I don't know who his\nfather is,\nthough I take it the answer is lurking somewhere. I can\nthink of a\nplausible sequnce of events that would allow it to be\nTyphon, but I\ncan also see problems with that - notably, that if spirits\non the\nAureate Path appear as they did when they died, Silk should\nhave\nnoticed that his father had two heads." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "the dream sequences equate Mamelta/Kypris/Mother and conflate Hy and Kypris (explicated through possession) as well. The blue eyes of Mamelta (and Kypris) and Silk certainly connect them - it is of course my opinion that mamelta/Kypris and Typhon have had a biological son, Silk; I never fancied the proliferation of cloning. But as with all ambiguous things, the validity of these associations is of course not obvious and consequently is not universally accepted." } ] }, { "message_id": "<4E9373A2.1050707@gmail.com>", "from": { "name": "James Wynn", "address": "crushtv at gmail.com" }, "date": "2011-10-10T22:37:22+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Silk's origin", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "On 10/10/2011 2:06 PM," }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Gerry Quinn wrote:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "2. We know Silk was an implanted embryo, so it is no surprise that he has\ntwo sets of parents; his genetic parents back on Urth a thousand years ago,\nand his surrogate parents in the Whorl." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": " Andrew Mason wrote:\nI think the two sets of parents actually count against the clone\ntheory; a clone does not have genetic parents in the ordinary sense." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "One might call the parents of his source his parents in a way; (this\nseems to be the line taken in _The Fifth Head of Cerberus_, where\nNumber Five is shown a picture of his 'mother', i.e. the mother of the\nsource of his line, back on Earth). But if Typhon was 'not born' it's\nnot clear he has parents, and if he does it's hard to see how they are\nrelevant to the story." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "That's true, although I think he *does* think of himself as having a \nmother at least in the way that Number Five thinks of his \"mother\". But \nmaybe in the way that Silk thinks of himself as having a \"mother\". (I'm \nreferring to \"Early Summer\", of course)\n\nAnd it is troublesome in what sense Tussah considered himself Silk's \n\"father\". If they ever met, Silk didn't remember it--only having seen a \nbust of him in a closet. Tussah never married Silk's mother, and he \nnever officially adopted Silk. Silk did not have to be Tussah's son in \norder to inherit the Caldeship. And to the extent that Silk's connection \nto Tussah could ever be proven, it would only discredit his claim to the \ntitle since Tussah explicitly said that his \"son\" would be Calde after \nhim. All this suggests that Tussah said that Silk was \"not the son of my \nbody\" merely because it was objectively true in some sense. Not to \nidentify him or out of fatherly feelings." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Moreover, we are told in a couple of places that the embryos are the\nresult of selective breeding, rather than clones." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I missed that. What are you referring to?" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Regarding who his parents are: Wolfe was once asked about Silk's\nancestry, and replied 'He is the son of the Calde and his mistress'.\nThis answer, which seems to relate to his birth-mother and adoptive\nfather, looks like a deliberate deflection of the question, not\ntelling us what the questioner wanted to know. This in turn suggests\nthat:\na. It is a significant question, which has an answer - his parents\naren't just Some Guy and Some Girl.\nb. It's not meant to be obvious from the story, since when something\nis meant to be obvious and readers don't get it, Wolfe is generally\nhappy to explain (e.g. who is Blood's father, or why did Auk kidnap\nHyacinth)." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I agree with this. I have long suspected that the parallel between \nTussah and Silk's birth-mother and Typhon and Kypris is intended. The \nculture of Viron is the culture of the commonwealth under Typhon. It is \nquite reasonable then that Typhon's title in the commonwealth was \n\"Calde\". So in some sense, it would help if Silk were somehow the son of \nboth Typhon and Tussah.\n\nMy working solution has been that Tussah is a clone of Typhon, and that \nSilk is a clone of a son of Typhon and Kypris (\"although he is not the \nson of my body\"). I think it is significant in a literary sense that Pas \nand Tussah are murdered at around the same time.\n\nMy problem is that I feel more and more confident all the time that Silk \nis supposed to be Typhon as well (a clone is the most straightforward \nexplanation--and that blond hair seems like an intended reference--we \ndon't know Tussah's hair color because he's bald). Yet Silk and Typhon \ndo not resemble each other. It's frustrating.\nOn the plus side to this theory, Silk tells Hide that \nJahlee-in-dream-travel (who is pretty clearly ensouled by Chenille) \ncould be his \"aunt or sister\". Well, the easiest way that that could be \ntrue is if Chenille were both daughter of Typhon (through Tussah), and \nthe sister of Typhon (through Silk). It's frustrating.\n\nYa know, everyone acknowledges the parallels between Severian and \nEmperor Claudius in Robert Grave's \"I, Claudius\". Not enough remember \nall that prophesy about the lineage of Julius Caesar to Nero--where each \nis succeeded by a \"son not son\". I think that is significant. But I \ncan't exactly how it is broken down at this point, because I'm thrown \noff that Silk and Tussah do not resemble each other." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "I think his mother may be Mamelta. I don't know who his father is,\nthough I take it the answer is lurking somewhere. I can think of a\nplausible sequnce of events that would allow it to be Typhon, but I\ncan also see problems with that - notably, that if spirits on the\nAureate Path appear as they did when they died, Silk should have\nnoticed that his father had two heads." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Well, the problem with all the gods except for Tartarus is how weird \nthey look. Maybe Typhon saw himself as having two-heads and that's why \nPas looked that way. But did Echidna really see herself as a monster \nwith snakes for hair? Scylla had an affinity for Big Scylla but could \nshe have really thought of herself as a human octopus. If Typhon is one \nof the fathers, he didn't *die* on the Whorl. If Silk meets Kypris on \nthe Aureate Path it is significant that he makes no remark about it that \nis recorded. It still leaves open who the other mother is. If he met \nMamelta there, it would more nicely fit into the recorded conversation.\n\nHowever, I'll note that Silk doesn't really describe the second father \n(which is reasonable since the account is written by Horn after all, \nanyway). Wolfe has this style of having a person say something, then \nbreaking the paragraph, and having the same person say something else. \nIt's quite jarring. Silk's father does that (I think) and so readers \ngenerally assume that both the fathers speak to Silk. I don't think they \ndo. I think only one does, and I find that interesting. I want to say \nthat it was unnecessary to describe them both since they both look like \nTussah. But I'm bother that Silk doesn't look like Tussah as well. It's \na snake pit.\n\nJ" } ] }, { "message_id": "<4E939403.8080007@verizon.net>", "from": { "name": "David Stockhoff", "address": "dstockhoff at verizon.net" }, "date": "2011-10-11T00:55:31+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Silk's origin", "in_reply_to": "<4E9373A2.1050707@gmail.com>", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "On 10/10/2011 6:37 PM, James Wynn wrote:\nOn 10/10/2011 2:06 PM,\nGerry Quinn wrote:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 3, "text": "2. We know Silk was an implanted embryo, so it is no surprise that \nhe has\ntwo sets of parents; his genetic parents back on Urth a thousand \nyears ago,\nand his surrogate parents in the Whorl." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": " Andrew Mason wrote:\nI think the two sets of parents actually count against the clone\ntheory; a clone does not have genetic parents in the ordinary sense." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "One might call the parents of his source his parents in a way; (this\nseems to be the line taken in _The Fifth Head of Cerberus_, where\nNumber Five is shown a picture of his 'mother', i.e. the mother of the\nsource of his line, back on Earth). But if Typhon was 'not born' it's\nnot clear he has parents, and if he does it's hard to see how they are\nrelevant to the story." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "That's true, although I think he *does* think of himself as having a \nmother at least in the way that Number Five thinks of his \"mother\". \nBut maybe in the way that Silk thinks of himself as having a \"mother\". \n(I'm referring to \"Early Summer\", of course)\n\nAnd it is troublesome in what sense Tussah considered himself Silk's \n\"father\". If they ever met, Silk didn't remember it--only having seen \na bust of him in a closet. Tussah never married Silk's mother, and he \nnever officially adopted Silk. Silk did not have to be Tussah's son in \norder to inherit the Caldeship. And to the extent that Silk's \nconnection to Tussah could ever be proven, it would only discredit his \nclaim to the title since Tussah explicitly said that his \"son\" would \nbe Calde after him. All this suggests that Tussah said that Silk was \n\"not the son of my body\" merely because it was objectively true in \nsome sense. Not to identify him or out of fatherly feelings." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "Moreover, we are told in a couple of places that the embryos are the\nresult of selective breeding, rather than clones." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "I missed that. What are you referring to?" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "Regarding who his parents are: Wolfe was once asked about Silk's\nancestry, and replied 'He is the son of the Calde and his mistress'.\nThis answer, which seems to relate to his birth-mother and adoptive\nfather, looks like a deliberate deflection of the question, not\ntelling us what the questioner wanted to know. This in turn suggests\nthat:\na. It is a significant question, which has an answer - his parents\naren't just Some Guy and Some Girl.\nb. It's not meant to be obvious from the story, since when something\nis meant to be obvious and readers don't get it, Wolfe is generally\nhappy to explain (e.g. who is Blood's father, or why did Auk kidnap\nHyacinth)." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "I agree with this. I have long suspected that the parallel between \nTussah and Silk's birth-mother and Typhon and Kypris is intended. The \nculture of Viron is the culture of the commonwealth under Typhon. It \nis quite reasonable then that Typhon's title in the commonwealth was \n\"Calde\". So in some sense, it would help if Silk were somehow the son \nof both Typhon and Tussah.\n\nMy working solution has been that Tussah is a clone of Typhon, and \nthat Silk is a clone of a son of Typhon and Kypris (\"although he is \nnot the son of my body\"). I think it is significant in a literary \nsense that Pas and Tussah are murdered at around the same time.\n\nMy problem is that I feel more and more confident all the time that \nSilk is supposed to be Typhon as well (a clone is the most \nstraightforward explanation--and that blond hair seems like an \nintended reference--we don't know Tussah's hair color because he's \nbald). Yet Silk and Typhon do not resemble each other. It's frustrating.\nOn the plus side to this theory, Silk tells Hide that \nJahlee-in-dream-travel (who is pretty clearly ensouled by Chenille) \ncould be his \"aunt or sister\". Well, the easiest way that that could \nbe true is if Chenille were both daughter of Typhon (through Tussah), \nand the sister of Typhon (through Silk). It's frustrating.\n\nYa know, everyone acknowledges the parallels between Severian and \nEmperor Claudius in Robert Grave's \"I, Claudius\". Not enough remember \nall that prophesy about the lineage of Julius Caesar to Nero--where \neach is succeeded by a \"son not son\". I think that is significant. But \nI can't exactly how it is broken down at this point, because I'm \nthrown off that Silk and Tussah do not resemble each other." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "I think his mother may be Mamelta. I don't know who his father is,\nthough I take it the answer is lurking somewhere. I can think of a\nplausible sequnce of events that would allow it to be Typhon, but I\ncan also see problems with that - notably, that if spirits on the\nAureate Path appear as they did when they died, Silk should have\nnoticed that his father had two heads." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Well, the problem with all the gods except for Tartarus is how weird \nthey look. Maybe Typhon saw himself as having two-heads and that's why \nPas looked that way. But did Echidna really see herself as a monster \nwith snakes for hair? Scylla had an affinity for Big Scylla but could \nshe have really thought of herself as a human octopus. If Typhon is \none of the fathers, he didn't *die* on the Whorl. If Silk meets Kypris \non the Aureate Path it is significant that he makes no remark about it \nthat is recorded. It still leaves open who the other mother is. If he \nmet Mamelta there, it would more nicely fit into the recorded \nconversation.\n\nHowever, I'll note that Silk doesn't really describe the second father \n(which is reasonable since the account is written by Horn after all, \nanyway). Wolfe has this style of having a person say something, then \nbreaking the paragraph, and having the same person say something else. \nIt's quite jarring. Silk's father does that (I think) and so readers \ngenerally assume that both the fathers speak to Silk. I don't think \nthey do. I think only one does, and I find that interesting. I want to \nsay that it was unnecessary to describe them both since they both look \nlike Tussah. But I'm bother that Silk doesn't look like Tussah as \nwell. It's a snake pit.\n\nJ" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Perhaps it's not so important. An identical genotype may give rise to \ndisparate phenotypes after all. Things can happen during development as \nwell as after birth that result in changes in appearance. Are they not \nboth blonde?\n\n(And this would be even more true if we are not talking about cloning \nbut instead a narrow genotype from intensive enhanced breeding. Would \nyour riddles work out OK if Silk was Typhon's \"brother\"?" } ] }, { "message_id": "<4E93B5F8.3020306@gmail.com>", "from": { "name": "James Wynn", "address": "crushtv at gmail.com" }, "date": "2011-10-11T03:20:24+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Silk's origin", "in_reply_to": "<4E939403.8080007@verizon.net>", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "On 10/10/2011 7:55 PM, David Stockhoff wrote:\nPerhaps it's not so important. An identical genotype may give rise to \ndisparate phenotypes after all. Things can happen during development \nas well as after birth that result in changes in appearance. Are they \nnot both blonde?\n\n(And this would be even more true if we are not talking about cloning \nbut instead a narrow genotype from intensive enhanced breeding. Would \nyour riddles work out OK if Silk was Typhon's \"brother\"?" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Well, there are just a lot of references that identify Silk directly \nwith Typhon.\nTussah might be blonde, but we can't know because he is bald.\nIt's not that Silk and Tussah aren't identical twins. Chenille is \nsuggested to look like Tussah in drag with large breasts. But Horn \ndoubts that she and Silk could be siblings because they \"really don't \nlook alike\".\n\nJ." } ] }, { "message_id": "<4E94487E.10501@verizon.net>", "from": { "name": "David Stockhoff", "address": "dstockhoff at verizon.net" }, "date": "2011-10-11T13:45:34+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Silk's origin", "in_reply_to": "<4E93B5F8.3020306@gmail.com>", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "On 10/10/2011 11:20 PM, James Wynn wrote:\nOn 10/10/2011 7:55 PM, David Stockhoff wrote:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "Perhaps it's not so important. An identical genotype may give rise to \ndisparate phenotypes after all. Things can happen during development \nas well as after birth that result in changes in appearance. Are they \nnot both blonde?\n\n(And this would be even more true if we are not talking about cloning \nbut instead a narrow genotype from intensive enhanced breeding. Would \nyour riddles work out OK if Silk was Typhon's \"brother\"?" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Well, there are just a lot of references that identify Silk directly \nwith Typhon.\nTussah might be blonde, but we can't know because he is bald.\nIt's not that Silk and Tussah aren't identical twins. Chenille is \nsuggested to look like Tussah in drag with large breasts. But Horn \ndoubts that she and Silk could be siblings because they \"really don't \nlook alike\".\n\nJ." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Siblings often don't look alike. However, this must be one of those \nsituations where the facts we are told can't matter as much as the \nnarrator's motive for telling us. Horn's opinion is subjective.\n\nBut going back to my point: are there any existing data on human \nperception of facial similarity between clones born from different \nsurrogate mothers, i.e., developing in different wombs? No. Is there any \nreason therefore to stick to the assumption that clones are always \nidentical? (The only real evidence we have of cloning on Urth is that \nthe uhlans' \" faces were more akin than the faces of brothers.\" We know \nnothing else about how they were \"made.\" Silk-clone-of-Typhon ought to \nfollow that rule simply because it has been put forth, but Wolfe can \nbreak it when he wants.)\n\nWhich leads me to another angle. Is there a classic SF model from which \nwe could derive rules of cloning \"behavior\"? For example, Asimov's Mule \nis a genetic mutation giving rise to super-telepathic powers; therefore \nhe is a precursor to Typhon that we can \"observe\" in action. Has some \nauthor already worked out this cloning business?" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Gerry Quinn", "address": "gerry at bindweed.com" }, "date": "2011-10-11T14:30:07+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Silk's origin", "in_reply_to": "<4E94487E.10501@verizon.net>", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "From: David Stockhoff " }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Which leads me to another angle. Is there a classic SF model from which \nwe could derive rules of cloning \"behavior\"? For example, Asimov's Mule \nis a genetic mutation giving rise to super-telepathic powers; therefore \nhe is a precursor to Typhon that we can \"observe\" in action. Has some \nauthor already worked out this cloning business?" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Gene Wolfe, maybe, in Fifth Head of Cerberus?\nIn 5HoC, clones are essentially identical, irrespective of the surrogate mother. In fact, cloning is banned on civilised planets because of this “anti-evolutionary” characteristic.\nIn BotLS, of course, embryos are (or have been) routinely engineered, and presumably this could be done just as well with clones.\n- Gerry Quinn" } ] }, { "message_id": "<4E945874.9090301@gmail.com>", "from": { "name": "James Wynn", "address": "crushtv at gmail.com" }, "date": "2011-10-11T14:53:40+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Silk's origin", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "On 10/11/2011 9:30 AM, Gerry Quinn wrote:\nIn 5HoC, clones are essentially identical, irrespective of the \nsurrogate mother. In fact, cloning is banned on civilised planets \nbecause of this \"anti-evolutionary\" characteristic." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Maitre *does* note that it is extremely difficult to get them to be \n*truly* identical. Thus all his failures sent to the slave market. But \nNumber Five can recognize his own face in one of the more abject failures.\n\nJ." } ] }, { "message_id": "<4E945C0A.2020104@verizon.net>", "from": { "name": "David Stockhoff", "address": "dstockhoff at verizon.net" }, "date": "2011-10-11T15:08:58+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Silk's origin", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "On 10/11/2011 10:30 AM, Gerry Quinn wrote:\n*From:* David Stockhoff \nWhich leads me to another angle. Is there a classic SF model from which" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "we could derive rules of cloning \"behavior\"? For example, Asimov's Mule" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "is a genetic mutation giving rise to super-telepathic powers; therefore" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "he is a precursor to Typhon that we can \"observe\" in action. Has some" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "author already worked out this cloning business?