Subject: (urth) Saltus Mine Deep One

From: m.driussi <m.driussi at genie.com>
Date: Sun, 14 Jun 1998 17:54:00 +0000

It is good to step back and recall that the reason why we continue to
turn this one over (and why alga waxes huffy against Wolfe, showing
that he is both extra special and unique <g>) is that Severian
basically says, IIRC, yeah, I didn't know the name of that critter
then but I do (or I think I do) now.  Which makes it into a clear
riddle for the reader, suggesting that we've been given enough clues
to figure it out.

The central answer, then, is a specific name (what, again?! <g>).
For all we know, it might be "Abaddon," the angel guarding the pit of
hell (if "Abaddon" <> subspace and "Abaddon" <> planet Mercury!).

Maybe there is a bit of Jesus's visit to hell--in Dante's work wasn't
there something about landscape shifting earthquake(s) caused by the
passage of the saviour?

=mantis=

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

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From: Peter Westlake <peter at harlequin.co.uk>
Date: Mon, 15 Jun 1998 16:01:04 +0000

Disagreeing with so learned a one as mantis is a perilous
undertaking, especially for a bear. However, needs must.

>riddle for the reader, suggesting that we've been given enough clues

Agreed. To be precise:

"What creature it was we had called from the roots of the continent
I think I now know."

>The central answer, then, is a specific name (what, again?! <g>).

Nothing about a name there. There is the grinding sound, which does
suggest that the thing is freeing itself from long imprisonment in
the rock, perhaps. Then the footsteps:

"From far below I heard a step that might have been the walking of
a tower on the Final Day, when it is said all the cities of Urth
will stride forth to meet the dawn of the New Sun."

Now there isn't much about towers walking elsewhere in the book
(reasonably enough!) so the occurrence of it in Citadel is the Clue
that mantis suggests must exist. It even reads like one:

"Far behind it loomed a machine that flashed fire, a machine that
was like a tower walking."

It's hard to see how it could be much more explicit than this.
I was really quite surprised to find a reference on the next
page but one:

"I opened my mouth to cry for help, then closed it again,
thinking I might call upon myself something more terrible
than that I had once waked in the mine of the man-apes."

>hell (if "Abaddon" <> subspace and "Abaddon" <> planet Mercury!).

a) see above

b) would Severian fear something "more terrible" than the angel
   of hell turning up on the battlefield?

c) *all* large living creatures on Urth have to live in the water.
   So it must be a machine.

SBear.

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From: Joshua A. Solomon <j.solomon at ucl.ac.uk>
Date: Mon, 15 Jun 1998 20:37:28 +0000

> than that I had once waked in the mine of the man-apes."

Could this be a rocket, or an ICBM?Severian thinks that the Citadel in Nessus is

(at least part of) a city, but we know that it is
really a bunch of rocketships.

bee
--
Joshua A. Solomon
The Institute of Ophthalmology
11 - 43 Bath Street
London EC1V 9EL
Voice: (44) 171 608 6924
Fax: (44) 171 608 6846
j.solomon at ucl.ac.uk
http://vision.arc.nasa.gov/personnel/jsolomon

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From: Marty Light <marty_light at siecor.com>
Date: Mon, 15 Jun 1998 18:41:55 +0000

Ditto on Alga's comment about Peter S.'s translation!  It's been great
lurking in the background, watching the posts proliferate. Not that anyone
ever needs a reason to re-read Wolfe, but 5HC is getting another perusal by
me. "A-bo, a-bo, it's off to read I go..."  No, I'm not going off on some
"Three Fingers" discussion;  rather, some idle speculation of mine own
which mantis/borski/etal's comments will dwarf in no time:

Peter's Stephenson & Westlake (aka SBear) have been guessing about the type
of machine awakened at the mine.  I've always assumed it was some sort of
major-league mining equipment -- perhaps an overgrown pile driver.  In a
vertical orientation, a pile driver could generate some sparks, lots of
noise, and appear like a tower walking.  Serverian could have unknowingly
triggered the equipment into action as he traveled through the mine.

Final question:  Are "Endangered Species" and "Planet Engineering" still in
print?  My copy of 5HC lists "...Species" on the Tor list, but I have been
unable to turn up a copy.  Thanks!

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From: Jason Voegele <voegele.6 at osu.edu>
Date: Mon, 15 Jun 1998 19:36:44 +0000

>unable to turn up a copy.  Thanks!

I've tried everywhere for both of these, to no avail.  However, check out
amazon.com and try their "out of print" ordering, they turned up a copy of
"Species" within a matter of hours, but I regretfully couldn't afford it at
the moment.  You may have to pay a little extra, but I'm sure it's worth it
to you.

Jason Voegele
(still lingering, although my "Urth" folder is starting to become an archive
in its own right)

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From: Peter Stephenson <pws at ifh.de>
Date: Tue, 16 Jun 1998 09:28:43 +0000

Peter Westlake wrote:
(pedantically, GW wrote and PW typed in and added quotes)
> than that I had once waked in the mine of the man-apes."

Just wanted to agree (belatedly --- fast list!) with the Lovecraft
overtones.  (The Baba Yaga joke was good, btw.) All we need is the
word `eldritch' and a reference to the forbidden Necronomicon of the
mad Arab Abdul Alhazred.  The ancientness and otherworldliness of
Lovecraft's creatures translates well to Wolfe, although we don't
usually get the horror element as clearly as here.

As for created beings: I left the first quote in as a contrast ---
what's missing in Lovecraft is the sense of something having been
`engineered', as a tower is but a shuggoth (have I got that right?)
isn't.  There are parallels: the are lots of cases in Lovecraft of
inventors or people who are making something nameless in their
basements which tend to remind me of the things you find in the back
of the fridge (or refrigerator for you lot over there) a few months
too late.  It somehow seems more chemical than physical, though.
Strange that Wolfe picked the name `chems' for his whorl creatures ---
maybe that was a deliberate way of making them seem more organic, in
comparison with taluses etc.

By the way, Lovecraft has some of my favourite `how not to do it' pieces
of prose, I'm glad GW wasn't too heavily influenced: "Dark the caverns
where no man has trod and evil the mind that is held by no head" [who
was it said `backward ran the sentences until reeled the mind'?], and
my all-time favourite: "What we heard was not the fabulous note of any
buried blasphemey of elder earth from whose supernal toughness an
age-denied polar sun had evoked a monstrous response" which says it all,
really (it's from `At the Mountains of Madness' and I think what they
heard was something like `tekelili' --- come to think of it, the
Antartic remains in this story, one of Lovecraft's longest, are
rather Wolfean, too).

If you need a Vironese name for me (though last time I came near the
place His Cognizance made the sign of addition at me and vanished) you
can call me `Corncrake', if it hasn't been taken.  No associations, I
just like the word.  I will continue to respond to Peter S or pws.

pws

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From: William H. Ansley <wansley at warwick.net>
Date: Tue, 16 Jun 1998 12:15:53 +0000

>isn't.

Actually, a shoggoth is engineered, rather surprisingly for Lovecraft. "At
the Mountains of Madness" is about as close as he ever comes to writing
"hard sf."

----------------------------
They had done the same thing on other planets; having manufactured not only
necessary foods, but certain multicellular protoplamic masses capable of
moulding their tissues into all sorts of temporary organs under hypnotic
influence and thereby forming ideal slaves to perform the heavy work of the
community. [p. 272, _The Annotated H. P. Lovecraft_, S. T. Joshi, ed. ]
----------------------------

"They" above are the "star-headed Old Ones" (please don't confuse them with
the "star-bellied sneetches").

William Ansley