Subject: (urth) Inire's...Things

From: m.driussi <m.driussi at genie.com>
Date: Sat, 13 Jun 1998 01:09:00 +0000

Spectacled Bear,

Ah, so magic mirrors are "machines"?  I hadn't really thought of them
in that sense.  A sort of clockwork?  Mechanical?  But not the
Botanical Gardens, surely, nor the second house, for these are
architectural, aren't they? <g>

No, I really am kidding.  Machines, devices, tools, dinguses.  There
seems to be a lack of what standard skiffy calls "robots," but this
might be because the android sailors are a race apart and long
emancipated, and the magical sciences of Urth are more tuned toward
self-repairing biologicals.  The idle idol carvers, loitering in the
lap of long loyal luxury, like lice . . . oh, stop right there . . .
at the turgid Tower of Power in the Cursed Town of scenic Mount Typhon.
But there is the "isochronon," a gift to the autarch from the ruler of
some other planet (III, ch. 34) which might be a nightwatch robot or
just a mechanical clock.

Granted, if there is a pacing tower (which tripod locomotion do you
prefer: (1) "Peg-leg" [ba-BOOM, ba-BOOM]; (2) "Stampy" [BOOM-ba,
BOOM-ba]; or (3) "Whirling Waltzer" [ba-ba-ba, ba-ba-ba]?) at the
root of the continent, we will say that it is Inire's.

But it just seems so =different= from Inire's style.  The picture
leading into the second house that also has a metal detector which
traps the individual and summons a human; endless mazes, bending time
in the case of the Botanical Gardens, bending space in the case of
the second house; and when I think of servitors of Inire, I think
first of the imps, the creatures of the mirrors, and unseen spirits
(genii or hatifs or daemons).  Or cagey codgers like beloved old
Rudesind the curator--"That's right.  That's right.  There's a
logical explanation for everything, and don't you forget it" (II, ch.
20).  Maybe even talking mirrors like the monitors of the Whorl, or
talking doors like those on the ship _Tzadkiel_ . . . in fact,
everything on that ship is the sort of Alice-in-Wonderland level of
Yesodic techno-magic I associate with Inire.  Where look, even this
picture in a cabin is a window to another dimension; all you have to
do is place your chair beneath it, then step up and through . . .

Careful with that teleporter as a way to build your ship in a bottle!
I'm still far from convinced that anything "beamed out" from Briah will
be easily found anywhere in Briah; or that anything "beamed in" to
Briah comes from anywhere in Briah.

Anyway, whatever the stampy thing down there is (oh hell, it's
Behemoth to match the Leviathan of Abaia), I thought that it's stamping
was not a signal that it was coming because "the man-apes aren't
coping," as you put it.  My impression was that it was more like a
mother stomping her foot and saying, "Don't mess wif da holy man!  D'ja
hear me?  Git in here, right now, else I gonna whip you little butts!"
That is, calling off the dogs rather than coming out with a shotgun.

And see how they run!

(In a Tolkien setting it would be, what, a Balrog coming up the
volcano vent?)

=mantis=

*More Wolfe info & archive of this list at http://www.urth.net/urth/

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From: CRCulver <crculver at aol.com>
Date: Sat, 13 Jun 1998 01:50:46 +0000

After a forced absence (I haven't read FHoC, darnit!) I am happy to be
contributing now that the BotNS is being discussed again.

Mantis said:
<But there is the "isochronon," a gift to the autarch from the ruler of some
other planet (III, ch. 34) which might be a nightwatch robot or just a
mechanical clock.>

I always thought it was the water clock mentioned in another part of the text
(no citation at the moment, I'm afraid).

Mantis continued:
<But it just seems so =different= from Inire's style.>

Inire's technology appears to be magic, it is so different from the somewhat-
real science of the ship of Tzadkiel. A lumbering thing isn't what I would
thing of as a creation of Father Inire.

Mantis also said:
<(In a Tolkien setting it would be, what, a Balrog coming up the
volcano vent?)>

Yes, and the man-apes would represent the Orcs of Moria. This scene always
struck me as taken right from Tolkien; so much so that the "thing" which
lumbers out of the depths would be a living thing and not a machine.

Christopher R. Culver <crculver at aol.com>
http://members.aol.com/crculver/index.html
------------------------------------------------
"The darkest dreams are the ones that come true."
-Warren Defever

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From: Charles Dye <raster at highfiber.com>
Date: Sun, 14 Jun 1998 12:25:34 +0000

>(no citation at the moment, I'm afraid).

I don't think so.  Water clocks have been around for a long, long time, but
they're not terribly useful by modern standards.  The flow rate of the water
tends to vary with the supply pressure, i.e. the amount of water remaining
in the supply vessel, and other factors like temperature.  Silt or dust can
also affect the flow rate.

Water clocks are, in other words, not isochronous.

(There are at least two references to water clocks in The Book.  In Dr.
Talos's play, a demon provides an inverted explanation of the clepsydra
Jahi hides behind:  "knowing what time it is, [you] can tell by that how
much water's flowed."  And Thecla substitutes a water clock into Kepler's
clockwork universe:  God has built it, but who will refill the supply?)

raster at highfiber.com