\nGene Wolfe, maybe, in Fifth Head of Cerberus?\nIn 5HoC, clones are essentially identical, irrespective of the \nsurrogate mother. In fact, cloning is banned on civilised planets \nbecause of this “anti-evolutionary” characteristic.\nIn BotLS, of course, embryos are (or have been) routinely engineered, \nand presumably this could be done just as well with clones.\n- Gerry Quinn" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "That's a possibility. I don't recall it, but if that's how it works in \nFHoC, I'll accept it. (Sorry, James!)\n\nOTOH, the engineers could just as well work artificial variation into \nthe procedure. Might Typhon have had some reason (political, \npsychological) to ensure that none of his clones would look like him? If \none escaped before the Whorl was launched ...." } ] }, { "message_id": "<4E945C2F.7080905@verizon.net>", "from": { "name": "David Stockhoff", "address": "dstockhoff at verizon.net" }, "date": "2011-10-11T15:09:35+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Silk's origin", "in_reply_to": "<4E945874.9090301@gmail.com>", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Wiggle room?" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "On 10/11/2011 10:53 AM, James Wynn wrote:\nOn 10/11/2011 9:30 AM, Gerry Quinn wrote:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "In 5HoC, clones are essentially identical, irrespective of the \nsurrogate mother. In fact, cloning is banned on civilised planets \nbecause of this “anti-evolutionary” characteristic." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Maitre *does* note that it is extremely difficult to get them to be \n*truly* identical. Thus all his failures sent to the slave market. But \nNumber Five can recognize his own face in one of the more abject failures.\n\nJ.\n\n\n\n_______________________________________________" } ] }, { "message_id": "<4E948295.5010500@gmail.com>", "from": { "name": "James Wynn", "address": "crushtv at gmail.com" }, "date": "2011-10-11T17:53:25+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Silk's origin", "in_reply_to": "<4E945C2F.7080905@verizon.net>", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "There are two big questions in the Whorl cycle that I think we are \nsupposed to resolve but I see zero solutions to them:\n\n1. The relationship between Silk, Tussh, and Typhon.\n\n2. How does an inhumi become a vine?\n\nJ" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "On 10/11/2011 10:09 AM, David Stockhoff wrote:\nWiggle room?\n\nOn 10/11/2011 10:53 AM, James Wynn wrote:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "On 10/11/2011 9:30 AM, Gerry Quinn wrote:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 3, "text": "In 5HoC, clones are essentially identical, irrespective of the \nsurrogate mother. In fact, cloning is banned on civilised planets \nbecause of this “anti-evolutionary” characteristic." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "Maitre *does* note that it is extremely difficult to get them to be \n*truly* identical. Thus all his failures sent to the slave market. \nBut Number Five can recognize his own face in one of the more abject \nfailures.\n\nJ.\n\n\n\n_______________________________________________\nUrth Mailing List\nTo post, write urth at urth.net" } ] }, { "message_id": "<4E9494B7.5020504@gmail.com>", "from": { "name": "António Pedro Marques", "address": "entonio at gmail.com" }, "date": "2011-10-11T19:10:47+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Silk's origin", "in_reply_to": "<4E93B5F8.3020306@gmail.com>", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "James Wynn wrote (11-10-2011 04:20):" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "On 10/10/2011 7:55 PM, David Stockhoff wrote:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "Perhaps it's not so important. An identical genotype may give rise to\ndisparate phenotypes after all. Things can happen during development as\nwell as after birth that result in changes in appearance. Are they not\nboth blonde?\n\n(And this would be even more true if we are not talking about cloning but\ninstead a narrow genotype from intensive enhanced breeding. Would your\nriddles work out OK if Silk was Typhon's \"brother\"?" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Well, there are just a lot of references that identify Silk directly with\nTyphon.\nTussah might be blonde, but we can't know because he is bald.\nIt's not that Silk and Tussah aren't identical twins. Chenille is suggested\nto look like Tussah in drag with large breasts. But Horn doubts that she and\nSilk could be siblings because they \"really don't look alike\"." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "What with never having time nor food to eat (Jerry, can you take this \nsentence to a.u.e? But crosspost it to somewhere I read!), I've always \npictured Silk as an anorectic. For some odd reason, that doesn't apply to \nthe guy in most of the Book of the Short Sun." } ] }, { "message_id": "<4E94E1C1.6030505@verizon.net>", "from": { "name": "David Stockhoff", "address": "dstockhoff at verizon.net" }, "date": "2011-10-12T00:39:29+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Silk's origin", "in_reply_to": "<4E948295.5010500@gmail.com>", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "What about author error? Is there any weak link in your argument that \nmight be \"fixed\" by the discovery of a typo or similar?" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "On 10/11/2011 1:53 PM, James Wynn wrote:\nThere are two big questions in the Whorl cycle that I think we are \nsupposed to resolve but I see zero solutions to them:\n\n1. The relationship between Silk, Tussh, and Typhon.\n\n2. How does an inhumi become a vine?\n\nJ\n\nOn 10/11/2011 10:09 AM, David Stockhoff wrote:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "Wiggle room?\n\nOn 10/11/2011 10:53 AM, James Wynn wrote:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 3, "text": "On 10/11/2011 9:30 AM, Gerry Quinn wrote:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 4, "text": "In 5HoC, clones are essentially identical, irrespective of the \nsurrogate mother. In fact, cloning is banned on civilised planets \nbecause of this “anti-evolutionary” characteristic." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 3, "text": "Maitre *does* note that it is extremely difficult to get them to be \n*truly* identical. Thus all his failures sent to the slave market. \nBut Number Five can recognize his own face in one of the more abject \nfailures.\n\nJ.\n\n\n\n_______________________________________________\nUrth Mailing List\nTo post, write urth at urth.net\nSubscription/information: http://www.urth.net\n\n\n\n---\navast! Antivirus: Inbound message clean.\nVirus Database (VPS): 111011-0, 10/11/2011\nTested on: 10/11/2011 10:54:43 AM\navast! - copyright (c) 1988-2011 AVAST Software.\nhttp://www.avast.com" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "---\navast! Antivirus: Outbound message clean.\nVirus Database (VPS): 111011-0, 10/11/2011\nTested on: 10/11/2011 11:09:36 AM\navast! - copyright (c) 1988-2011 AVAST Software.\nhttp://www.avast.com\n\n\n\n_______________________________________________" } ] }, { "message_id": "<1318384518.38498.YahooMailClassic@web161802.mail.bf1.yahoo.com>", "from": { "name": "Marc Aramini", "address": "marcaramini at yahoo.com" }, "date": "2011-10-12T01:55:18+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Silk's origin", "in_reply_to": "<4E948295.5010500@gmail.com>", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "--- On Tue, 10/11/11, James Wynn wrote:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "1. The relationship between Silk, Tussh, and Typhon.\n\n2. How does an inhumi become a vine?" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "No, no, no. The liana vines are primitive inhumi, the natural state of inhumi without blood. They parasitized the ability to recombine their genome from the much more mystical trees of Green, which can actually more fully integrate the genetic material they eat like in \"Talk of Mandrakes.\"\n\nIn the absence of humans to feed upon, the only inhumi left would be the vegetable lianas." } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Lee Berman", "address": "severiansola at hotmail.com" }, "date": "2011-10-12T12:44:39+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Silk's Origin", "in_reply_to": "<1318384518.38498.YahooMailClassic@web161802.mail.bf1.yahoo.com>", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "James Wynn: How does an inhumi become a vine?" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Marc Aramini: No, no, no. The liana vines are primitive inhumi, the natural state of inhumi \nwithout blood. They parasitized the ability to recombine their genome from the much more \nmystical trees of Green, which can actually more fully integrate the genetic material they eat \nlike in \"Talk of Mandrakes.\"In the absence of humans to feed upon, the only inhumi left would be \nthe vegetable lianas." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I'm thinking James' question might have had a whimsical tone rather than being meant as a strict, \nliteral query but I do think you are right Marc. Thus the \"secret of the inhumi\". Vines/lianas don't\nengage in social pathology such as lying and manipulation. They got that from us. How do you think \nthe reptile/amphibian aspect of inhumi got incorportated?\n \nDoes the multi-head/multi-limb aspect of the Neighbors reflect a tree origin? \t\t \t \t\t " } ] }, { "message_id": "<571E68DA15DD499F97AF81E00288D79F@Rover>", "from": { "name": "Gerry Quinn", "address": "gerry at bindweed.com" }, "date": "2011-10-12T13:16:52+00:00", "subject": "(urth) [BGSpam]Re: Silk's origin", "in_reply_to": "<4E948295.5010500@gmail.com>", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "From: James Wynn " }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "There are two big questions in the Whorl cycle that I think we are \nsupposed to resolve but I see zero solutions to them:\n1. The relationship between Silk, Tussh, and Typhon.\n2. How does an inhumi become a vine?" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I’m comfortable with the concept that the relationships are simply those described in the book:\n\n1. Silk was grown from an engineered embryo bought by Tussah. His genetic parents on Urth have no significance to the story. Silk’s scanned persona later merged with the remains of that of Typhon.\n\n2. Inhumi are animals, and have no relation to vines. [It may of course be that particular plants of Green are of some nutritional significance to the water-breathing juvenile form of the inhumi.]\n\n- Gerry Quinn\n\n " } ] }, { "message_id": "<4E95A772.50808@verizon.net>", "from": { "name": "David Stockhoff", "address": "dstockhoff at verizon.net" }, "date": "2011-10-12T14:42:58+00:00", "subject": "(urth) [BGSpam]Re: Silk's origin", "in_reply_to": "<571E68DA15DD499F97AF81E00288D79F@Rover>", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "On 10/12/2011 9:16 AM, Gerry Quinn wrote:\n*From:* James Wynn \nThere are two big questions in the Whorl cycle that I think we are\nsupposed to resolve but I see zero solutions to them:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "1. The relationship between Silk, Tussh, and Typhon.\n2. How does an inhumi become a vine?" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "I’m comfortable with the concept that the relationships are simply \nthose described in the book:\n1. Silk was grown from an engineered embryo bought by Tussah. His \ngenetic parents on Urth have no significance to the story. Silk’s \nscanned persona later merged with the remains of that of Typhon.\n2. Inhumi are animals, and have no relation to vines. [It may of \ncourse be that particular plants of Green are of some nutritional \nsignificance to the water-breathing juvenile form of the inhumi.]\n- Gerry Quinn" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Is it possible that Typhonic genes were inserted into embryos? Silk may \nthen get some parts of Typhon's genotype but not others. So with Mucor. \nNone would look like him.\n\nWould this not be the simplest form of genetic engineering? After all, \nTyphon would not want the technology that produced him, if there was \nsuch, to be widely available or reproduced. He's the kind of guy who \nwould say, \"Make me a superman\" and then kill his scientists. But his \nDNA could be closely held and put to use to make partial Typhons, none \nof which could arise to challenge him in his new body or newest iteration." } ] }, { "message_id": "<1318431163.72460.YahooMailClassic@web161804.mail.bf1.yahoo.com>", "from": { "name": "Marc Aramini", "address": "marcaramini at yahoo.com" }, "date": "2011-10-12T14:52:43+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Silk's Origin", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "--- On Wed, 10/12/11, Lee Berman wrote:\nFrom: Lee Berman \nSubject: (urth) Silk's Origin\nTo: urth at urth.net\nDate: Wednesday, October 12, 2011, 5:44 AM" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "James Wynn: How does an inhumi become a vine?" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "Marc Aramini: No, no, no. The liana vines are\nprimitive inhumi, the natural state of inhumi \nwithout blood. They parasitized the ability to\nrecombine their genome from the much more \nmystical trees of Green, which can actually more fully\nintegrate the genetic material they eat \nlike in \"Talk of Mandrakes.\"In the absence of humans to\nfeed upon, the only inhumi left would be \nthe vegetable lianas." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "I'm thinking James' question might have had a whimsical\ntone rather than being meant as a strict, \nliteral query but I do think you are right Marc. Thus the\n\"secret of the inhumi\". Vines/lianas don't\nengage in social pathology such as lying and manipulation.\nThey got that from us. How do you think \nthe reptile/amphibian aspect of inhumi got incorportated?\n \nDoes the multi-head/multi-limb aspect of the Neighbors\nreflect a tree origin? ???" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "In my opinion, yes, and it also symbolically represents the doubled genetic nature of a hybrid strain (corn genetics in the first chapter of OBW and hybridization linked to the condition of Blue - ad nauseum! Both symbolic of Silk-Horn and the neighbors as hybrids more suited to the harsh environment). Note how MAD the neighbors get when a guy with an ax goes into the forest. why? It's mother tree he's going to cut down.\n ????????" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "?????? ???\n\n_______________________________________________" } ] }, { "message_id": "<606577368B424519B0072050D478DF88@Rover>", "from": { "name": "Gerry Quinn", "address": "gerry at bindweed.com" }, "date": "2011-10-12T14:53:46+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Silk's origin", "in_reply_to": "<4E95A772.50808@verizon.net>", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "From: David Stockhoff " }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "On 10/12/2011 9:16 AM, Gerry Quinn wrote:\nI’m comfortable with the concept that the relationships are simply \nthose described in the book:\n1. Silk was grown from an engineered embryo bought by Tussah. His \ngenetic parents on Urth have no significance to the story. Silk’s \nscanned persona later merged with the remains of that of Typhon.\n2. Inhumi are animals, and have no relation to vines. [It may of \ncourse be that particular plants of Green are of some nutritional \nsignificance to the water-breathing juvenile form of the inhumi.]" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Is it possible that Typhonic genes were inserted into embryos? Silk may \nthen get some parts of Typhon's genotype but not others. So with Mucor. \nNone would look like him." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "If Silk has genes for leadership, they may well be the same as Typhon’s. The same applies to blond hair, height (if they are of the same height) etc. I don’t really think possessing some genes in common implies a special relationship. We all possess many genes in common, after all, and many of our genes are also shared with other animals and even more distant relatives.\n- Gerry Quinn\n " } ] }, { "message_id": "<1318431810.62338.YahooMailClassic@web161803.mail.bf1.yahoo.com>", "from": { "name": "Marc Aramini", "address": "marcaramini at yahoo.com" }, "date": "2011-10-12T15:03:30+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Silk's origin", "in_reply_to": "<606577368B424519B0072050D478DF88@Rover>", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "--- On Wed, 10/12/11, Gerry Quinn wrote:\n\n\nFrom: Gerry Quinn \nSubject: Re: (urth) Silk's origin\nTo: \"The Urth Mailing List\" \nDate: Wednesday, October 12, 2011, 7:53 AM\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nIf Silk has genes for leadership, they may well be the same as Typhon’s. The same applies to blond hair, height (if they are of the same height) etc. I don’t really think possessing some genes in common implies a special relationship. We all possess many genes in common, after all, and many of our genes are also shared with other animals and even more distant relatives.\n\n\n\n- Gerry Quinn\n\n\n\n\n\n\nI agree with you? here Gerry. I think it's an all, 50% (offspring), or nothing/incidental (except, you know, being human and DNA based etc)?gene correspondence with Typhon there." } ] }, { "message_id": "<4E95B2F8.7060009@verizon.net>", "from": { "name": "David Stockhoff", "address": "dstockhoff at verizon.net" }, "date": "2011-10-12T15:32:08+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Silk's origin", "in_reply_to": "<606577368B424519B0072050D478DF88@Rover>", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "On 10/12/2011 10:53 AM, Gerry Quinn wrote:\n\n*From:* David Stockhoff \nOn 10/12/2011 9:16 AM, Gerry Quinn wrote:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 3, "text": "I’m comfortable with the concept that the relationships are simply\nthose described in the book:\n1. Silk was grown from an engineered embryo bought by Tussah. His\ngenetic parents on Urth have no significance to the story. Silk’s\nscanned persona later merged with the remains of that of Typhon.\n2. Inhumi are animals, and have no relation to vines. [It may of\ncourse be that particular plants of Green are of some nutritional\nsignificance to the water-breathing juvenile form of the inhumi.]" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "Is it possible that Typhonic genes were inserted into embryos? Silk may\nthen get some parts of Typhon's genotype but not others. So with Mucor.\nNone would look like him." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "If Silk has genes for leadership, they may well be the same as \nTyphon’s. The same applies to blond hair, height (if they are of the \nsame height) etc. I don’t really think possessing some genes in common \nimplies a special relationship. We all possess many genes in common, \nafter all, and many of our genes are also shared with other animals \nand even more distant relatives.\n- Gerry Quinn" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I am baffled. Are you making a point?\n\nLet's put this to James. James, does an engineered-genes-insertion link \nbetween Typhon and Silk work for your theory? After all, with some \nwiggle room it makes them brothers, or closer than brothers. And yet \nthey will be as different as Silk and Mucor." } ] }, { "message_id": "<4E95EEF4.9040707@gmail.com>", "from": { "name": "James Wynn", "address": "crushtv at gmail.com" }, "date": "2011-10-12T19:48:04+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Silk's origin", "in_reply_to": "<4E95B2F8.7060009@verizon.net>", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "On 10/12/2011 9:16 AM, Gerry Quinn wrote:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 4, "text": "I’m comfortable with the concept that the relationships are simply\nthose described in the book:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 4, "text": "1. Silk was grown from an engineered embryo bought by Tussah. His\ngenetic parents on Urth have no significance to the story. Silk’s\nscanned persona later merged with the remains of that of Typhon.\n2. Inhumi are animals, and have no relation to vines. [It may of\ncourse be that particular plants of Green are of some nutritional\nsignificance to the water-breathing juvenile form of the inhumi.]" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 3, "text": "Is it possible that Typhonic genes were inserted into embryos? Silk \nmay\nthen get some parts of Typhon's genotype but not others. So with \nMucor.\nNone would look like him." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Unfortunately, for the resolution of the puzzle, the book says far more \nthan you appear to be aware of. Including that a character in the Short \nSun series identifies the Rajan's staff as an inhumi, and that at night \nhe talked about it." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "If Silk has genes for leadership, they may well be the same as \nTyphon’s. The same applies to blond hair, height (if they are of the \nsame height) etc. I don’t really think possessing some genes in \ncommon implies a special relationship. We all possess many genes in \ncommon, after all, and many of our genes are also shared with other \nanimals and even more distant relatives." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "On 10/12/2011 10:32 AM, David Stockhoff wrote:\n\nLet's put this to James. James, does an engineered-genes-insertion \nlink between Typhon and Silk work for your theory? After all, with \nsome wiggle room it makes them brothers, or closer than brothers. And \nyet they will be as different as Silk and Mucor." