{ "export": { "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/whorl/1256", "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": "whorl", "thread": { "id": 1256, "subject": "Mysteries", "messages": 4, "voices": 4, "first": "2001-03-09T15:01:17+00:00", "last": "2001-03-11T16:24:16+00:00" }, "messages": [ { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "David Lebling", "address": "dlebling at ucentric.com" }, "date": "2001-03-09T21:45:15+00:00", "subject": "(whorl) Mysteries", "in_reply_to": null, "reply_link": null, "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Wolfe has a habit of introducing a mystery, having Silk/Horn state that he\nknows the answer, and then not saying what it is. Does anyone here know the\nanswers to:\n\n1) IGJ. Silk/Horn asks Mora(?) if she knows why her father's brother was\ncalled Incanto, then declares that he knows why, but he never tells us the\nanswer. Why was Inclito's brother called Incanto?\n\n2) RttW. Silk/Horn gives several explanations for how he can perform astral\ntravel without an inhumu present. He lists several explicit ones (hidden\ninhumi, etc.) then a final one which worries him, but doesn't say what it\nis. What is it?\n\nFeel free to add more to this list...\n\n Dave Lebling\n aka vizcacha\n\n\n\n*This is WHORL, for discussion of Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun." } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Adam Stephanides", "address": "adamsteph at earthlink.net" }, "date": "2001-03-09T15:01:17+00:00", "subject": "Re: (whorl) Mysteries", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "on 3/9/01 8:45 PM, David Lebling at dlebling at ucentric.com wrote:\nFeel free to add more to this list..." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "This may just be something I missed, but in New Viron \"Father\" is talking to\nHoof about Scylla, \"and I asked him if there had ever been a real Scylla.\n'Yes,' he said. 'Yes, that's the terrible part.' Then he said something I\ndid not understand at all: 'I feel sorry for Beroep.'\" (339) I'm also\nmystified by the reference to Beroep.\n\n--Adam\n\n\n*This is WHORL, for discussion of Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun." } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Robert Borski", "address": "rborski at charter.net" }, "date": "2001-03-11T14:38:45+00:00", "subject": "(whorl) Re: Mysteries", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Vizcacha the wonderer writes:\n\n\n\n<2) RttW. Silk/Horn gives several explanations for how he can perform astral\ntravel without an inhumu present. He lists several explicit ones (hidden\ninhumi, etc.) then a final one which worries him, but doesn't say what it\nis. What is it? >\n\nI've already attempted to answer this one, but to recapitulate: if the\nNeighbors are able to bilocate the same way the inhumi are, and if\nPas/Typhon is a Neighbor, then PassilkHorn should also be able to do so. For\nthe Narrator to acknowledge this, however, means he has to accept he's not\nsimply Horn--something he avoids all the way to the end of the Short Sun\nseries. Thus his worriment.\n\n<1) IGJ. Silk/Horn asks Mora(?) if she knows why her father's brother was\ncalled Incanto, then declares that he knows why, but he never tells us the\nanswer. Why was Inclito's brother called Incanto?>\n\nWolfe gives this prominence in the PROPER NAMES section as well, adding\nparenthetically under the Incanto entry: \"Also the name of Inclito's older\nbrother, who died in infancy.\" So it does seem important.\n\nPossibly we can look for clues in the two stories Salica--the mother of\nInclito and Incanto--tells during the dinner storytelling sessions. In the\nfirst we learn that she has been married five times; not until husband\nnumber four, however, does she finally conceive a child. Here's where\nperhaps the title of her second story may become relevant: \"Stuck in the\nChimney.\" On a Freudian level, this may be how Salica envisions her\nbarrenness. Her delight at eventually bearing a son may therefore be why she\nnames it Incanto -- \"enchanted child\"-- which to the newly-married couple he\nsurely is, at least until he dies.