{ "export": { "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/613", "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": 613, "subject": "Claw Power in BOTNS", "messages": 4, "voices": 4, "first": "1998-05-02T12:41:30+00:00", "last": "1998-05-15T09:13:02+00:00" }, "messages": [ { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "m.driussi", "address": "m.driussi at genie.geis.com" }, "date": "1998-05-14T01:10:00+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Claw Power in BOTNS", "in_reply_to": null, "reply_link": null, "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "vizcacha\n\n(and anybody else following this \"how can the white fountain power\nthe Claw in BOTNS when it doesn't exist yet, except possibly as much\nas a half dead/half live cat?\" investigation),\n\nOh dear, the things I forget!\n\nLook here, a passage in URTH (ch. 20), where Apheta is talking to\nSeverian after a disclaimer about how she doesn't know much:\n\n\"I cannot say whence you drew [energy for miracles] when you were on\nUrth. Partly from yourself, no doubt. But not all or even most can\nhave come from you, or you would have perished. Perhaps from your\nworld, or from its old sun. When you were on the ship [\"Tzadkiel\"]\nthere was no world and no sun near enough, so you took what could be\ndrawn from the ship itself, and nearly wrecked it. But even that was\nnot sufficient [to resurrect the murdered steward].\"\n\nOkay! This passage gives us the answer that the white fountain was\nnot involved; that Severian basically made an empathetic\npledge/sacrifice of life essence, vril, what-have-you, for each\nmiracle, and the Claw brokered a more-than-matching grant from any or\nall of the local energy sources.\n\nFurther, this opens wide vistas in re-examining certain events in\nTBOTNS. For example, when Sev pledges by his sword to the old sun,\n\"his life for mine,\" and then the notules kill the uhlan: this seems\nlike a clear case of a deal with the (sky father) sun. When Severian\nperforms an execution and feels the power flowing through his legs:\nthis might be a deal with the (bloodthirsty mother) Urth.\n\nIn looking at this in the past, I wondered if the \"temporal banking\nmodel\" which Wolfe gives to explain Severian's power in TBOTNS could\nbe expanded into different banks: the bank of the Mother Urth, the\nbank of the old sun, etc. I then went into a maze of thinking that\nErebus, Abaia, and all the other titans were sitting at the top of\nsimilar energy pyramids, perhaps by their various signal elements\n(water, ice, etc.). But since that seemed kinda weak (even with\nLune's causing 4.5 times the tidal force for the Water Dept.), I\nspeculated that the black hole at the heart of the old sun was\nfeeding them. (Problem with this: if Erebus and Abaia are descended\nfrom Typhon, then how come the faltering sun predates them? If they\naren't relatives of T then that problem is erased--they were just\nBaldanders-types doing an end-run around Typhon and probably had a\nhand in manipulating the breakup of his dynasty into feuding\nsiblings.)\n\nAnyway, point is: Severian is an energy vampire. So one starts\nwatching for clues and cues of this. Did Severian trigger the\nearthquake when the Convulsor hit him in order to utilize =that=\nenergy, or was the earthquake an unrelated side effect of something\nelse? (I mean, aside from the mythologically satisfying: \"And the\nEarth trembled in mourning for him.\") Do \"deposits\" to the Earth\nMother bank (executions) allow for later \"withdrawals with interest\"?\nLikewise the Old Sun Father bank?\n\nAnyway, here is a model that does away with many of the more thorny\nissues in the paradox of the half-dead/half-live white fountain.\n\n=mantis=" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "sph1635", "address": "sph1635 at utsph.sph.uth.tmc.edu" }, "date": "1998-05-02T12:41:30+00:00", "subject": "re:(urth) Claw Power in BOTNS", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "\tI like this explaination. The only area that I cannot find an explaination\nfor is that of the time at the end of SWORD, when Severian enters the\nforrested hills for some weeks without any food. What I had always assumed\nis that energy was released from the claw when it's pyx case broke. But,\nthen I remembered (from somewhere, I do not have any proof right now) that\nSeverian does make reference to the lake and how it resembles the gem. So\nis it from one of these sources that Severian is able to survive in the\nhills without any nourishment? If not, then what is sustaining him?\n\t\t\t\t\t\tXury" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Peter Grimes", "address": "grimes at waste.org" }, "date": "1998-05-14T15:37:31+00:00", "subject": "re:(urth) Claw Power in BOTNS", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "On Sat, 2 May 1998 sph1635 at utsph.sph.uth.tmc.edu wrote:\nSeverian does make reference to the lake and how it resembles the gem. So\nis it from one of these sources that Severian is able to survive in the\nhills without any nourishment? If not, then what is sustaining him?" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Humans can survive for several weeks without food as long as they have\nwater. Severian does describe himself as feeling weaker and weaker\nover this period of time.\n\nPlus he already has the power of the New Sun in him because it started\ntravelling towards Urth so long before that.\n\nBetween the two its no mystery how he survives.\n\n\n-Dave" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Michael Straight", "address": "straight at email.unc.edu" }, "date": "1998-05-15T09:13:02+00:00", "subject": "Re: (urth) Claw Power in BOTNS", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "On Thu, 14 May 1998 m.driussi at genie.geis.com wrote:\n(and anybody else following this \"how can the white fountain power\nthe Claw in BOTNS when it doesn't exist yet, except possibly as much\nas a half dead/half live cat?\" investigation)," }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "[Theory about Severian getting power from Urth, Old Sun, etc.]" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Anyway, here is a model that does away with many of the more thorny\nissues in the paradox of the half-dead/half-live white fountain." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "While these ideas are tantilizing, I just wanted to go on record as really\nliking the time-twisting ideas about Severian being able to use the white\nfountain because it will exist in the future. There's lots of good SF\nprecedent for that kind of thing -- take this passage from a Greg Egan\nstory (\"Eugene\") I read just yesterday [minor spoiler]:\n\n \"You've invented time travel!\"\n\n \"No. Suppose you fed the genetic profile of an embryo into a computer,\n which then constructed a simulation of the appearance of the mature\n organism; no time travel is involved, and yet aspects of a possible\n future are revealed. In that example, all the machinery to perform the\n extrapolation exists in the present, but the same thing can happen if the\n right equipment--equipment of a more sophisticated kind--exists in the\n potential future. It may be useful as a mathematical formalism, to\n pretend that the potential future has a tangible reality and is\n influencing the past--just as in geometric optics, it's often convenient\n to prentend that reflections are real objects that exist behind the\n mirrors that create them--but a formalism is all it would be.\n\n \"So because you might invent such a divice, we can see you, and talk to\n you, as if you were speaking to us from the future?\" \"Yes.\"\n\nProbably complete nonsense, but I love it anyway. (Most of Egan's stuff\nhas less handwaving than that, btw. His short-story collection\n_Axiomatic_ is quite mind-blowing; it plays with ideas of mind and\nconsciousness and identity that mix Daniel Dennett, Douglas Hoffsteader,\nand Oliver Sacks with quite original stuff of his own).\n\n-Rostrum" } ] } ] }