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Well, not really.\n\nThere's no exposition in the book that ties the genes for leadership to \nheight or blonde hair.\n\nAdditionally, the references tying Silk to Typhon strike me as very \npersonal. Including Horn's speech in OBW about how if Pas is a god on \nthe Whorl then he can come and be a god on Blue. I think that is an \nautorial reference to Silk. The best dodge I can come up with is that \nSilk was carrying a piece of Pas in his head since before Tussah's \nassassination. But even that is too many degrees of separation for me. \nFor example, why could only Silk be used as a donor to repatch Pas after \nhis resurrection, and why did it require going all the way to the \nMainframe? If it is only that he was carrying part of the god in his \nhead, then he only needed to stand in front of a Sacred Window. And I \nstill want him to be a son of Typhon somehow to have a hope of \nexplaining the two parents Silk meets on the Aureate Path. It's clear \nthat Wolfe has all this carefully worked out. I just can't figure out \nhow he got there.\n\nJ.\n\nJ." } ] }, { "message_id": "<4E95EFC9.2080001@gmail.com>", "from": { "name": "James Wynn", "address": "crushtv at gmail.com" }, "date": "2011-10-12T19:51:37+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Silk's origin", "in_reply_to": "<1318384518.38498.YahooMailClassic@web161802.mail.bf1.yahoo.com>", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "1. The relationship between Silk, Tussh, and Typhon.\n\n2. How does an inhumi become a vine?" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "On 10/11/2011 8:55 PM, Marc Aramini wrote:\n\nNo, no, no. The liana vines are primitive inhumi, the natural state of inhumi without blood. They parasitized the ability to recombine their genome from the much more mystical trees of Green, which can actually more fully integrate the genetic material they eat like in \"Talk of Mandrakes.\"\n\nIn the absence of humans to feed upon, the only inhumi left would be the vegetable lianas." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "If the vines are non-sentient, then how does the Rajan converse with it?\nJ." } ] }, { "message_id": "<4E95F100.6060004@verizon.net>", "from": { "name": "David Stockhoff", "address": "dstockhoff at verizon.net" }, "date": "2011-10-12T19:56:48+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Silk's origin", "in_reply_to": "<4E95EEF4.9040707@gmail.com>", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "On 10/12/2011 3:48 PM, James Wynn wrote:\nOn 10/12/2011 10:32 AM, David Stockhoff wrote:\n\nLet's put this to James. James, does an engineered-genes-insertion \nlink between Typhon and Silk work for your theory? After all, with \nsome wiggle room it makes them brothers, or closer than brothers. And \nyet they will be as different as Silk and Mucor." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Well, not really.\n\nThere's no exposition in the book that ties the genes for leadership \nto height or blonde hair." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "That's not something I suggested. I was referring to your puzzle of \n\"brothers\" and \"sisters.\"" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Additionally, the references tying Silk to Typhon strike me as very \npersonal. Including Horn's speech in OBW about how if Pas is a god on \nthe Whorl then he can come and be a god on Blue. I think that is an \nautorial reference to Silk. The best dodge I can come up with is that \nSilk was carrying a piece of Pas in his head since before Tussah's \nassassination. " }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "If Silk is carrying genes from Typhon and Typhon is Pas, does that help?" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "But even that is too many degrees of separation for me. For example, \nwhy could only Silk be used as a donor to repatch Pas after his \nresurrection, and why did it require going all the way to the \nMainframe? If it is only that he was carrying part of the god in his \nhead, then he only needed to stand in front of a Sacred Window. And I \nstill want him to be a son of Typhon somehow to have a hope of \nexplaining the two parents Silk meets on the Aureate Path. " }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "That's what I mean. In what sense must Silk be a son of Typhon---given \nthe \"son not son\" pattern of the Romans you have pointed to: legal? No. \nFilial? No. Why not genetic?" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "It's clear that Wolfe has all this carefully worked out. I just can't \nfigure out how he got there.\n\nJ." } ] }, { "message_id": "<4E95F454.3020700@gmail.com>", "from": { "name": "James Wynn", "address": "crushtv at gmail.com" }, "date": "2011-10-12T20:11:00+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Silk's Origin", "in_reply_to": "<1318431163.72460.YahooMailClassic@web161804.mail.bf1.yahoo.com>", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "I'm thinking James' question might have had a whimsical\ntone rather than being meant as a strict,\nliteral query but I do think you are right Marc. Thus the\n\"secret of the inhumi\". Vines/lianas don't\nengage in social pathology such as lying and manipulation.\nThey got that from us. How do you think\nthe reptile/amphibian aspect of inhumi got incorportated?\n\nDoes the multi-head/multi-limb aspect of the Neighbors\nreflect a tree origin?" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "In my opinion, yes, and it also symbolically represents the doubled genetic nature of a hybrid strain (corn genetics in the first chapter of OBW and hybridization linked to the condition of Blue - ad nauseum! Both symbolic of Silk-Horn and the neighbors as hybrids more suited to the harsh environment). Note how MAD the neighbors get when a guy with an ax goes into the forest. why? It's mother tree he's going to cut down." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "There are indeed lots of references associating the trees on Blue to \nNeighbors and vines to inhumi.\nWhen you see that Wolfe is overlaying the Neighbors with Fairie \nmythology--and since dream-travel is Time-travel, perhaps they are \nsupposed to be the origins of the myth--the idea of the Neighbors as \ndryads makes perfect sense.\n\n\"Neighbor\" = \"Grey Neighbors\" = Fair Folk = Fairie. Wolfe is aware of \nthis because he refers to it in \"An Evil Guest\".\n\nJ." } ] }, { "message_id": "<1318450757.51710.YahooMailClassic@web161803.mail.bf1.yahoo.com>", "from": { "name": "Marc Aramini", "address": "marcaramini at yahoo.com" }, "date": "2011-10-12T20:19:17+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Silk's origin", "in_reply_to": "<4E95EFC9.2080001@gmail.com>", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "--- On Wed, 10/12/11, James Wynn wrote:\n\nIf the vines are non-sentient, then how does the Rajan\nconverse with it?\nJ." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "The trees are NOT nonsentient. They are the observers of the eucharist scene. Neither are the vines that have fed from them nonsentient, having stolen something of their nature. (also possible that staff has been sharing a little sustenance from the Rajan, no?) Not nonsentient, just vegetable.\n\nAnd you know what I think the original vanished people are already, though there is some confusion as to whether they arose on Blue or Green. :(" } ] }, { "message_id": "<4E95F74E.8030407@gmail.com>", "from": { "name": "James Wynn", "address": "crushtv at gmail.com" }, "date": "2011-10-12T20:23:42+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Silk's origin", "in_reply_to": "<4E95F100.6060004@verizon.net>", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 3, "text": "On 10/12/2011 10:32 AM, David Stockhoff wrote:\n\nLet's put this to James. James, does an engineered-genes-insertion \nlink between Typhon and Silk work for your theory? After all, with \nsome wiggle room it makes them brothers, or closer than brothers. \nAnd yet they will be as different as Silk and Mucor." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "[...]\nBut even that is too many degrees of separation for me. For example, \nwhy could only Silk be used as a donor to repatch Pas after his \nresurrection, and why did it require going all the way to the \nMainframe? If it is only that he was carrying part of the god in his \nhead, then he only needed to stand in front of a Sacred Window. And I \nstill want him to be a son of Typhon somehow to have a hope of \nexplaining the two parents Silk meets on the Aureate Path." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "That's what I mean. In what sense must Silk be a son of Typhon---given \nthe \"son not son\" pattern of the Romans you have pointed to: legal? \nNo. Filial? No. Why not genetic?" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Well, just sharing selected genes would not really make Silk a \"son of \nTyphon\". That would be true of any cousin of Typhon or any chimpanzee \n(as Gerry pointed out).\n\nNow, yeah, it would work perfectly for \"the son not of my body\" to mean \nthat Silk is a clone of the son of Typhon and that Tussah is a clone of \nTyphon. I can't begin to relate all the ways that works.\nIf that were true, then I'd happily wave away all the references to Silk \nAS Typhon/Pas.\nBut if Chenille is the image of Tussah and Tussah is the clone of \nTyphon, doesn't it seem reasonable that Silk and Chenille would look \nenough alike for Horn to think they should be brother and sister?\n\nNow, suppose this imagined original \"Son of Typhon\" were himself not \nreally a genetic son. Suppose he was implanted in the original Kypris \njust as Silk was? That would make it unnecessary for Silk to look \nanything like Typhon. But...\n\n1) Why bother giving Silk the similarities to Typhon at all? Why the \nrelatively unusual blonde hair and such?\n\n2) Why, when asked about Silk's \"ancestry\" did Wolfe say \"he was the son \nof the Calde and his mistress\"? His ancestry would move a step back \nbeyond Typhon.\n\nJ." } ] }, { "message_id": "<4E95F87C.1090406@gmail.com>", "from": { "name": "James Wynn", "address": "crushtv at gmail.com" }, "date": "2011-10-12T20:28:44+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Silk's origin", "in_reply_to": "<1318450757.51710.YahooMailClassic@web161803.mail.bf1.yahoo.com>", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "If the vines are non-sentient, then how does the Rajan\nconverse with it?\nJ." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "On 10/12/2011 3:19 PM, Marc Aramini wrote:\nThe trees are NOT nonsentient. They are the observers of the eucharist scene. Neither are the vines that have fed from them nonsentient, having stolen something of their nature. (also possible that staff has been sharing a little sustenance from the Rajan, no?) Not nonsentient, just vegetable.\n\nAnd you know what I think the original vanished people are already, though there is some confusion as to whether they arose on Blue or Green. :(" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Okay. I got confused for a minute. So--sorry if you answered this, \nsomeone asked you but I don't see the answer-- how/did they end up as \nnon-sentient reptilians with an egg-laying life-cycle?\n\nJ." } ] }, { "message_id": "<4E95FAD0.2080908@verizon.net>", "from": { "name": "David Stockhoff", "address": "dstockhoff at verizon.net" }, "date": "2011-10-12T20:38:40+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Silk's Origin", "in_reply_to": "<4E95F454.3020700@gmail.com>", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 3, "text": "On 10/12/2011 4:11 PM, James Wynn wrote:\nI'm thinking James' question might have had a whimsical\ntone rather than being meant as a strict,\nliteral query but I do think you are right Marc. Thus the\n\"secret of the inhumi\". Vines/lianas don't\nengage in social pathology such as lying and manipulation.\nThey got that from us. How do you think\nthe reptile/amphibian aspect of inhumi got incorportated?\n\nDoes the multi-head/multi-limb aspect of the Neighbors\nreflect a tree origin?" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "In my opinion, yes, and it also symbolically represents the doubled \ngenetic nature of a hybrid strain (corn genetics in the first chapter \nof OBW and hybridization linked to the condition of Blue - ad \nnauseum! Both symbolic of Silk-Horn and the neighbors as hybrids \nmore suited to the harsh environment). Note how MAD the neighbors \nget when a guy with an ax goes into the forest. why? It's mother \ntree he's going to cut down." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "There are indeed lots of references associating the trees on Blue to \nNeighbors and vines to inhumi.\nWhen you see that Wolfe is overlaying the Neighbors with Fairie \nmythology--and since dream-travel is Time-travel, perhaps they are \nsupposed to be the origins of the myth--the idea of the Neighbors as \ndryads makes perfect sense.\n\n\"Neighbor\" = \"Grey Neighbors\" = Fair Folk = Fairie. Wolfe is aware of \nthis because he refers to it in \"An Evil Guest\". " }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Exactly." } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Lee Berman", "address": "severiansola at hotmail.com" }, "date": "2011-10-12T20:40:05+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Silk's Origin", "in_reply_to": "<4E95FAD0.2080908@verizon.net>", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "James Wynn: When you see that Wolfe is overlaying the Neighbors with Fairie \nmythology--and since dream-travel is Time-travel, perhaps they are \nsupposed to be the origins of the myth--the idea of the Neighbors as \ndryads makes perfect sense. \"Neighbor\" = \"Grey Neighbors\" = Fair Folk = Fairie. \nWolfe is aware of this because he refers to it in \"An Evil Guest\"." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": " \nI think this is right. I think David Stockhoff came to a similar conclusion a year\nor two ago...\n \nOr perhaps that was a discussion of the Shadow Children from 5HoC. Doesn't matter.\nSame author created them both. And as has been previously discussed, the Shadow Children \nand Inhumi+Neighbors bear a lot of similarity. Shadow Children originating as dark things\ncurling around the roots of plants sounds rather like parasitic vines. Then there is the\nindeterminate numeric count of Shadow Children and Neighbors and the similarity of their \ndream travel. \"Faerie\" seems like a pretty good unifying concept.\n \t\t \t \t\t " } ] }, { "message_id": "<4E95FF22.1050805@verizon.net>", "from": { "name": "David Stockhoff", "address": "dstockhoff at verizon.net" }, "date": "2011-10-12T20:57:06+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Silk's origin", "in_reply_to": "<4E95F74E.8030407@gmail.com>", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "On 10/12/2011 4:23 PM, James Wynn wrote:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 4, "text": "On 10/12/2011 10:32 AM, David Stockhoff wrote:\n\nLet's put this to James. James, does an engineered-genes-insertion \nlink between Typhon and Silk work for your theory? After all, with \nsome wiggle room it makes them brothers, or closer than brothers. \nAnd yet they will be as different as Silk and Mucor." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 3, "text": "[...]\nBut even that is too many degrees of separation for me. For example, \nwhy could only Silk be used as a donor to repatch Pas after his \nresurrection, and why did it require going all the way to the \nMainframe? If it is only that he was carrying part of the god in his \nhead, then he only needed to stand in front of a Sacred Window. And \nI still want him to be a son of Typhon somehow to have a hope of \nexplaining the two parents Silk meets on the Aureate Path." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "That's what I mean. In what sense must Silk be a son of \nTyphon---given the \"son not son\" pattern of the Romans you have \npointed to: legal? No. Filial? No. Why not genetic?" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Well, just sharing selected genes would not really make Silk a \"son of \nTyphon\". That would be true of any cousin of Typhon or any chimpanzee \n(as Gerry pointed out)." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I have to remind myself sometimes that I am addressing a bunch of \nengineers. :D\n\n(1) Is percentage of shared genes the only way to compare species? \nObviously not.\n(2) If chimps and humans are 99% the same, then that pretty much kills \nthat usefulness of that viewpoint. Further, most of the 99% is junk, \nrendering the figure meaningless. Is there a biologist in the house?\n(3) If God walked the earth 10 generations ago, and I had some of His \ngenes spliced in so that I could throw thunderbolts, you can be damn \nsure I'd call myself the Son of God and throw thunderbolts at you if you \ngave a peep. And so would you. \"Cousin\" would not do it.\n\nPoint being, Silk has some of Typhon's superiority, if we accept this \ntheory. Naturally, if you don't think Typhon is in any way superior, \nthis doesn't work so well---you would indeed be talking about mundane \ntraits." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Now, yeah, it would work perfectly for \"the son not of my body\" to \nmean that Silk is a clone of the son of Typhon and that Tussah is a \nclone of Typhon. I can't begin to relate all the ways that works." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I guess I may be talking about partial cloning, if that makes sense." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "If that were true, then I'd happily wave away all the references to \nSilk AS Typhon/Pas.\nBut if Chenille is the image of Tussah and Tussah is the clone of \nTyphon, doesn't it seem reasonable that Silk and Chenille would look \nenough alike for Horn to think they should be brother and sister?" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Not if Silk didn't get his looks from Typhon, just his physical \nsuperiority. Recall that I am proposing splicing specific genes for \nspecific traits. We can do that now already. Some may be accidental or \nconnected, of course." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Now, suppose this imagined original \"Son of Typhon\" were himself not \nreally a genetic son. Suppose he was implanted in the original Kypris \njust as Silk was? That would make it unnecessary for Silk to look \nanything like Typhon. But...\n\n1) Why bother giving Silk the similarities to Typhon at all? Why the \nrelatively unusual blonde hair and such?" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "It's a sign to the unusually dull reader. ;)" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "2) Why, when asked about Silk's \"ancestry\" did Wolfe say \"he was the \nson of the Calde and his mistress\"? His ancestry would move a step \nback beyond Typhon." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Ah, well. Some things are inexplicable." } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Andrew Mason", "address": "andrew.mason53 at googlemail.com" }, "date": "2011-10-12T21:11:38+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Silk's origin", "in_reply_to": "<4E95FF22.1050805@verizon.net>", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "James Wynn wrote:\n\nAnd it is troublesome in what sense Tussah considered himself Silk's\n\"father\". If they ever met, Silk didn't remember it--only having seen a\nbust of him in a closet. Tussah never married Silk's mother, and he\nnever officially adopted Silk." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Well, the other inhabitants of Viron don't seem to have had a problem\nwith it. When Tussah died, leaving the message that 'my son, not of my\nbody, will succeed me', they set out to look for this 'adopted son'.\nThe fact that Tussah wasn't married and had no child living with him\ndidn't worry them. So I'm guessing adoption in Viron is a legal rather\nthan a familial matter. We don't know there was no legal adoption -\nthe papers would presumably be hidden somewhere." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "Moreover, we are told in a couple of places that the embryos are the\nresult of selective breeding, rather than clones." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "I missed that. What are you referring to?" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "There's something in RTTW, isn't there, which refers to carefully\ncontrolled matings in Typhon's workshops? And Crane's remake about the\nPetri dish fits in with this. Of course, this doesn't prevent a few\nclones being slipped in among them, but I think the presumption should\nbe that they are selectively bred rather than cloned.\n\n.\n If Typhon is" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "one of the fathers, he didn't *die* on the Whorl." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "That may not matter if the vision isn't from Mainframe, but from the\nOutsider. On the other hand, that produces a new problem, in that\nTyphon, one would think, is not the sort of person the Outsider would\nchoose as a messenger." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "However, I'll note that Silk doesn't really describe the second father\n(which is reasonable since the account is written by Horn after all,\nanyway). Wolfe has this style of having a person say something, then\nbreaking the paragraph, and having the same person say something else.