{ "export": { "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/772", "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": 772, "subject": "Inire's...Things", "messages": 3, "voices": 3, "first": "1998-06-13T01:09:00+00:00", "last": "1998-06-14T12:25:34+00:00" }, "messages": [ { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "m.driussi", "address": "m.driussi at genie.com" }, "date": "1998-06-13T01:09:00+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Inire's...Things", "in_reply_to": null, "reply_link": null, "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Spectacled Bear,\n\nAh, so magic mirrors are \"machines\"? I hadn't really thought of them\nin that sense. A sort of clockwork? Mechanical? But not the\nBotanical Gardens, surely, nor the second house, for these are\narchitectural, aren't they? \n\nNo, I really am kidding. Machines, devices, tools, dinguses. There\nseems to be a lack of what standard skiffy calls \"robots,\" but this\nmight be because the android sailors are a race apart and long\nemancipated, and the magical sciences of Urth are more tuned toward\nself-repairing biologicals. The idle idol carvers, loitering in the\nlap of long loyal luxury, like lice . . . oh, stop right there . . .\nat the turgid Tower of Power in the Cursed Town of scenic Mount Typhon.\nBut there is the \"isochronon,\" a gift to the autarch from the ruler of\nsome other planet (III, ch. 34) which might be a nightwatch robot or\njust a mechanical clock.\n\nGranted, if there is a pacing tower (which tripod locomotion do you\nprefer: (1) \"Peg-leg\" [ba-BOOM, ba-BOOM]; (2) \"Stampy\" [BOOM-ba,\nBOOM-ba]; or (3) \"Whirling Waltzer\" [ba-ba-ba, ba-ba-ba]?) at the\nroot of the continent, we will say that it is Inire's.\n\nBut it just seems so =different= from Inire's style. The picture\nleading into the second house that also has a metal detector which\ntraps the individual and summons a human; endless mazes, bending time\nin the case of the Botanical Gardens, bending space in the case of\nthe second house; and when I think of servitors of Inire, I think\nfirst of the imps, the creatures of the mirrors, and unseen spirits\n(genii or hatifs or daemons). Or cagey codgers like beloved old\nRudesind the curator--\"That's right. That's right. There's a\nlogical explanation for everything, and don't you forget it\" (II, ch.\n20). Maybe even talking mirrors like the monitors of the Whorl, or\ntalking doors like those on the ship _Tzadkiel_ . . . in fact,\neverything on that ship is the sort of Alice-in-Wonderland level of\nYesodic techno-magic I associate with Inire. Where look, even this\npicture in a cabin is a window to another dimension; all you have to\ndo is place your chair beneath it, then step up and through . . .\n\nCareful with that teleporter as a way to build your ship in a bottle!\nI'm still far from convinced that anything \"beamed out\" from Briah will\nbe easily found anywhere in Briah; or that anything \"beamed in\" to\nBriah comes from anywhere in Briah.\n\nAnyway, whatever the stampy thing down there is (oh hell, it's\nBehemoth to match the Leviathan of Abaia), I thought that it's stamping\nwas not a signal that it was coming because \"the man-apes aren't\ncoping,\" as you put it. My impression was that it was more like a\nmother stomping her foot and saying, \"Don't mess wif da holy man! D'ja\nhear me? Git in here, right now, else I gonna whip you little butts!\"\nThat is, calling off the dogs rather than coming out with a shotgun.\n\nAnd see how they run!\n\n(In a Tolkien setting it would be, what, a Balrog coming up the\nvolcano vent?)\n\n=mantis=" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "CRCulver", "address": "crculver at aol.com" }, "date": "1998-06-13T01:50:46+00:00", "subject": "Re: (urth) Inire's...Things", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "After a forced absence (I haven't read FHoC, darnit!) I am happy to be\ncontributing now that the BotNS is being discussed again.\n\nMantis said:\n\n\nI always thought it was the water clock mentioned in another part of the text\n(no citation at the moment, I'm afraid).\n\n\nMantis continued:\n\n\nInire's technology appears to be magic, it is so different from the somewhat-\nreal science of the ship of Tzadkiel. A lumbering thing isn't what I would\nthing of as a creation of Father Inire.\n\n\nMantis also said:\n<(In a Tolkien setting it would be, what, a Balrog coming up the\nvolcano vent?)>\n\nYes, and the man-apes would represent the Orcs of Moria. This scene always\nstruck me as taken right from Tolkien; so much so that the \"thing\" which\nlumbers out of the depths would be a living thing and not a machine.\n\nChristopher R. Culver \nhttp://members.aol.com/crculver/index.html\n------------------------------------------------\n\"The darkest dreams are the ones that come true.\"\n-Warren Defever" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Charles Dye", "address": "raster at highfiber.com" }, "date": "1998-06-14T12:25:34+00:00", "subject": "Re: (urth) Inire's...Things", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "CRCulver at aol.com writes:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Mantis said:\n\n\nI always thought it was the water clock mentioned in another part of the text\n(no citation at the moment, I'm afraid)." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I don't think so. Water clocks have been around for a long, long time, but\nthey're not terribly useful by modern standards. The flow rate of the water\ntends to vary with the supply pressure, i.e. the amount of water remaining\nin the supply vessel, and other factors like temperature. Silt or dust can\nalso affect the flow rate.\n\nWater clocks are, in other words, not isochronous.\n\n(There are at least two references to water clocks in The Book. In Dr.\nTalos's play, a demon provides an inverted explanation of the clepsydra\nJahi hides behind: \"knowing what time it is, [you] can tell by that how\nmuch water's flowed.\" And Thecla substitutes a water clock into Kepler's\nclockwork universe: God has built it, but who will refill the supply?)\n\nraster at highfiber.com" } ] } ] }