\n\nBut this is hardly the only mystery associated with Inclito's family. As has\nbeen mentioned before, at one point Inclito tells Mora the following:\n\n\"...after racking my brain for long days I've finally realized who you and\nyour father remind me of. I knew--I felt, at least--that I had met you both\nbefore. I won't tell you because the names would mean nothing to you.\"\n\nMora subsequently asks if they're good people, and Wolfe/Horn writes:\n\n\"'Very good people.' Without my willing it, my voice grew softer. I myself\nheard it with surprise.\"\n\nSo obviously it's someone Horn (or Pas or Silk) cares about, although this\nseems to surprise him (them), and quite probably a father-daughter tandem.\n\nThen there's the very bizarre and disturbing scene where young Mora comes to\nvisit Horn wearing jewelry and scent. Notes Horn: \"What ran through her head\nas she thus dressed herself to visit me? I can only guess.\"\n\nSeveral paragraphs later Horn declaims:\n\n\"I know what she is going through, poor child. And she is a child. 'I won't\nask you to disrobe,' I said, \"because it doesn't matter whether I know.\nYou'll know if I'm right, and that's enough.\"\n\nHorn then attempts a biology lesson, telling Mora how various individuals\ncome to maturity differently and the various factors involved; in my opinion\nit's completely bogus because he tells Mora, \"In general, the larger the\nindividual the slower the onset.\" This, of course, flies in the face of\nevidence, because, all other things being equal (nutrition, age, etc.),\ngirls with a higher fat percentage tend to achieve menarche before their\nthinner peers. And what exactly is it that Horn expects to see if indeed\nMora does disrobe? Her lack of pubic development? And why has Mora come to\nHorn all tarted up? Is she the virgin sent to satisfy the\npotentially-malicious stego?\n\nFor a while I wondered if the father-daughter tandem that Inclito and Mora\nreminded Horn of were Hammerstone and Olivine (the only other potent\nfather-daughter combination I could think of is Pas-Scylla). Would a\ndisrobed Mora therefore be discernable as a chem? (Horn at one point tells\nOlivine it would not be inappropriate of him to ask her to strip and calls\nit \"an eminently just punishment.\" Would a naked chem feel shame and\nembarassment, or simply revealed as not-human?) This led me to all sorts of\nalternate speculation, such as: do chems \"grow\" after being birthed,\nreplicating the infant-adolescent-adult growth curve? And how much\nphysiological fidelity is there between bios and chems? Can the latter, say,\nbe sexually violated, as Mora is? Also, is it possible that the occasional\nchem tries to pass as human, the same way the inhumi do?\n\nAnd while I am at least talking about chems, who is the woman in the north\nthat Olivine tells us her father, who's been gone a long, long time, has\ngone in search of?\n\nLike I said in an earlier post: lots of little mysteries in the Short Sun\nseries. And I love 'em all!\n\nRobert Borski\n\n\n\n\n*This is WHORL, for discussion of Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun." } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Kevin J. Maroney", "address": "kmaroney at ungames.com" }, "date": "2001-03-11T16:24:16+00:00", "subject": "Re: (whorl) Re: Mysteries", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "At 02:38 PM 3/11/01 -0600, Robert B wrote:\nI've already attempted to answer this one, but to recapitulate: if the\nNeighbors are able to bilocate the same way the inhumi are, and if\nPas/Typhon is a Neighbor, then PassilkHorn should also be able to do so. For\nthe Narrator to acknowledge this, however, means he has to accept he's not\nsimply Horn--something he avoids all the way to the end of the Short Sun\nseries. Thus his worriment." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Why would we believe that Pas is a Neighbor? \n\nI agree that Horn's reluctance to consider or explicate the reasons that he\ncan Travel without the Inhumi present is a reflection of his fears about\nhis own status, but it seems more likely that he fears that the translation\nfrom his birth body to the body he finds himself in on the _Whorl_ has made\nhim no longer human. This, in fact, seems the most likely to me; Horn is no\nlonger human, even in Silk's body. " }, { "kind": "sig", "depth": 0, "text": " Kevin Maroney | Unplugged Games \n kmaroney at ungames.com | (212) 777-1190\n\n*This is WHORL, for discussion of Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun." } ] } ] }