\nIt's quite jarring. Silk's father does that (I think) and so readers\ngenerally assume that both the fathers speak to Silk. I don't think they\ndo. I think only one does, and I find that interesting." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "While we aren't forced to think that both fathers speak, it seems\nlikely to me that they do, since it's specifically said that one of\nthe mothers does not speak, suggesting that the other three parents\nall do." } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Andrew Mason", "address": "andrew.mason53 at googlemail.com" }, "date": "2011-10-12T21:29:38+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Silk's origin", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "James Wynn wrote:\n\nAdditionally, the references tying Silk to Typhon strike me as very\npersonal. Including Horn's speech in OBW about how if Pas is a god on\nthe Whorl then he can come and be a god on Blue. I think that is an\nautorial reference to Silk." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "When Kypris invites Silk to merge with Pas, she says 'you would be\nhim, and he would be you'. This could be seen as a tautology - if Silk\n(in Mainframe) is Pas, of course Pas (in Mainframe) is Silk. But it\ncould also be read as referring to an exchange - Pas, in Mainframe, is\npartly Silk, and Silk, in Silk's body, is partly Pas. Something like\nthis happens on a small scale, if I remember rightly, in every case of\npossession - a bit of Kypris is left in Chenille, and a bit of\nChenille goes back to Mainframe with Kypris. This could be the same\nthing on a larger scale,\n\nTo support this, at the beginning of OBW Sinew says that if Horn\nbrings Silk to Blue he will also be bringing Pas, referring to\nKypris's proposal. Horn says that we don't know if Silk accepted the\nproposal, but he doesn't say 'and if he had it wouldn't matter anyway,\nbecause the Silk in Silk's body is still just Silk'. So I think there\nis a way here for Silk to be, in a sense, Pas, without any genetic\nidentity.\n\n And I" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "still want him to be a son of Typhon somehow to have a hope of\nexplaining the two parents Silk meets on the Aureate Path." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Well, yes. I agree that his father should be someone significant, or\nat least someone identifiable, which would give us the satisfaction of\nseeing how things fit together. But I'm worried that if the only\nreason for thinking it's Typhon is 'who else could it be?', that still\nisn't a satisfactory answer." } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Gerry Quinn", "address": "gerry at bindweed.com" }, "date": "2011-10-12T21:32:24+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Silk's origin", "in_reply_to": "<4E95FF22.1050805@verizon.net>", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "From: David Stockhoff " }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "On 10/12/2011 4:23 PM, James Wynn wrote:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "Well, just sharing selected genes would not really make Silk a \"son of \nTyphon\". That would be true of any cousin of Typhon or any chimpanzee \n(as Gerry pointed out)." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "I have to remind myself sometimes that I am addressing a bunch of \nengineers. :D" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "(1) Is percentage of shared genes the only way to compare species? \nObviously not.\n(2) If chimps and humans are 99% the same, then that pretty much kills \nthat usefulness of that viewpoint. Further, most of the 99% is junk, \nrendering the figure meaningless. Is there a biologist in the house?" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "But isn’t it you who is promulgating the view that the shared genes are significant?" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "(3) If God walked the earth 10 generations ago, and I had some of His \ngenes spliced in so that I could throw thunderbolts, you can be damn \nsure I'd call myself the Son of God and throw thunderbolts at you if you \ngave a peep. And so would you. \"Cousin\" would not do it." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Leadership skills are not a special ability distinct from the abilities of the human race in general, as the ability to shoot thunderbolts would be.\n\nWhen we attach significance to someone being related to another person, we are talking about large constellations of genes. If somebody has Typhon’s nose, and we suspect he is related to Typhon, we take account of it because we imagine he may have many characteristics of Typhon, not just the nose. If we knew that Typhon was so proud of his nose that he had his nose-shape genes injected into countless embryos, the matter would be much less interesting — just a nose shape, not Typhon’s nose-shape." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Point being, Silk has some of Typhon's superiority, if we accept this \ntheory. Naturally, if you don't think Typhon is in any way superior, \nthis doesn't work so well---you would indeed be talking about mundane \ntraits." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Leadership is not quite as mundane as blond hair, but it is not that rare. Indeed, I’d expect that if if indeed there are ponderable genes for leadership — a questionable matter given that it must depend strongly on nurture as well as nature — there are multiple gene complexes, and Typhon’s technicians would probably have used different combinations in different embryos." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "2) Why, when asked about Silk's \"ancestry\" did Wolfe say \"he was the \nson of the Calde and his mistress\"? His ancestry would move a step \nback beyond Typhon." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Ah, well. Some things are inexplicable." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Maybe Wolfe was just indicating that Silk’s genetic parents are basically irrelevant to the story. \n\n- Gerry Quinn\n\n\n\n " } ] }, { "message_id": "<4E960CE7.9060207@verizon.net>", "from": { "name": "David Stockhoff", "address": "dstockhoff at verizon.net" }, "date": "2011-10-12T21:55:51+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Silk's origin", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "On 10/12/2011 5:32 PM, Gerry Quinn wrote:\n\n*From:* David Stockhoff \nOn 10/12/2011 4:23 PM, James Wynn wrote:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 3, "text": "Well, just sharing selected genes would not really make Silk a \n\"son of\nTyphon\". That would be true of any cousin of Typhon or any chimpanzee\n(as Gerry pointed out)." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "I have to remind myself sometimes that I am addressing a bunch of\nengineers. :D" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "(1) Is percentage of shared genes the only way to compare species?\nObviously not.\n(2) If chimps and humans are 99% the same, then that pretty much kills\nthat usefulness of that viewpoint. Further, most of the 99% is junk,\nrendering the figure meaningless. Is there a biologist in the house?" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "But isn’t it you who is promulgating the view that the shared genes \nare significant?" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "err ... they are significant for a reason other than mere quantity." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "(3) If God walked the earth 10 generations ago, and I had some of His\ngenes spliced in so that I could throw thunderbolts, you can be damn\nsure I'd call myself the Son of God and throw thunderbolts at you if \nyou\ngave a peep. And so would you. \"Cousin\" would not do it." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Leadership skills are not a special ability distinct from the \nabilities of the human race in general, as the ability to shoot \nthunderbolts would be." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "There are many reasons a man can be called the son of a man who is not \nhis father. There are many things a man can inherit from a man who is \nnot his father." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "When we attach significance to someone being related to another \nperson, we are talking about large constellations of genes. If \nsomebody has Typhon’s nose, and we suspect he is related to Typhon, we \ntake account of it because we imagine he may have many characteristics \nof Typhon, not just the nose. If we knew that Typhon was so proud of \nhis nose that he had his nose-shape genes injected into countless \nembryos, the matter would be much less interesting — just a nose \nshape, not Typhon’s nose-shape." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "We are not talking about noses. I said that quite clearly here:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "Point being, Silk has some of Typhon's superiority, if we accept this\ntheory. Naturally, if you don't think Typhon is in any way superior,\nthis doesn't work so well---you would indeed be talking about mundane\ntraits." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Leadership is not quite as mundane as blond hair, but it is not that \nrare. Indeed, I’d expect that if if indeed there are ponderable genes \nfor leadership — a questionable matter given that it must depend \nstrongly on nurture as well as nature — there are multiple gene \ncomplexes, and Typhon’s technicians would probably have used different \ncombinations in different embryos." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Leadership shmeadership. Silk is so much more. For example, Crane \nobserves that he heals remarkably quickly. Silk is a minor superman with \na combination of superior traits. Perhaps leadership is his best \ncharacteristic, but you could also argue that it's his morality. Is \nthere a gene for that? Who knows? Who cares? Maybe Wolfe pretends there \nis for this story. Maybe the Outsider took a Superman and made him a \nGood Superman. If that's the story, that's the story.\n\nWolfe is not a gene scientist---he's a writer." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 3, "text": "2) Why, when asked about Silk's \"ancestry\" did Wolfe say \"he was the\nson of the Calde and his mistress\"? His ancestry would move a step\nback beyond Typhon." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "Ah, well. Some things are inexplicable." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Maybe Wolfe was just indicating that Silk’s genetic parents are \nbasically irrelevant to the story." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Possibly. Or he was stating Silk's legal or socially defined paternity, \nor how he saw himself. There so many answers." } ] }, { "message_id": "<1318457092.41745.YahooMailClassic@web161803.mail.bf1.yahoo.com>", "from": { "name": "Marc Aramini", "address": "marcaramini at yahoo.com" }, "date": "2011-10-12T22:04:52+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Silk's origin", "in_reply_to": "<4E95F87C.1090406@gmail.com>", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "--- On Wed, 10/12/11, James Wynn wrote:\nOkay. I got confused for a minute. So--sorry if you\nanswered this, \nsomeone asked you but I don't see the answer-- how/did they\nend up as \nnon-sentient reptilians with an egg-laying life-cycle?\n\nJ." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "They are what they eat/prey upon. After transmuted mankind/the vanished people leave Urth, just the reptiles and the trees and the lianas can survive there on Green, and the lianas have to eat something. The trees and the liana are aggressive evolutionists." } ] }, { "message_id": "<4E963F9F.2050000@gmail.com>", "from": { "name": "James Wynn", "address": "crushtv at gmail.com" }, "date": "2011-10-13T01:32:15+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Silk's origin", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "James Wynn wrote:\nAnd it is troublesome in what sense Tussah considered himself Silk's\n\"father\". If they ever met, Silk didn't remember it--only having seen a\nbust of him in a closet. Tussah never married Silk's mother, and he\nnever officially adopted Silk." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Andrew Mason wrote:\nWell, the other inhabitants of Viron don't seem to have had a problem\nwith it. When Tussah died, leaving the message that 'my son, not of my\nbody, will succeed me', they set out to look for this 'adopted son'.\nThe fact that Tussah wasn't married and had no child living with him\ndidn't worry them. So I'm guessing adoption in Viron is a legal rather\nthan a familial matter. We don't know there was no legal adoption -\nthe papers would presumably be hidden somewhere." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Tussah's murderers assume he procured an embryo and intended that the \nchild would preceed him. But they must surely have assumed he made some \nsort of make a supposition that Tussah has laid some kind of groundwork \nso that when the heir was revealed, he would have some proof of who he \nwas. No doubt, one of the methods to seek for the heir was to seek for \nprecisely such groundwork. In fact, we know after the fact that he made \nno such preparations. We know it from Horn's conversation with Silk on \nthe airship. He was depending on Kypris and whatever allies she procured \nto accomplish it. Or perhaps there is some added layer of inevitability \nWolfe did not detail.\n\n\"He said he had an adopted son, and this son was going to be the next \none. What Nettle says is he didn't say to make it happen, he just said \nit would.\"" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "There's something in RTTW, isn't there, which refers to carefully\ncontrolled matings in Typhon's workshops? And Crane's remake about the\nPetri dish fits in with this. Of course, this doesn't prevent a few\nclones being slipped in among them, but I think the presumption should\nbe that they are selectively bred rather than cloned." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "\"And some he sent as frozen embryos, the products of carefully \ncontrolled matings in his workshops.\n\nI think the reference to \"workshops\" means that we should not take \n\"matings\" too literally. I'm sure that the production of embryos \nincluded matching eggs to sperms. I also think we are clearly signaled \nthat Silk is a clone. I'll explain in a bit." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "If Typhon is one of the fathers, he didn't *die* on the Whorl." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "That may not matter if the vision isn't from Mainframe, but from the\nOutsider. On the other hand, that produces a new problem, in that\nTyphon, one would think, is not the sort of person the Outsider would\nchoose as a messenger." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Well, Quetzal isn't the sort to be assigned the job of saving the people \nof the Quarter from the Trivigaunte. That's an underlying message in the \nnovel. Still, we aren't told who \"he\" is that sent them." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "While we aren't forced to think that both fathers speak, it seems\nlikely to me that they do, since it's specifically said that one of\nthe mothers does not speak, suggesting that the other three parents\nall do." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Hmmm...I don't find that compelling. Actually I suspect the speaker is \nunclear because they were identical. So I don't think it would matter if \nthey *did* both speak." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "On 10/12/2011 4:29 PM, Andrew Mason wrote:\n[very cogent argument]\nSo I think there is a way here for Silk to be, in a sense, Pas, \nwithout any genetic identity." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Good point. I'm unsatisfied with it but I'm unsatisfied with my own \nexplanations." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "I still want him to be a son of Typhon somehow to have a hope of\nexplaining the two parents Silk meets on the Aureate Path." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Well, yes. I agree that his father should be someone significant, or\nat least someone identifiable, which would give us the satisfaction of\nseeing how things fit together. But I'm worried that if the only\nreason for thinking it's Typhon is 'who else could it be?', that still\nisn't a satisfactory answer." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "As you know, there moments in all good literature that are purely \nironic--in which the author silently tosses the reader the ball and the \nreader is expected to catch it. There are lots of these in Wolfe novels. \nBut, of course, in a Wolfe novel the balls are often thrown with special \ncurves or high over head.\n\nFor example, when (early in Nightside as he is headed for the market) \nSilk called Blood \"son\" and spent pages and pages ponder over WHY he had \ndone that, even though the reader and any characters listening would \nhave had no problem with it. As the story progresses we are expected to \ndeduce that Silk is special embryo like Mucor and that Blood is Pike's son\n(which I did from the names Pike-Rose-Blood, but Wolfe must have thought \nit was no great mystery because when asked, he casually answered).\nIt is not until well into The Book of the Short Sun that the reader \ncomes in contact with dream-travel and can deduce that it can involve \ndream-travel, and THEN can understand that Pike's Ghost whom Silk meets \nin \"Lake\" is actually the Rajan and Oreb passing through. Then the \nquestion of why Silk thought he saw Pike must obviously occur. Then he \nmust realize that there has to be a lot of \"twins\" running around. And \nso we understand that at least some--maybe all--the embryos are clones.\n\nI think it is the same with Typhon and Silk. Silk is fatherless. This \nissue of Silk's \"father\" is an important plot-point in the story. The \nare lots of references equating and associating Silk with Typhon. In the \nAureate Path he meets to=wo men claiming to be his father. One has \nTussah's face. The other is not described. At that point, \"who else \ncould it be\" is a valid argument.\n\nJ." } ] }, { "message_id": "<1318472472.59977.YahooMailClassic@web161804.mail.bf1.yahoo.com>", "from": { "name": "Marc Aramini", "address": "marcaramini at yahoo.com" }, "date": "2011-10-13T02:21:12+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Silk's origin", "in_reply_to": "<4E95F74E.8030407@gmail.com>", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "As far as James' discussion of the fathers of Silk, while no other father is mentioned, it is explicitly stated that one of them is who Lemur patterns himself after. Lemur patterns himself not after a secular authority, but after a rather god-like being who has sent his consciousness into a machine (Pas like). \n\nThere is no background to support that Tussah was grown from an embryo, since the seal of Pas had only been recently broken and the embryos stolen. There is evidence that since the time of Tussah's caldeship, these embryos have been GROWN PREMATURELY, before Pas planned. Lemur's speech also mentions explicitly that Pas wanted a son to replace him, the other children were just no good.\nWe also have Silk's head on Typhon's body. Not Tussah's head. And Silk never goes bald. And doesn't look like chenille, who looks just like her father Tussah. I just don't see HOW we can support the idea that Tussah could be a clone, when there is a TON of evidence that the grown embryos were a well known scandal,and Silk the most expensive one of them all, a very very special embryo that ruined the reputation of a respected Calde." } ] }, { "message_id": "<4E965F0E.2030907@gmail.com>", "from": { "name": "James Wynn", "address": "crushtv at gmail.com" }, "date": "2011-10-13T03:46:22+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Silk's origin", "in_reply_to": "<1318472472.59977.YahooMailClassic@web161804.mail.bf1.yahoo.com>", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "On 10/12/2011 9:21 PM, Marc Aramini wrote:\nAs far as James' discussion of the fathers of Silk, while no other father is mentioned, it is explicitly stated that one of them is who Lemur patterns himself after. Lemur patterns himself not after a secular authority, but after a rather god-like being who has sent his consciousness into a machine (Pas like)." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "We don't really know who the voice is supposed to be." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": " There is no background to support that Tussah was grown from an embryo, since the seal of Pas had only been recently broken and the embryos stolen." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Umm....For Silk and Mucor to be embryos, they must have been on the \nmarket for at least 25 years. That's not \"recently\". We don't really \nknow how long ago the embryos were released or if there were more than \none stash. Remora gives not hint that when Tussah purchased his embryo, \nthey were a novelty. And since the event with Pike's Ghost implies that \nSilk and Pike are twins, separated by decades....well, they've been \naround a while." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "There is evidence that since the time of Tussah's caldeship, these embryos have been GROWN PREMATURELY, before Pas planned. Lemur's speech also mentions explicitly that Pas wanted a son to replace him, the other children were just no good." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Hierax is described as the very image of Typhon." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "We also have Silk's head on Typhon's body. Not Tussah's head." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "As I recall, this after Pas has been patched. Tussah was dead. And \nanyway, Pas didn't need patching when Tussah was alive." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "And Silk never goes bald." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "So?" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "And doesn't look like chenille, who looks just like her father Tussah." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Yep, this is a problem. But for the reasons I gave, I can't really come \nup with another adequate solution to the \"son not of my body\" bit." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "I just don't see HOW we can support the idea that Tussah could be a clone, when there is a TON of evidence that the grown embryos were a well known scandal,and Silk the most expensive one of them all, a very very special embryo that ruined the reputation of a respected Calde." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Where are you getting that having an embyo was a scandal rather than an \nexpensive novelty? I don't think there is any evidence that Tussah was \nmurdered be cause of Silk.\n\nJ." } ] }, { "message_id": "<1318478550.21622.YahooMailClassic@web161804.mail.bf1.yahoo.com>", "from": { "name": "Marc Aramini", "address": "marcaramini at yahoo.com" }, "date": "2011-10-13T04:02:30+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Silk's origin", "in_reply_to": "<4E965F0E.2030907@gmail.com>", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "--- On Wed, 10/12/11, James Wynn wrote:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "And Silk never goes bald." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "So?" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "And doesn't look like chenille, who looks just like\nher father Tussah." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Yep, this is a problem. But for the reasons I gave, I can't\nreally come up with another adequate solution to the \"son\nnot of my body\" bit." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "I just don't see HOW we can support the idea that\nTussah could be a clone, when there is a TON of evidence\nthat the grown embryos were a well known scandal,and Silk\nthe most expensive one of them all, a very very special\nembryo that ruined the reputation of a respected Calde." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Where are you getting that having an embyo was a scandal\nrather than an expensive novelty? I don't think there is any\nevidence that Tussah was murdered be cause of Silk." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I'll respond to the rest later this week, I just wanted to say, baldness/hair pattern is one of those great genetic markers that cloning would, you know, match up if Silk/Tussah were genetically identical.\n\nPrimarily, I see \"the son not of my body\" as straight up adoption: the heir he grows but has NO GENETIC connection to his body. I think your reading of it entails the opposite of the words. If I wanted a child, adopted him,, and had plans for him, but he wasn't related to me, I'd call him the son not of my body. \n\nThey called the embryo Tussah's folly, right? I need to find the exact quote, perhaps I exaggerated its importance, but it was a blow to his reputation." } ] }, { "message_id": "<1318478874.25769.YahooMailClassic@web161805.mail.bf1.yahoo.com>", "from": { "name": "Marc Aramini", "address": "marcaramini at yahoo.com" }, "date": "2011-10-13T04:07:54+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Silk's origin", "in_reply_to": "<4E965F0E.2030907@gmail.com>", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "and two sets of parents just implies that they are visibly different, unless it's just doubling trickery, which I don't think is prevalent in that particular scene, though I don't put it past wolfe. I'm very very sure the parents are Silk's surrogate Mother, his financial investor Tussah, Kypris, and Typhon, most assuredly, the later two forming the male and female voice of cooing doves Silk hears from time to time, a call to action set in motion before his gestation. Kypris cares for Silk because he is special to her, but she can't distinguish between sexual and maternal love." } ] }, { "message_id": "<1318479297.68123.YahooMailClassic@web161802.mail.bf1.yahoo.com>", "from": { "name": "Marc Aramini", "address": "marcaramini at yahoo.com" }, "date": "2011-10-13T04:14:57+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Silk's origin", "in_reply_to": "<1318478874.25769.YahooMailClassic@web161805.mail.bf1.yahoo.com>", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I trust Tussah's assertion at face value in a way I don't trust Silkhorn later because many of Silk's later statements about identity are born of either ignorance of denial. Statements like, \"maybe no one understands these things\" talking about the celestial mechanics also works to undercut the credibility of certain assertions by the narrators (in the same fashion as saying \"I am Horn\" when we know he is already fully Silk - he just doesn't understand anything about his condition). \nHowever, there is no reason to assume Tussah is equally fractured in identity and removed from a position of authority over reality when he says, \"the son not of my body\" to make the opposite interpretation apply to it - \"a genetically related individual\" as opposed to \"an adopted man I will call son because I came up with the idea of growing him even though we share no genetic material\", which to me is the surface reading of that statement." } ] }, { "message_id": "<4E971B6B.8060307@gmail.com>", "from": { "name": "James Wynn", "address": "crushtv at gmail.com" }, "date": "2011-10-13T17:10:03+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Silk's origin", "in_reply_to": "<1318478550.21622.YahooMailClassic@web161804.mail.bf1.yahoo.com>", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "On 10/12/2011 11:02 PM, Marc Aramini wrote:\nI'll respond to the rest later this week, I just wanted to say, baldness/hair pattern is one of those great genetic markers that cloning would, you know, match up if Silk/Tussah were genetically identical." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "But this is not a problem if is Silk is a clone of the SON of Typhon. \nEven if Silk and Tussah were genetically identical--a possibility I \nleave open but unexplained--there are a lot of ways one can go bald \nbeyond genetics.\nBut then I consider Horn height and ability to mimic Silk to be a hint \neither, although THEY don't look alike either. And Horn goes bald. So, \nI'm stuck at this point." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Primarily, I see \"the son not of my body\" as straight up adoption: the heir he grows but has NO GENETIC connection to his body. I think your reading of it entails the opposite of the words. If I wanted a child, adopted him,, and had plans for him, but he wasn't related to me, I'd call him the son not of my body." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Absolutely it is not opposite.\nLet me remind you of what Tussah said:\n\"ALTHOUGH he is not the son of my BODY, my SON shall be Calde after me.\"\n\nNot of his body, but affirmatively his son. It's a mystery. It's not \nbased on confusion on Tussah's part but full self-awareness. This would \nassume that Tussah is well-aware that Silk's and his own genetic \nancestry which is entirely likely considering Lemur's knowledge of the \nTyphon family. And, as I said, Wolfe already dropped the dime on clones \nwith the Pike/Rajan mix-up.\n\nI think the adoption interpretation is remarkably non-Wolfean and if any \nother writer had a character make a prophesy like Tussah's and intended \nadoption, he would have felt the need to explain it--because it would \nneed justification.\n\nThere's no evidence that Silk was adopted. It's possible they never met \nafter his birth. And he didn't need an adopted heir. I assert Wolfe \ndodged when asked about Silk's ancestry. It's simply the only believable \nexplanation I can think of.\n\nJ." } ] }, { "message_id": "<1318529675.81270.YahooMailClassic@web161802.mail.bf1.yahoo.com>", "from": { "name": "Marc Aramini", "address": "marcaramini at yahoo.com" }, "date": "2011-10-13T18:14:35+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Silk's origin", "in_reply_to": "<4E971B6B.8060307@gmail.com>", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "--- On Thu, 10/13/11, James Wynn wrote:\nAbsolutely it is not opposite.\nLet me remind you of what Tussah said:\n\"ALTHOUGH he is not the son of my BODY, my SON shall be\nCalde after me.\"\n\nNot of his body, but affirmatively his son. It's a mystery.\nIt's not based on confusion on Tussah's part but full\nself-awareness. This would assume that Tussah is well-aware\nthat Silk's and his own genetic ancestry which is entirely\nlikely considering Lemur's knowledge of the Typhon family.\nAnd, as I said, Wolfe already dropped the dime on clones\nwith the Pike/Rajan mix-up." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I know what you are saying about wolfean types of statements, I still think that's just talking about adoption in this particular case with the complete lack of physical similarities between Chenille and Silk. (Food for thought: it says she's like a female AUK. How about real misdirection? Horn thinks Silk is the heir of Typhon and plants clues to hint at it when maybe it was always somebody else)\n\nI really really really think this statement is non-interpretively saying, \"although he is [my son silk] not of my body [from my genitals/ from my genetic material], my son [i bought and paid for him and planted him, Silk's my son, I came up with idea] shall be Calde after me\"\n\nDon't mean to argue with you so excessively but I just can't read this statement the way you do. A beast with three horns, sure, I can wiggle, but this time he is saying Silk isn't of his body, though is his son. If he was grown from a rib or cell, he would be of his body." } ] }, { "message_id": "<4E973074.7090303@verizon.net>", "from": { "name": "David Stockhoff", "address": "dstockhoff at verizon.net" }, "date": "2011-10-13T18:39:48+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Silk's origin", "in_reply_to": "<4E971B6B.8060307@gmail.com>", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "On 10/13/2011 1:10 PM, James Wynn wrote:\nOn 10/12/2011 11:02 PM, Marc Aramini wrote:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "I'll respond to the rest later this week, I just wanted to say, \nbaldness/hair pattern is one of those great genetic markers that \ncloning would, you know, match up if Silk/Tussah were genetically \nidentical." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "But this is not a problem if is Silk is a clone of the SON of Typhon. \nEven if Silk and Tussah were genetically identical--a possibility I \nleave open but unexplained--there are a lot of ways one can go bald \nbeyond genetics.\nBut then I consider Horn height and ability to mimic Silk to be a hint \neither, although THEY don't look alike either. And Horn goes bald. So, \nI'm stuck at this point." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "Primarily, I see \"the son not of my body\" as straight up adoption: \nthe heir he grows but has NO GENETIC connection to his body. I think \nyour reading of it entails the opposite of the words. If I wanted a \nchild, adopted him,, and had plans for him, but he wasn't related to \nme, I'd call him the son not of my body." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Absolutely it is not opposite.\nLet me remind you of what Tussah said:\n\"ALTHOUGH he is not the son of my BODY, my SON shall be Calde after me.\"\n\nNot of his body, but affirmatively his son. It's a mystery. It's not \nbased on confusion on Tussah's part but full self-awareness. This \nwould assume that Tussah is well-aware that Silk's and his own genetic \nancestry which is entirely likely considering Lemur's knowledge of the \nTyphon family. And, as I said, Wolfe already dropped the dime on \nclones with the Pike/Rajan mix-up.\n\nI think the adoption interpretation is remarkably non-Wolfean and if \nany other writer had a character make a prophesy like Tussah's and \nintended adoption, he would have felt the need to explain it--because \nit would need justification.\n\nThere's no evidence that Silk was adopted. It's possible they never \nmet after his birth. And he didn't need an adopted heir. I assert \nWolfe dodged when asked about Silk's ancestry. It's simply the only \nbelievable explanation I can think of." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "As far as cloning, recall that your son gets only half your DNA. Cloning \n(100%) is not needed. I've argued this for three days, of course. To me, \n\"cloning\" need not be taken too literally, as there is a wide range of \ngenetic manipulation. Any genetic contribution that is meaningful would \ncount.\n\nAs an example of meaningful genetic contribution: if I went to my \nclonebank and ordered one copy, then found that the bank had made 20 \ncopies (because my superior genes and oh, say, rulership of Earth made \nmy DNA a hot property), then I could sue and claim those 20 embryos as \nmy property/offspring. Even if they took only half of my DNA, I could at \nleast claim paternity. (Look at what Monsanto does to farmers whose \ncrops have been contaminated by their GM corn.) I could then call them \nall my sons and predict that one would be a future ruler of Earth. The \nbigger mystery is how I knew that would happen!\n\nThree thoughts:\n\n(1) It's almost as though Silk received a genetic contribution from a \nsource that is not Tussah but identical to Tussah. That is, from a \nsource for both Tussah and Silk, e.g., if Silk is clone #2 to Tussah's \nclone #1 off some original. If Silk's embryo preceded Tussah himself by \n200 years, that's the only way he could be Tussah's genetic son anyway.\n\n(2) Might Tussah have contributed something of himself to Silk that was \nnot from his body, but from his mind? I have no idea how that might work.\n\n(3) What if Typhon's sperm were kept for insemination rather than having \nhis DNA cloned? You'd have any number of variations on Typhon as a \nresult, some looking like him, some not, because Typhon would contribute \nhalf the genes (and any male result would be his son). Is there a \nsolution for the other half that would result in Silk and also make him \nson of Tussah?\n\nI see no particular reason why Typhon's and Tussah's genes couldn't be \ncombined without any female contribution whatsoever. Whatever \ntechnological hurdles could be overcome or ignored; the bigger problems \nwould be the narrative ones." } ] }, { "message_id": "<1318531631.96256.YahooMailClassic@web161806.mail.bf1.yahoo.com>", "from": { "name": "Marc Aramini", "address": "marcaramini at yahoo.com" }, "date": "2011-10-13T18:47:11+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Silk's origin", "in_reply_to": "<4E973074.7090303@verizon.net>", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I still think Tussah is a father insofar as he put the embryo in his mistress' stomach, that's about it. I think that's enough to make Silk his son. I just don't get how the statement \"NOT of my body\" leads us to posit any genetic congruency." } ] }, { "message_id": "<1318531853.467.YahooMailClassic@web161801.mail.bf1.yahoo.com>", "from": { "name": "Marc Aramini", "address": "marcaramini at yahoo.com" }, "date": "2011-10-13T18:50:53+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Silk's origin", "in_reply_to": "<1318531631.96256.YahooMailClassic@web161806.mail.bf1.yahoo.com>", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "--- On Thu, 10/13/11, Marc Aramini wrote:\nFrom: Marc Aramini \nSubject: Re: (urth) Silk's origin\nTo: \"The Urth Mailing List\" \nDate: Thursday, October 13, 2011, 11:47 AM\nI still think Tussah is a father\ninsofar as he put the embryo in his mistress' stomach,\nthat's about it. I think that's enough to make Silk\nhis son. I just don't get how the statement \"NOT of my body\"\nleads us to posit any genetic congruency." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I really liken Silk's position to Superman to some degree - Mr. Kent could say, you are my son, though not of my body. And Clark could say, you will always be my mom, martha. Except this time Mr. Kent died before Clark could know him." } ] }, { "message_id": "<4E97334B.4050004@verizon.net>", "from": { "name": "David Stockhoff", "address": "dstockhoff at verizon.net" }, "date": "2011-10-13T18:51:55+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Silk's origin", "in_reply_to": "<1318529675.81270.YahooMailClassic@web161802.mail.bf1.yahoo.com>", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "On 10/13/2011 2:14 PM, Marc Aramini wrote:\nI know what you are saying about wolfean types of statements, I still \nthink that's just talking about adoption in this particular case with \nthe complete lack of physical similarities between Chenille and Silk. \n(Food for thought: it says she's like a female AUK. How about real \nmisdirection? Horn thinks Silk is the heir of Typhon and plants clues \nto hint at it when maybe it was always somebody else) " }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Now that's interesting. Was Auk the heir of Typhon, but somehow (the \nOutsider?) Silk rose up instead? Could Tussah have been wrong, or else \nright in a more tenuous sense than we are considering (perhaps as \n\"patron\" rather than \"father\")?" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "I really really really think this statement is non-interpretively \nsaying, \"although he is [my son silk] not of my body [from my \ngenitals/ from my genetic material], my son [i bought and paid for him \nand planted him, Silk's my son, I came up with idea] shall be Calde \nafter me\" " }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I agree that there are noncorporeal ways Silk could be his son. I don't \nsee pure legality as useful, since this adoption evidence would then \nhave to be brought forth for the people to see or the judges to examine. \nIf Silk's inheritance is extralegal, no such process is necessary." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Don't mean to argue with you so excessively but I just can't read this \nstatement the way you do. A beast with three horns, sure, I can \nwiggle, but this time he is saying Silk isn't of his body, though is \nhis son. If he was grown from a rib or cell, he would be of his body." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I agree in general, but there is certainly wiggle room. In a world where \nartificial insemination is commonplace and well understood, yes. Where \nit is not, maybe not. And of course, plenty of couples use sperm from a \nbank to get around the male partner's sterility; these men raise the \noffspring as their children. I think that fits your interpretation. \nTussah did not raise Silk, but this illustrates the flexibility of the \nconcept of \"son.\"" } ] }, { "message_id": "<4E973640.9020804@verizon.net>", "from": { "name": "David Stockhoff", "address": "dstockhoff at verizon.net" }, "date": "2011-10-13T19:04:32+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Silk's origin", "in_reply_to": "<1318531853.467.YahooMailClassic@web161801.mail.bf1.yahoo.com>", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "On 10/13/2011 2:50 PM, Marc Aramini wrote:\n\n--- On Thu, 10/13/11, Marc Aramini wrote:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "From: Marc Aramini\nSubject: Re: (urth) Silk's origin\nTo: \"The Urth Mailing List\"\nDate: Thursday, October 13, 2011, 11:47 AM\nI still think Tussah is a father\ninsofar as he put the embryo in his mistress' stomach,\nthat's about it. I think that's enough to make Silk\nhis son. I just don't get how the statement \"NOT of my body\"\nleads us to posit any genetic congruency." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "I really liken Silk's position to Superman to some degree - Mr. Kent could say, you are my son, though not of my body. And Clark could say, you will always be my mom, martha. Except this time Mr. Kent died before Clark could know him." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "That's certainly a good precedent despite the exception. It has an \nadmirable simplicity.\n\nThe catch is the strength of the connection. I agree with James that \nmere adoption seems weak. But it is balanced by the fact that this Kent \ncan add, \"I caused you to be planted in my woman's womb.\" That may be \nenough." } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Lee Berman", "address": "severiansola at hotmail.com" }, "date": "2011-10-13T22:14:29+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Silk's origin", "in_reply_to": "<4E973640.9020804@verizon.net>", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "I don't really have a dog in this fight but since I haven't seen it" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "mentioned in this round of discussion of this topic, (apologies if" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "I've missed it) I'd like to mention the fact of \"tussah\" being an Asian " }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "silkworm. I think we are supposed to consider this in trying to ascertain " }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "how Tussah is related to Silk. \t\t \t \t\t " } ] }, { "message_id": "<4E9763FE.2030306@gmail.com>", "from": { "name": "James Wynn", "address": "crushtv at gmail.com" }, "date": "2011-10-13T22:19:42+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Silk's origin", "in_reply_to": "<1318529675.81270.YahooMailClassic@web161802.mail.bf1.yahoo.com>", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "On 10/13/2011 1:14 PM, Marc Aramini wrote:\n(Food for thought: it says [Chenille's] like a female AUK. How about real misdirection? Horn thinks Silk is the heir of Typhon and plants clues to hint at it when maybe it was always somebody else)" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Well, I've always kind of suspected something like this.\n\n1) But you still have the \"son not of my body\". If Auk is the *actual* \nson and intended heir, then how is he not the son of Tussah's \nbody--unless you interpret the term as I do.\n\nAdditionally, I've mentioned before that there is a weird pairing of \nSilk and Auk in the story at narrative and figurative level. Silk \nshrives Auk before the robbery of Blood's house. Auk shrives Silk \nafterwards...insisting he confess all he did without leaving anything out.\n\nOn a figurative level, Auk and Silk divide the acts of both Hesphaestus \nand those of Aristeaus between them. I've often toyed with idea that \nSilk is a clone of Typhon and Auk/Tussah are clones of Piaton. If Auk \nwas also a clone AND the intended heir that moves the \"son not of my \nbody\" prophesy into a really twisted area--because Auk is the son of \nTyphon but only the son of Piaton after they became the same person.\n\nAgain, all this only works if you can accept (what I think is \ninescapable) that Wolfe has sprinkled embryos all over the books and the \nembryos are clones (many of whom, at least, clones of Typhon's family \nand court).\n\n2) The second problem with Auk as the intended heir is *why didn't he \ninherit*? Clearly Tussah expected the gods to accomplish it, so what \nwent wrong?\n\nJ." } ] }, { "message_id": "<4E976791.5050006@gmail.com>", "from": { "name": "James Wynn", "address": "crushtv at gmail.com" }, "date": "2011-10-13T22:34:57+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Silk's origin", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "On 10/13/2011 5:14 PM, Lee Berman wrote:\nI don't really have a dog in this fight but since I haven't seen it mentioned in this round of discussion of this topic, (apologies if I've missed it) I'd like to mention the fact of \"tussah\" being an Asian silkworm. I think we are supposed to consider this in trying to ascertain how Tussah is related to Silk." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "It certainly means Silk was named by or for Tussah. Just as Chenille \nwas. It tells us nothing about his \"ancestry\".\nOf course, the most significant argument against a familial connection \nbetween Auk and Tussah is that unlike Silk and Chenille, he doesn't have \nan obviously associated name.\n\nJ." } ] }, { "message_id": "<4E977C98.5030809@verizon.net>", "from": { "name": "David Stockhoff", "address": "dstockhoff at verizon.net" }, "date": "2011-10-14T00:04:40+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Silk's origin", "in_reply_to": "<4E9763FE.2030306@gmail.com>", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "On 10/13/2011 6:19 PM, James Wynn wrote:\nOn 10/13/2011 1:14 PM, Marc Aramini wrote:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "(Food for thought: it says [Chenille's] like a female AUK. How about \nreal misdirection? Horn thinks Silk is the heir of Typhon and plants \nclues to hint at it when maybe it was always somebody else)" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Well, I've always kind of suspected something like this.\n\n1) But you still have the \"son not of my body\". If Auk is the *actual* \nson and intended heir, then how is he not the son of Tussah's \nbody--unless you interpret the term as I do.\n\nAdditionally, I've mentioned before that there is a weird pairing of \nSilk and Auk in the story at narrative and figurative level. Silk \nshrives Auk before the robbery of Blood's house. Auk shrives Silk \nafterwards...insisting he confess all he did without leaving anything \nout.\n\nOn a figurative level, Auk and Silk divide the acts of both \nHesphaestus and those of Aristeaus between them. I've often toyed with \nidea that Silk is a clone of Typhon and Auk/Tussah are clones of \nPiaton. If Auk was also a clone AND the intended heir that moves the \n\"son not of my body\" prophesy into a really twisted area--because Auk \nis the son of Typhon but only the son of Piaton after they became the \nsame person.\n\nAgain, all this only works if you can accept (what I think is \ninescapable) that Wolfe has sprinkled embryos all over the books and \nthe embryos are clones (many of whom, at least, clones of Typhon's \nfamily and court).\n\n2) The second problem with Auk as the intended heir is *why didn't he \ninherit*? Clearly Tussah expected the gods to accomplish it, so what \nwent wrong?" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "The Outsider, I'd guess." } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Tim O'Donnell", "address": "timodonn at gmail.com" }, "date": "2011-10-14T08:06:37+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Silk's origin", "in_reply_to": "<4E977C98.5030809@verizon.net>", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Something in the mail below struck me (and this is pure speculation) but the\nphrasing \"son not of my body\" might\nbe intended to specifically rule out the son of his [Tussah's] body.\nIs there any possibility for Auk [and Chenille] to be biological children of\nTussah with Silk as an adopted embryo, also\npurchased by Tussah?\n___________________________________________________________________________________________" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Dan'l Danehy-Oakes", "address": "danldo at gmail.com" }, "date": "2011-10-16T16:06:10+00:00", "subject": "(urth) [BGSpam]Re: Silk's origin", "in_reply_to": "<571E68DA15DD499F97AF81E00288D79F@Rover>", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "On Wed, Oct 12, 2011 at 6:16 AM, Gerry Quinn wrote:\n2. Inhumi are animals, and have no relation to vines. [It may of course be\nthat particular plants of Green are of some nutritional significance to the\nwater-breathing juvenile form of the inhumi.]" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I would say that this is an Earth- (or Urth-) centric idea. The\ndistinction between \"plant\" and \"animal\" need not apply on an alien\nworld." }, { "kind": "sig", "depth": 0, "text": "Dan'l Danehy-Oakes" } ] }, { "message_id": "<1318788409.99336.YahooMailClassic@web161806.mail.bf1.yahoo.com>", "from": { "name": "Marc Aramini", "address": "marcaramini at yahoo.com" }, "date": "2011-10-16T18:06:49+00:00", "subject": "(urth) [BGSpam]Re: Silk's origin", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "--- On Sun, 10/16/11, Dan'l Danehy-Oakes wrote:\n\n " }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "wrote:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "2. Inhumi are animals, and have no relation to\nvines. [It may of course be\nthat particular plants of Green are of some\nnutritional significance to the\nwater-breathing juvenile form of the inhumi.]" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "I would say that this is an Earth- (or Urth-) centric idea.\nThe\ndistinction between \"plant\" and \"animal\" need not apply on\nan alien\nworld." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "heh heh heh heh heh Green Man? (the irony) (or, heme groups not being what they used to, would it be chloroplasty?)" } ] }, { "message_id": "<27707E40C1DD4D5FA39CA4176025762A@Rover>", "from": { "name": "Gerry Quinn", "address": "gerry at bindweed.com" }, "date": "2011-10-17T12:19:30+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Silk's origin", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "From: Dan'l Danehy-Oakes " }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "On Wed, Oct 12, 2011 at 6:16 AM, Gerry Quinn wrote:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "2. Inhumi are animals, and have no relation to vines. [It may of course be\nthat particular plants of Green are of some nutritional significance to the\nwater-breathing juvenile form of the inhumi.]" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "I would say that this is an Earth- (or Urth-) centric idea. The\ndistinction between \"plant\" and \"animal\" need not apply on an alien\nworld." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I dunno... the divisions of life seem remarkably similar! The inhumi are motile and do not photosynthesise; the trees and lianas are the converse.\n- Gerry Quinn" } ] }, { "message_id": "<4E9F4C87.8010900@gmail.com>", "from": { "name": "James Wynn", "address": "crushtv at gmail.com" }, "date": "2011-10-19T22:17:43+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Silk's origin", "in_reply_to": "<27707E40C1DD4D5FA39CA4176025762A@Rover>", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "On Wed, Oct 12, 2011 at 6:16 AM, Gerry Quinn wrote:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 3, "text": "2. Inhumi are animals, and have no relation to vines. [It may of \ncourse be\nthat particular plants of Green are of some nutritional \nsignificance to the\nwater-breathing juvenile form of the inhumi.]" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "I would say that this is an Earth- (or Urth-) centric idea. The\ndistinction between \"plant\" and \"animal\" need not apply on an alien\nworld." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "I dunno... the divisions of life seem remarkably similar! The inhumi \nare motile and do not photosynthesise; the trees and lianas are the \nconverse." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "And yet, we are told that the Rajan's staff was an inhumi and that at \nnight he spoke to it.\nIt's unexpected, even puzzling. But there it is. Somehow clever clever \nGene has worked it out.\n\nJ." } ] }, { "message_id": "<1319064186.84295.YahooMailClassic@web161806.mail.bf1.yahoo.com>", "from": { "name": "Marc Aramini", "address": "marcaramini at yahoo.com" }, "date": "2011-10-19T22:43:06+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Silk's origin", "in_reply_to": "<4E9F4C87.8010900@gmail.com>", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "--- On Wed, 10/19/11, James Wynn wrote:\n\n\n\nAnd yet, we are told that the Rajan's staff was an inhumi and that at night he spoke to it.\nIt's unexpected, even puzzling. But there it is. Somehow clever clever Gene has worked it out.\n\nJ.\n\nI've been presenting a theory for that since like 2001 ... :(\n\nYou're making me sad, James. ::((" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Gerry Quinn", "address": "gerry at bindweed.com" }, "date": "2011-10-19T22:50:32+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Silk's origin", "in_reply_to": "<4E9F4C87.8010900@gmail.com>", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "From: James Wynn" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "On Wed, Oct 12, 2011 at 6:16 AM, Gerry Quinn mailto:gerry at bindweed.com wrote:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "I dunno... > the divisions of life seem remarkably similar! The inhumi are\nmotile and do not > > photosynthesise; the trees and lianas are the converse." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "And yet, we are told that the Rajan's staff was an inhumi and that at night he spoke to it.\nIt's unexpected, even puzzling. But there it is. Somehow clever clever Gene has worked it out." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Where are we told this? I can’t find it. Are you sure there is no other interpretation? \n\nAFAIK the Rajan’s staff was the one he took from the farmer who attacked him in the Whorl, although later on he replaced it with one cut from a vine/liana on Blue. It had a face of sorts, due to knots in the wood. But the guy who cut that staff made staffs for all his village.\n\n- Gerry Quinn\n\n " } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Lee Berman", "address": "severiansola at hotmail.com" }, "date": "2011-10-20T02:00:17+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Silk's origin", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "James Wynn: And yet, we are told that the Rajan's staff was an inhumi and that at night he spoke to it.\nIt's unexpected, even puzzling. But there it is. Somehow clever clever Gene has worked it out." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "J." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Marc Aramini: I've been presenting a theory for that since like 2001 ... :(" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "You're making me sad, James. ::((" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": " \n\nWhy sad, Marc? I've noticed for a while now that you and James are on the same page\n\non this. Perhaps you have been the proverbial ships who pass in the night, missing\n\neach other's posts? \t\t \t \t\t " } ] }, { "message_id": "<1319079082.69009.YahooMailClassic@web161802.mail.bf1.yahoo.com>", "from": { "name": "Marc Aramini", "address": "marcaramini at yahoo.com" }, "date": "2011-10-20T02:51:22+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Silk's origin", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "--- On Wed, 10/19/11, Lee Berman wrote:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": " \n\nWhy sad, Marc? I've noticed for a while now that you and\nJames are on the same page\n\non this. Perhaps you have been the proverbial ships who\npass in the night, missing\n\neach other's posts? ???\n????????\n?????? ???" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Heh heh, no, it's just James graciously posted up my essay almost a decade ago that confronted this. He must have read it. \n\nLiana as primitive inhumi, parasites on the vanished gods (trees of green). The trees eat and recombine more fully and are hybrids with double the genetic content of their original meal. Inhumi are the parasites that have had a chance to feed on blood, but they were originally those liana vines. It's not mysterious, neighbors get MAD when you walk in the forest with an ax, trees are watching, weird stuff happens under the vanished gods including transmigration of Horn into Babbie at the conclusion of OBW.\n\ntrees --> vanished people\nliana vines --> inhumi\n\none eats, one drinks. The trees watch the eucharist. It's not hidden if you read Short sun looking for it, it almost jumps out. I can't open the book without finding further evidence of it. Just sad because it doesn't seem like a great mystery to me anymore. It's the story \"Talk of Mandrakes\" projected onto the future of Urth." } ] }, { "message_id": "<4EA092B4.9080003@gmail.com>", "from": { "name": "James Wynn", "address": "crushtv at gmail.com" }, "date": "2011-10-20T21:29:24+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Silk's origin", "in_reply_to": "<1319079082.69009.YahooMailClassic@web161802.mail.bf1.yahoo.com>", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "Lee Berman:\nWhy sad, Marc? I've noticed for a while now that you and James are on the same page on this. Perhaps you have been the proverbial ships who pass in the night, missing each other's posts?" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Marc Aramini wrote\nHeh heh, no, it's just James graciously posted up my essay almost a decade ago that confronted this. He must have read it." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I have read it, although, it been years since the last time.\nhttp://urth.org/whorlmap/chras-writers/default.htm\n\nThe thing I liked about the theory was that you were dealing with \nreferences and obvious plot elements in \"Short Sun\" other people just \nignored (and some continue to) because they didn't like the \nimplications. I thought your willingness to make an authorial clue out \nof the hybridization plot element to be positively ballsy. That's still \ntrue. You were addressing the puzzle in the grandmother's tale and it's \npossible implications before anyone else that I know of.\n\nLee is right that we read Wolfe the same way (the right way). And I \nabsolutely agree that the Neighbors are some of the trees on Blue \n(probably the ancestors of all of them), and the inhumi are the vines. I \ndon't know how Wolfe (being the writer he is) was likely to be more \novert about that. I'm just really unsatisfied with how you got there.\n\nOn the other hand, yours is the ONLY theory that ANYONE has put to \ntogether to explain it--including me. When I posted your theory, I had \nhoped I would eventually have three or four theories of similar \ncomprehensiveness to post. Never happened.\n\nJ." } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Gerry Quinn", "address": "gerry at bindweed.com" }, "date": "2011-10-21T15:31:48+00:00", "subject": "(urth) [BGSpam]Re: Silk's origin", "in_reply_to": "<4EA092B4.9080003@gmail.com>", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "From: James Wynn " }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Lee is right that we read Wolfe the same way (the right way). And I \nabsolutely agree that the Neighbors are some of the trees on Blue \n(probably the ancestors of all of them), and the inhumi are the vines. I \ndon't know how Wolfe (being the writer he is) was likely to be more \novert about that. I'm just really unsatisfied with how you got there." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "How do you determine the right way to read Wolfe? I would tend to go by results, i.e. consistent interpretations that make sense in terms of ALL the text, and not just mysterious snippets interpreted in exotic ways. \nIf Wolfe wanted to write about a world where animals and plants are close cousins and can rapidly evolve into one another, perhaps by epigenetic means, it would have been very easy for him to do so. He’s writing science fiction, after all. He could very easily have indicated how the process happens with simple plants and animals, perhaps by having a farmer on Blue talk about it, or a farmer or hunter on Green (I take it we are supposed to believe that evolution took this course on both planets?)\n\nWolfe didn’t do anything like this. I think the lianas are just metaphors, like Sandwalker’s “tree” in Fifth Head. They work fine as metaphors. \n\nI think if Wolfe wanted to indicate that this sort of process took place, he would not have failed to give such an indication. " }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "On the other hand, yours is the ONLY theory that ANYONE has put to \ntogether to explain it--including me. When I posted your theory, I had \nhoped I would eventually have three or four theories of similar \ncomprehensiveness to post. Never happened." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "What exactly are the things we need to explain?\n\n- Gerry Quinn\n\n\n " } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Gerry Quinn", "address": "gerry at bindweed.com" }, "date": "2011-10-21T15:33:42+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Silk's origin", "in_reply_to": "<4EA092B4.9080003@gmail.com>", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "From: James Wynn " }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Lee is right that we read Wolfe the same way (the right way). And I \nabsolutely agree that the Neighbors are some of the trees on Blue \n(probably the ancestors of all of them), and the inhumi are the vines. I \ndon't know how Wolfe (being the writer he is) was likely to be more \novert about that. I'm just really unsatisfied with how you got there." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "How do you determine the right way to read Wolfe? I would tend to go by results, i.e. consistent interpretations that make sense in terms of ALL the text, and not just mysterious snippets interpreted in exotic ways. \nIf Wolfe wanted to write about a world where animals and plants are close cousins and can rapidly evolve into one another, perhaps by epigenetic means, it would have been very easy for him to do so. He’s writing science fiction, after all. He could very easily have indicated how the process happens with simple plants and animals, perhaps by having a farmer on Blue talk about it, or a farmer or hunter on Green (I take it we are supposed to believe that evolution took this course on both planets?)\nWolfe didn’t do anything like this. I think the lianas are just metaphors, like Sandwalker’s “tree” in Fifth Head. They work fine as metaphors. \n\nI think if Wolfe wanted to indicate that this sort of process took place, he would not have failed to give such an indication. " }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "On the other hand, yours is the ONLY theory that ANYONE has put to \ntogether to explain it--including me. When I posted your theory, I had \nhoped I would eventually have three or four theories of similar \ncomprehensiveness to post. Never happened." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "What exactly are the things we need to explain?\n\n- Gerry Quinn" } ] }, { "message_id": "<1319211492.9663.YahooMailClassic@web161805.mail.bf1.yahoo.com>", "from": { "name": "Marc Aramini", "address": "marcaramini at yahoo.com" }, "date": "2011-10-21T15:38:12+00:00", "subject": "(urth) [BGSpam]Re: Silk's origin", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "--- On Fri, 10/21/11, Gerry Quinn wrote:\n\n\n\n\n\nWhat exactly are the things we need to explain?\n\n- Gerry Quinn\n?The bumps in the night with the staff, the trees that eat trees, why the vanished people react hostilely to people cutting down wood, how the narrator can astral travel with no ihumi present but with his staff, why he aways feels watched around the forest or when Babbie is pushing a log, why Babbie gets defensive around horn's sons when they are threatened and says huh huh huh, why the narrator seems to show up in an ancient story (not just the surface explanation), why the staff has a face, why the islands are made up of giant herbs and this scares the narrator, why the tone changes between?OBW and IGJ, why the vanished person is shown on??a tree at the end of RTTW when the man looks through the ring. the tree in Long Sun quetzal calls a parent tree that is his shelter and comfort. the myth of man climbing up the tree but not coming down yet in Long Sun.\n\nBut none of that stuff is important to the text in a straight, non explicated reading, Gerry, so, once again, let's agree to disagree. I just know that when I write my unpublished dereliction of art stories, sometimes things are implied like that and they are not explicitly stated, and let's be honest if it is a misprision it was directly inspired by my interpretation of Wolfe's style. Wolfe implies a lot. he even says the vegetable matter was a waste, that Pas would have a better plan for it.\n\n\n\n\n-----Inline Attachment Follows-----" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Lee Berman", "address": "severiansola at hotmail.com" }, "date": "2011-10-21T16:40:42+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Silk's origin", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Gerry Quinn: How do you determine the right way to read Wolfe? \nI would tend to go by results, i.e. consistent interpretations that \nmake sense in terms of ALL the text, and not just mysterious snippets \ninterpreted in exotic ways." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": " \nI think this is a good post Gerry, which reveals a lot. The funny thing\nis that I would say it is your analysis of Wolfe seems to consist of snippets\ninterpreted in an exotic way. That exotic way being that you are almost\ntotally devoted to writing posts which lecture us on what the story is NOT, with\nonly passing lip service to what the story actually IS. And a collection of NOTS\ndoesn't seem like a way to construct a consistent interpretation to me.\n \nI see others, as well as myself, attempting to find a cohesive interpretive\nstructure to understand Wolfe. It is a shame you do not see that. But at least we\nnow know that you also are trying, with your negative approach, to construct your own \ncomprehensive analysis.\n \nDoing this via building a model composed of \"not this\" and \"not that\"\nideas is pretty exotic and strange to me and explains some of the \ndifficulties in communication. It adds weight to the already weighty\nsuggestion by Marc Aramini that agreeing to disagree may be the best\nsolution. As I've suggested before, if you tried a more postive approach which \neschews mentioning the \"nots\" and emphasizes what you think the story \"is\" might \nallow for a more fulfilling discussion of your ideas. \t\t \t \t\t " } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Gerry Quinn", "address": "gerry at bindweed.com" }, "date": "2011-10-21T21:16:07+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Silk's origin", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "From: Lee Berman " }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Gerry Quinn: " }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": " How do you determine the right way to read Wolfe? \nI would tend to go by results, i.e. consistent interpretations that \nmake sense in terms of ALL the text, and not just mysterious snippets \ninterpreted in exotic ways." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "I think this is a good post Gerry, which reveals a lot. The funny thing\nis that I would say it is your analysis of Wolfe seems to consist of snippets\ninterpreted in an exotic way. That exotic way being that you are almost\ntotally devoted to writing posts which lecture us on what the story is NOT, with\nonly passing lip service to what the story actually IS. And a collection of NOTS\ndoesn't seem like a way to construct a consistent interpretation to me." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I don’t see where you get that from. In the last few posts, for example, I’ve posted on what I think the reference to Dionysus means, what I think is the significance of Severian’s spectrum of lovers; I’ve posted my interpretation of the nature of Baldanders, and my interpretation of the short story Suzanne Delage. Those are positive interpretations. You may not find them sufficiently bizarre or hermetic for your tastes, but I believe they are consistent with what Wolfe wrote. And I believe they do not require fantastic suppositions for which there is little evidence, or flat-out contradictions of the text. Not requiring such things is, to my mind, an essential part of a good theory." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "I see others, as well as myself, attempting to find a cohesive interpretive\nstructure to understand Wolfe." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "What do you mean by the word “cohesive?” Does it include the quality of being compatible with the text? " }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Doing this via building a model composed of \"not this\" and \"not that\"\nideas is pretty exotic and strange to me and explains some of the \ndifficulties in communication. " }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "It would be strange, if that were what I were doing. But it’s not. I propose theories in the ordinary way. And I challenge theories — my own and others — in the ordinary way too, by looking for elements in the text that contradict them or are explained better by other theories. " }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "It adds weight to the already weighty\nsuggestion by Marc Aramini that agreeing to disagree may be the best\nsolution. As I've suggested before, if you tried a more postive approach which \neschews mentioning the \"nots\" and emphasizes what you think the story \"is\" might \nallow for a more fulfilling discussion of your ideas. " }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Are you suggesting that I should refrain from pointing out problems I observe in theories that are proposed here?\n\n- Gerry Quinn" } ] }, { "message_id": "<1319255116.24900.YahooMailClassic@web161803.mail.bf1.yahoo.com>", "from": { "name": "Marc Aramini", "address": "marcaramini at yahoo.com" }, "date": "2011-10-22T03:45:16+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Silk's origin", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "--- On Fri, 10/21/11, Gerry Quinn wrote:\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nAre you suggesting that I should refrain from pointing out problems I observe in theories that are proposed here?\n\n- Gerry Quinn\n\nI don't think that's what he's suggesting, but have you ever found any interpretations outside of the non-implied ones convincing? How do you interpret the identity of the Rajan? My tree understanding makes it clear to me: he is mostly Horn until he sits under the tree at the end of OBW, then the vanished god/tree lets him say his goodbyes and the Rajan is then Silk in denial, thus accounting for the shift in tone, but there is no mechanism for transfer without the tree, a motiff repeated over and over in conjunction with the vanished people. do you ever account for these things or simply sweep them under the rug as if they don't exist in the text, or exist in at best a completely inapplicable way to the totality? \n\nSo the total journey is Horn dying on Green, being sent into the suicidal Silk who is gone, giving up his eye so Silver Silk is rebooted into the body, then narrating OBW as a confused blending of Silver Silk and Horn until the tree allows him to sacrifice himself and be only Silk, but Silk heavily in denial, making huge IRONIC statements in OBW like \"silk would never lie to himself like I do about loving nettle\" (paraphrased)? That reading scheme requires an ironic readng of statements about identity. Can you account for the chage in tone from OBW to IGJ or do you simply say IT ISN'T THERE AR ALL? That is, I think, what he gets at in bringing up the negative approaches: smoothiing over strange anomalies in the text as if they were not present. I won't say I'm right, but can you address the sudden shift in tone to a positive one at the end of OBW and why Horn says goodbye there? My theory DOES explain that and I always feel comfortable in\n identifying EXACTLY who the narrator is - I was very CONFUSED before that, so my theory, for me, made the text make sense, when before it really didn't. \n\nJust my 2 cents. I don't want to argue with you excessively because we have radically different approaches to Wolfe, but my approaches are TEXT BASED, I didn't come up with these things from anything but re-reeading the work and thinking about it and how best to explain the weird vegetable motiffs." } ] }, { "message_id": "<1319255259.13575.YahooMailClassic@web161806.mail.bf1.yahoo.com>", "from": { "name": "Marc Aramini", "address": "marcaramini at yahoo.com" }, "date": "2011-10-22T03:47:39+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Silk's origin", "in_reply_to": "<1319255116.24900.YahooMailClassic@web161803.mail.bf1.yahoo.com>", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "isn't there at all, not ar al, of course. My apologies, I should look at what I type.\n\n--- On Fri, 10/21/11, Marc Aramini wrote:\n\n\nFrom: Marc Aramini \nSubject: Re: (urth) Silk's origin\nTo: \"The Urth Mailing List\" \nDate: Friday, October 21, 2011, 8:45 PM\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n--- On Fri, 10/21/11, Gerry Quinn wrote:\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nAre you suggesting that I should refrain from pointing out problems I observe in theories that are proposed here?\n\n- Gerry Quinn\n\nI don't think that's what he's suggesting, but have you ever found any interpretations outside of the non-implied ones convincing? How do you interpret the identity of the Rajan? My tree understanding makes it clear to me: he is mostly Horn until he sits under the tree at the end of OBW, then the vanished god/tree lets him say his goodbyes and the Rajan is then Silk in denial, thus accounting for the shift in tone, but there is no mechanism for transfer without the tree, a motiff repeated over and over in conjunction with the vanished people. do you ever account for these things or simply sweep them under the rug as if they don't exist in the text, or exist in at best a completely inapplicable way to the totality? \n\nSo the total journey is Horn dying on Green, being sent into the suicidal Silk who is gone, giving up his eye so Silver Silk is rebooted into the body, then narrating OBW as a confused blending of Silver Silk and Horn until the tree allows him to sacrifice himself and be only Silk, but Silk heavily in denial, making huge IRONIC statements in OBW like \"silk would never lie to himself like I do about loving nettle\" (paraphrased)? That reading scheme requires an ironic readng of statements about identity. Can you account for the chage in tone from OBW to IGJ or do you simply say IT ISN'T THERE AR ALL? That is, I think, what he gets at in bringing up the negative approaches: smoothiing over strange anomalies in the text as if they were not present. I won't say I'm right, but can you address the sudden shift in tone to a positive one at the end of OBW and why Horn says goodbye there? My theory DOES explain that and I always feel comfortable in\n identifying EXACTLY who the narrator is - I was very CONFUSED before that, so my theory, for me, made the text make sense, when before it really didn't. \n\nJust my 2 cents. I don't want to argue with you excessively because we have radically different approaches to Wolfe, but my approaches are TEXT BASED, I didn't come up with these things from anything but re-reeading the work and thinking about it and how best to explain the weird vegetable motiffs.\n\n-----Inline Attachment Follows-----" } ] }, { "message_id": "<5B649E8A-ED99-4D5B-BD4A-B499034418C7@gmail.com>", "from": { "name": "António Pedro Marques", "address": "entonio at gmail.com" }, "date": "2011-10-22T12:00:12+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Silk's origin", "in_reply_to": "<1319255116.24900.YahooMailClassic@web161803.mail.bf1.yahoo.com>", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "No dia 22/10/2011, ?s 04:45, Marc Aramini escreveu:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "-- On Fri, 10/21/11, Gerry Quinn wrote:\nAre you suggesting that I should refrain from pointing out problems I observe in theories that are proposed here?\nI don't think that's what he's suggesting\n\nI think it is. He's said as much before. \n\nJust my 2 cents. I don't want to argue with you excessively because we have radically different approaches to Wolfe, but my approaches are TEXT BASED, I didn't come up with these things from anything but re-reeading the work and thinking about it and how best to explain the weird vegetable motiffs." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I find your approach radically different from Lee's. You're a bit like Sherlock Holmes, trying to make sense of the evidence, trimming out the impossible and putting your trust in the however improbable. Some people's problem with that is that they don't find the evidence strong enough that it justifies seeking improbable explanations (and your reply is that they, in turn, choose to simply ignore that there is evidence to begin with). But I don't think anyone can accuse you of distorting the evidence. Your approach is legitimate even if others don't have to trust it.\n\nLee on the other hand works mostly like a genetic algorithm. He thinks of some external myth or theme or leitmotiv and tries to shoehorn the story into it. Over time, he settles on some themes being of special relevance, and interprets everything through them. This may require considerable bending of the evidence, which annoys everyone but him, who considers the evidence to be mere hooks at the disposal of the interpreter. Another way in which it annoys people is that it makes the story a retelling of a mishmash of known myths rather than a work with its own rules and purpose (I haven't seen a comment on that, but then I haven't read everything everyone's ever written here). Such an approach is bound to be met with fierce opposition. It may sometimes lead to some results - eg I've recently commented Echidna-is-Typhon's-sister seems a promising avenue - but for the most part it's a personal exercise with no way of getting through to others. " } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Lee Berman", "address": "severiansola at hotmail.com" }, "date": "2011-10-22T13:35:34+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Silk's Origin", "in_reply_to": "<5B649E8A-ED99-4D5B-BD4A-B499034418C7@gmail.com>", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Doing this via building a model composed of \"not this\" and \"not that\"\nideas is pretty exotic and strange to me and explains some of the \ndifficulties in communication.> Doing this via building a model composed of \"not this\" and \"not that\"\nideas is pretty exotic and strange to me and explains some of the \ndifficulties in communication." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Gerry Quinn: It would be strange, if that were what I were doing. But it’s " }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "not. I propose theories in the ordinary way. And I challenge theories — my " }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "own and others — in the ordinary way too." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": " \n\nNaturally your own methods will not seem unusual to you. That would be something\n\nof a contradiction. I don't consider your contributions to be ordinary. I think\n\nof you as an extraordinary member of this community. Surely my analysis of your\n\nposts are as valid as your analysis of mine and others." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "I don’t see where you get that from. In the last few posts, for example, I’ve posted " }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "on what I think the reference to Dionysus means, what I think is the significance of " }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Severian’s spectrum of lovers; I’ve posted my interpretation of the nature of Baldanders, " }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "and my interpretation of the short story Suzanne Delage. Those are positive " }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "interpretations." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": " \n\nYes, but it is my impression that your own positive interpretations are usually placed\n\nlater in your posts, after you have criticized and negated the interpretation of someone \n\nelse. And it does seem clear that the negative portions of your posts generate more\n\ndiscussion than the positive portions." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Are you suggesting that I should refrain from pointing out problems I observe in theories " }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "that are proposed here?" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": " \n\nIt would be an interesting experiment. But perhaps it is one you have already tried and you\n\ndidn't like the results. Participation in this forum clearly comes in the category of \n\n\"entertainment\" in our lives. So I understand that we each must contribute in a way which is\n\nfun for us. Carry on, Gerry! Carry on. :- ) \t\t \t \t\t " } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Lee Berman", "address": "severiansola at hotmail.com" }, "date": "2011-10-22T16:23:40+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Silk's origin", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Antonio Pedro Marques: I find your approach radically different from Lee's. " }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "You're a bit like Sherlock Holmes, trying to make sense of the evidence, " }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "trimming out the impossible and putting your trust in the however improbable. " }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": " \n\n \n\nI agree that Gerry and I have different approaches but I'm not sure this \n\ncharacterizes the difference. I see Gerry's approach as imbued with an \n\nessential reliance on parsimony, much like Roy C. Lackey's before him.\n\nHe works very hard to find evidence to contradict what seem like improbable\n\nexplanations in favor of more pedestrian ones. If there is a mantra to be\n\nfound in Gerry's posts it is \"very unlikely\"." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "But I don't think anyone can accuse you of distorting the evidence." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": " \n\nI wasn't going to mention it, but since you bring it up...There was a recently\n\nillustration of the difference between my and Gerry's approach. I found a Wolfe\n\nquote which contradicted an idea of mine. So I posted it and said I was wrong.\n\nGerry recently noted a Wolfe quote which contradicted his interpretation and he\n\nsaid Wolfe was in error." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Lee on the other hand works mostly like a genetic algorithm. He thinks of some " }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "external myth or theme or leitmotiv and tries to shoehorn the story into it." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": " \n\nThis is not correct. I had a youthful interest in Greek and Norse mythology but\n\nI never pursued it into adulthood (until recently). Rather than shoehorning\n\nmythology into Gene Wolfe's work, the reverse has happened. Gene WOlfe's work\n\nhas forced me to delve much deeper into mythology than I ever had before. In\n\nfact, I was pretty proud of myself on first reading BotNS that I knew who \n\nmythological Typhon was. But I didn't really know about his relationship to \n\nEchidna and Scylla and Sphynx and Phaea and Cerberus, not to mention the Egyptian\n\nand Assyrian cognate wind gods such as Typhon-Set and Pazuzu. Long Sun forced me to \n\ndelve into the myths and learn about them.\n\n \n\nLikewise for Father Inire. My first intuition was that he was patterned after some\n\nsort of Greek god but I couldn't figure out which. Hephaestus? Hermes? Prometheus?\n\nHe seemed to have a bit of each. But I just had the feeling Wolfe's intentions were\n\nmore specific than that.\n\n \n\nIt wasn't until the end of RttW that I had my answer. The Outsider's mother is Semele?\n\nI didn't know that meant Dionysus and when I first looked that up I couldn't see the\n\nsignificance of the wine god to the rest of the story. It took more research to learn \n\nthat Dionysus was a primordial god who, after the decline of the Greek pantheon, managed \n\nto absorb qualities from all the pantheon gods and become a central deity to the gnostic \n\ntraditions which pre-dated Christianity. \t\t \t \t\t " } ] }, { "message_id": "<465EA9B5-3A64-4712-AF33-A9971B58AD2B@gmail.com>", "from": { "name": "entonio at gmail.com", "address": "entonio at gmail.com" }, "date": "2011-10-22T17:19:40+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Silk's origin", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "No dia 2011/10/22, ?s 17:23, Lee Berman \nescreveu:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "Antonio Pedro Marques: I find your approach radically different \nfrom Lee's.\nYou're a bit like Sherlock Holmes, trying to make sense of the \nevidence,\ntrimming out the impossible and putting your trust in the however \nimprobable." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "I agree that Gerry and I have different approaches but I'm not sure \nthis characterizes the difference." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Nor should it, because I was talking about/to *Marc*." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "Lee on the other hand works mostly like a genetic algorithm. He \nthinks of some\nexternal myth or theme or leitmotiv and tries to shoehorn the story \ninto it." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "This is not correct. I had a youthful interest in Greek and Norse \nmythology but I never pursued it into adulthood (until recently). \nRather than shoehorning mythology into Gene Wolfe's work, the \nreverse has happened. Gene WOlfe's work has forced me to delve much \ndeeper into mythology than I ever had before. In fact, I was pretty \nproud of myself on first reading BotNS that I knew who mythological \nTyphon was. But I didn't really know about his relationship to \nEchidna and Scylla and Sphynx and Phaea and Cerberus, not to mention \nthe Egyptian and Assyrian cognate wind gods such as Typhon-Set and \nPazuzu. Long Sun forced me to delve into the myths and learn about \nthem." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Oh, I didn't mean you tried to impose the myths you're aware of on the \nstory. I meant you think myths must be the key to it, and that may \nentail researching mythology in order to find usable material (as you \njust went on to explain about FI)." } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Lee Berman", "address": "severiansola at hotmail.com" }, "date": "2011-10-22T18:50:05+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Silk's origin", "in_reply_to": "<465EA9B5-3A64-4712-AF33-A9971B58AD2B@gmail.com>", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Antonio: Oh, I didn't mean you tried to impose the myths you're aware " }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "of on the story. I meant you think myths must be the key to it, and that " }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "may entail researching mythology in order to find usable material (as you \njust went on to explain about FI)." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": " \n\nFair enough. Though I'd say that I think myths and religion are the key to\n\nonly one level of this piece of literature. There are other levels which\n\nneed other keys. Knowledge of South American geography and culture apply to \n\none level of understanding. World politics and history to another. American \n\npop culture and Gene WOlfe's personal life are the keys to another level still. \t\t \t \t\t " } ] }, { "message_id": "<4EA32361.60002@verizon.net>", "from": { "name": "David Stockhoff", "address": "dstockhoff at verizon.net" }, "date": "2011-10-22T20:11:13+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Silk's Origin", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "On 10/22/2011 9:35 AM, Lee Berman wrote:\n\n\nNaturally your own methods will not seem unusual to you. That would be something\n\nof a contradiction. I don't consider your contributions to be ordinary. I think\n\nof you as an extraordinary member of this community. Surely my analysis of your\n\nposts are as valid as your analysis of mine and others.\n\n\n.....\n\n\nYes, but it is my impression that your own positive interpretations are usually placed\n\nlater in your posts, after you have criticized and negated the interpretation of someone\n\nelse. And it does seem clear that the negative portions of your posts generate more\n\ndiscussion than the positive portions." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "As a participant in one of those discussions, I feel it's incumbent on \nme to put in a word here. For what it's worth, this was exactly my own \nimpression. At least one recent discussion would have been more, er..., \nEFFICIENT, if some relevant background had come forth earlier.\n\nI don't want all my dots connected for me, but \"It's just not important\" \nis a really unsatisfying response to a hypothesis!" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Gerry Quinn", "address": "gerry at bindweed.com" }, "date": "2011-10-23T10:10:09+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Silk's origin", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "From: Lee Berman " }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Sent: Saturday, October 22, 2011 5:23 PM\nAntonio Pedro Marques: " }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "[to Marc]" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "I find your approach radically different from Lee's. \nYou're a bit like Sherlock Holmes, trying to make sense of the evidence, \ntrimming out the impossible and putting your trust in the however improbable. " }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "I agree that Gerry and I have different approaches but I'm not sure this \ncharacterizes the difference. I see Gerry's approach as imbued with an \nessential reliance on parsimony, much like Roy C. Lackey's before him.\nHe works very hard to find evidence to contradict what seem like improbable\nexplanations in favor of more pedestrian ones. If there is a mantra to be\nfound in Gerry's posts it is \"very unlikely\"." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Fair enough, except that I do not consider the opposite of “improbable” to be “pedestrian”. “Probable” is of course the natural opposite, but while a probable explanation is clearly better qua explanation than an improbable one, there are aesthetic values involved too, such as economy. And an imagined world that works of itself, not as the stumbling puppet of some bizarre ruling equation that is secretly encoded in the text. \n\nI do not consider, for example, that a theory is more “fun” as a function of how absurd it is; it is hard at times to avoid the feeling that something like this forms a large part of your aesthetic. You will appreciate that such ideas are hard to reconcile with more traditional critical approaches. " }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "There was a recently\nillustration of the difference between my and Gerry's approach. I found a Wolfe\nquote which contradicted an idea of mine. So I posted it and said I was wrong.\nGerry recently noted a Wolfe quote which contradicted his interpretation and he\nsaid Wolfe was in error." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I’ve noted it before, and I noted it again as an argument that might be made against the idea that the Shadow Children are the descendants of the original human discoverers of Sainte Anne. Wolfe referred in passing to the shapeshifters as the Shadow Children (I think that was what he said) in an interview some fifteen years after the book was published. I think he just made a mistake in the interview, yes. Read the book and pay attention to the what the Old Wise One says (paying attention also to who he is composed from, which varies over time) and we are told the story straight out.\n\n- Gerry Quinn" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Gerry Quinn", "address": "gerry at bindweed.com" }, "date": "2011-10-23T10:39:03+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Silk's origin", "in_reply_to": "<1319211492.9663.YahooMailClassic@web161805.mail.bf1.yahoo.com>", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "From: Marc Aramini \n --- On Fri, 10/21/11, Gerry Quinn wrote:\n\n\n\n What exactly are the things we need to explain?" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": " The bumps in the night with the staff, the trees that eat trees, why the \nvanished people react hostilely to people cutting down wood, how the \nnarrator can astral travel with no ihumi present but with his staff, why \nhe aways feels watched around the forest or when Babbie is pushing a \nlog, why Babbie gets defensive around horn's sons when they are \nthreatened and says huh huh huh, why the narrator seems to show up in \nan ancient story (not just the surface explanation), why the staff has a \nface, why the islands are made up of giant herbs and this scares the\n narrator, why the tone changes between OBW and IGJ, why the vanished \nperson is shown on a tree at the end of RTTW when the man looks \nthrough the ring. the tree in Long Sun quetzal calls a parent tree that\n is his shelter and comfort. the myth of man climbing up the tree but\nnot coming down yet in Long Sun." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": " Can’t we just say the Neighbours (and the Inhumi for that matter) *like* trees, without them having to actually *be* trees? They both come from heavily forested planets, after all. Lianas can certainly be a metaphor for inhumi. I don’t think they are inhumi. Jugano tells us that baby inhumi swim in the water. \n\n If Wolfe wanted them to be trees, wouldn’t he have had some farmer on Blue talk about how the animals there seem to turn into plants, or whatever? Why would he hide such a key fact of Blue (and Green) biology?\n\n As for Short Sun, I’ll need another read before I am very confident of my interpretations, and I suspect it is the most difficult part of the Solar Cycle to interpret anyway. That mysterious psi abilities on the part of the Neighbours, the Inhumi and others play a role, I am certain. But identifying the plants with the animals seems to me a leap too far." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "But none of that stuff is important to the text in a straight, non explicated \nreading, Gerry, so, once again, let's agree to disagree. I just know that\nwhen I write my unpublished dereliction of art stories, sometimes things\nare implied like that and they are not explicitly stated, and let's be honest\nif it is a misprision it was directly inspired by my interpretation of Wolfe's\nstyle. Wolfe implies a lot. he even says the vegetable matter was a waste, \nthat Pas would have a better plan for it." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": " You see, for me that’s just the way that somebody brought up in the Whorl would naturally think. Just as Silk’s dreams, though they reveal certain things, are also the dreams Silk might dream.\n\n I don’t think you allow enough for character and metaphor in Wolfe; it seems to me that you sometimes interpret things which are intended to be part of that sphere as statements of fact about the world (which even can supersede things that are more overtly statements of fact). \n\n - Gerry Quinn\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n " } ] }, { "message_id": "<9A56EE0D00A64AC6939DA82897495B9A@Rover>", "from": { "name": "Gerry Quinn", "address": "gerry at bindweed.com" }, "date": "2011-10-23T10:46:43+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Silk's Origin", "in_reply_to": "<4EA32361.60002@verizon.net>", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "From: David Stockhoff " }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "As a participant in one of those discussions, I feel it's incumbent on \nme to put in a word here. For what it's worth, this was exactly my own \nimpression. At least one recent discussion would have been more, er..., \nEFFICIENT, if some relevant background had come forth earlier.\n\nI don't want all my dots connected for me, but \"It's just not important\" \nis a really unsatisfying response to a hypothesis!" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I don’t recall the specific discussion, but usually when I say something is “not important” I mean it doesn’t have any very wide implications in the scheme of things. Maybe it’s the colour of someone’s dress. Maybe it throws an interesting light on some part of Whorl culture. Maybe it alters the history of a minor character. Maybe we are not told.\nFor example, when the Neighbours went to the Whorl and infected it with Inhumi, we don’t know whether they drilled their way in, hacked into airlock controls, contacted elements of Mainframe, or got in some other way. We don’t know the details and it’s not important. [If it *were* important - if it significantly impacted the storyline in some way — we *would* have been told.]\n- Gerry Quinn" } ] }, { "message_id": "<4EA427D7.1020800@verizon.net>", "from": { "name": "David Stockhoff", "address": "dstockhoff at verizon.net" }, "date": "2011-10-23T14:42:31+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Silk's Origin", "in_reply_to": "<9A56EE0D00A64AC6939DA82897495B9A@Rover>", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "On 10/23/2011 6:46 AM, Gerry Quinn wrote:\n*From:* David Stockhoff \n**\nAs a participant in one of those discussions, I feel it's incumbent on\nme to put in a word here. For what it's worth, this was exactly my own\nimpression. At least one recent discussion would have been more, er...,\nEFFICIENT, if some relevant background had come forth earlier." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "I don't want all my dots connected for me, but \"It's just not \nimportant\"\nis a really unsatisfying response to a hypothesis!" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "I don’t recall the specific discussion, but usually when I say \nsomething is “not important” I mean it doesn’t have any very wide \nimplications in the scheme of things. Maybe it’s the colour of \nsomeone’s dress. Maybe it throws an interesting light on some part of \nWhorl culture. Maybe it alters the history of a minor character. Maybe \nwe are not told.\nFor example, when the Neighbours went to the Whorl and infected it \nwith Inhumi, we don’t know whether they drilled their way in, hacked \ninto airlock controls, contacted elements of Mainframe, or got in some \nother way. We don’t know the details and it’s not important. [If it \n*were* important - if it significantly impacted the storyline in some \nway — we *would* have been told.]" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Perfect. How do we know the Neighbors got into the Whorl? Were we \"told\"?\n\nIf not, then figuring out \"how\" is clearly part of figuring out \n\"whether.\" Once you get down to \"drilling\" or \"blasting\" it makes no \ndifference. But astral projection vs spaceships? It matters. Motive, \nmeans, and opportunity.\n\nDismissing evidence is one way of dismissing theories, and it's not \nreally honest." } ] }, { "message_id": "<9C7286FF6CA34C0AB08288E8DB35C2B3@Rover>", "from": { "name": "Gerry Quinn", "address": "gerry at bindweed.com" }, "date": "2011-10-23T15:33:22+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Silk's Origin", "in_reply_to": "<4EA427D7.1020800@verizon.net>", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "From: David Stockhoff " }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "For example, when the Neighbours went to the Whorl and infected it \nwith Inhumi, we don’t know whether they drilled their way in, hacked \ninto airlock controls, contacted elements of Mainframe, or got in some \nother way. We don’t know the details and it’s not important. [If it \n*were* important - if it significantly impacted the storyline in some \nway — we *would* have been told.]" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Perfect. How do we know the Neighbors got into the Whorl? Were we \"told\"?" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Yes, by WindCloud, one of the Neighbours, in the courtroom in Dorp.\n\n******************\n\"I was one of those who boarded your whorl when it neared our sun. \nIn the Whorl, I made the acquaintance of many of your race, and I \nhave known others since, on both the whorls we once called ours.\"\n******************\n\nIt is later explained by SilkHorn:\n\n******************\n\"[To the Whorl] the Vanished People went?\"\nI nodded.\n\"To greet us it was?\"\n\"You might put it so, though they were sensible enough to find out a\ngood deal about us-and infect us with inhumi-\"\n\"Bad thing!\"\n\"Before they ventured to greet even a few of us.\"\n\"Bad it was,\" Vadsig agreed with Oreb.\n\"To leave inhumi among us?\" I shook my head. \"It was a small price to \npay for two whorls, and it enabled the Neighbors to gauge much more \naccurately the differences between our race and their own.\"\n*******************" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "If not, then figuring out \"how\" is clearly part of figuring out \n\"whether.\" Once you get down to \"drilling\" or \"blasting\" it makes no \ndifference. But astral projection vs spaceships? It matters. Motive, \nmeans, and opportunity." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "But that’s easy. In the first place we don’t actually know for sure that the Neighbours are capable of astral projection like SilkHorn and his inhumi. But even assuming they are, we know they did not bring inhumi to the Whorl by astral projection anyway, because astrally projected inhumi take on the form of those they have drained. Astrally transported inhumi would have been Neighbours on the Whorl, just as Jugano was human on Urth. [There are other obstacles too — could Quetzal’s body have slept on Blue for thirty years while he was astrally projected? And what about the business of having to have previously visited the place you travel to in the flesh?]\n\nWe also know the Neighbours had space flight: that’s how they got to Green and discovered the inhumi.\n\nSo: means, motive and opportunity, just like you said. One logical solution, given the setup that Wolfe has created. And we are told it." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Dismissing evidence is one way of dismissing theories, and it's not \nreally honest." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "And what evidence do you think I have dismissed? [Of course, Jugano claimed the inhumi were always on Urth, but I beg leave to doubt him.]\n\n- Gerry Quinn" } ] }, { "message_id": "<1319395521.6436.YahooMailClassic@web161803.mail.bf1.yahoo.com>", "from": { "name": "Marc Aramini", "address": "marcaramini at yahoo.com" }, "date": "2011-10-23T18:45:21+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Silk's origin", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "--- On Sun, 10/23/11, Gerry Quinn wrote:\n\n\nFrom: Gerry Quinn \nSubject: Re: (urth) Silk's origin\nTo: \"The Urth Mailing List\" \nDate: Sunday, October 23, 2011, 3:39 AM\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nFrom: Marc Aramini \n\n\n\n\n\n--- On Fri, 10/21/11, Gerry Quinn wrote:\n\n\n\n\n\nWhat exactly are the things we need to explain?" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "? The bumps in the night with the staff, the trees that eat trees, why the \nvanished people react hostilely to people cutting down wood, how the \nnarrator can astral travel with no ihumi present but with his staff, why \nhe aways feels watched around the forest or when Babbie is pushing a \nlog, why Babbie gets defensive around horn's sons when they are \nthreatened and says huh huh huh, why the narrator seems to show up in \nan ancient story (not just the surface explanation), why the staff has a \nface, why the islands are made up of giant herbs and this scares the\n? narrator, why the tone changes between OBW and IGJ, why the vanished \nperson is shown on? a tree at the end of RTTW when the man looks \nthrough the ring. the tree in Long Sun quetzal calls a parent tree that\n? is his shelter and comfort. the myth of man climbing up the tree but\nnot coming down yet in Long Sun." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Can’t we just say the Neighbours (and the Inhumi for that matter) *like* trees, without them having to actually *be* trees? They both come from heavily forested planets, after all. Lianas can certainly be a metaphor for inhumi. I don’t think they are inhumi. Jugano tells us that baby inhumi swim in the water. \n\nIf Wolfe wanted them to be trees, wouldn’t he have had some farmer on Blue talk about how the animals there seem to turn into plants, or whatever? Why would he hide such a key fact of Blue (and Green) biology?\n\nAs for Short Sun, I’ll need another read before I am very confident of my interpretations, and I suspect it is the most difficult part of the Solar Cycle to interpret anyway. That mysterious psi abilities on the part of the Neighbours, the Inhumi and others play a role, I am certain. But identifying the plants with the animals seems to me a leap too far." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "But none of that stuff is important to the text in a straight, non explicated \nreading, Gerry, so, once again, let's agree to disagree. I just know that\nwhen I write my unpublished dereliction of art stories, sometimes things\nare implied like that and they are not explicitly stated, and let's be honest\nif it is a misprision it was directly inspired by my interpretation of Wolfe's\nstyle. Wolfe implies a lot. he even says the vegetable matter was a waste, \nthat Pas would have a better plan for it." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "You see, for me that’s just the way that somebody brought up in the Whorl would naturally think. Just as Silk’s dreams, though they reveal certain things, are also the dreams Silk might dream.\n\nI don’t think you allow enough for character and metaphor in Wolfe; it seems to me that you sometimes interpret things which are intended to be part of that sphere as statements of fact about the world (which even can supersede things that are more overtly statements of fact). \n\n- Gerry Quinn\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n-----Inline Attachment Follows-----" } ] } ] }