Subject: (whorl) Pas, on disembarking: Howdy Neighbor

From: Robert Borski <rborski at charter.net>
Date: Mon, 12 Mar 2001 12:14:36 +0000

Gamemeister Maroney (Unplugged) having asked:

<Why would we believe that Pas is a Neighbor?>

Well, as I've been arguing for some time now, I believe this notion answers
more questions than it generates.

For starters, it explains why the Blue-Green system was targeted by the
Whorl. Pas/Typhon is simply going home. Doubtless, other habitable systems
much closer to Urth could have been targeted, but they haven't--why not? To
argue otherwise--that the Whorl arrived at Blue-Green by accident or
malfunction--leaves a rather hollow core at the center of the Long Sun
series. ("Why did we come here, Silk?" "It appears, students, that the Whorl
took a wrong turn at Alpha Centauri. Whoops!") I also find the idea that the
Whorl has been programmed to temporarily stop at Blue-Green while it flushes
its bilge tanks and reboots untenable because it takes away the impetus for
the Mainframe rebellion. As Horn notes, "[Scylla] and her mother and some of
Pas's other sprats had tried to kill him because they did not want people
leaving the old whorl to come to Blue where they would not be the gods." But
if the Whorl's prime directive is as seed ship or long range voyager, why
wouldn't Echidna et al still be aboard as its gods? Surely, they don't need
the colonists of Blue to worship them if they have other congregants.

Secondly, Pas and the Neighbors both have two heads. Coincidence or plot
point? For the most part the twice-normal biology of the Blue-Green systems
seems utilized more for exotic color than anything else (love those
eight-legged crocodiles of the Nadi). And as for Pas not having multiple
limbs, there's evidence that the Neighbors know how to bioengineer
shape-shifting in the inhumi, so perhaps Pas knows how to do this himself.

Thirdly, who is the little girl in Hide's dream (RTTW, pgs. 22-24) who is
being pursued by the talus-like doll and why are there also "tall men with
too many legs" in some of the rooms Hide looks into? Isn't she Scylla, who
we know is on the run from Pas? And why would there be Neighbors present?
Wolfe's dream sequences are almost always meant to be revelatory.

Fourthly, at one point during IGJ, Horn sings in and translates from
Neighborese--and not amateurishly, but well enough so that it completely
discombobulates poor Colonel Terzo. When and how did Horn learn the language
of the Neighbors? From darling one-armed Seawrack? But isn't Seawrack a
minion of the Mother--Greater Scylla's clone on Blue? How, in turn, has
Scylla come to learn Neighborese? Personally, I favor the idea that the Pas
aspect of PassilkHorn is the one who's providing the translation skills
because it's the least complicated. As a Neighbor, he's simply speaking his
native tongue.

And these are just off the top of my much-scratched  head.

Robert Borski

*This is WHORL, for discussion of Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun.
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---

From: Alex David Groce <alex_groce at gs246.sp.cs.cmu.edu>
Date: Mon, 12 Mar 2001 14:20:58 +0000

<snipping Robert's Pas-as-neighbor arguments>

Fine and well, but you still haven't dealt with the fact that when
Severian meets Typhon in SWORD, Typhon doesn't remotely resemble a
Neighbor, in any way, form, or fashion.  Indeed, if he's a Neighbor,
the grafting of a human's head onto his shoulder seems unlikely in the
extreme.

If the only way to arrive at a set of answers in BOTSS is by
completely destroying continuity and consistency with BOTNS, my
opinion is that those can't be the right answers.

--
"And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free." John 8:32
--
Alex David Groce (agroce+ at cs.cmu.edu)
Ph.D. Student, Carnegie Mellon University - Computer Science Department
8112 Wean Hall (412)-268-3066
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~agroce

---

From: Kevin J. Maroney <kmaroney at ungames.com>
Date: Mon, 12 Mar 2001 14:33:55 +0000

>more questions than it generates.

I don't like any of the answers, frankly. 

>much closer to Urth could have been targeted, but they haven't--why not? 

A. We don't know that there are. There's no evidence whatsoever to judge
what criteria Typhon used to select the target for the _Whorl_. Personally,
I think that habitable planets are few and far between. (Of course, I also
believe that planets are an unnecessary luxury.)

B. We don't know that they haven't. There's no textual evidence that the
_Whorl_ is the only ship of its type. 

>point? 

Pas's second head is artificial. This is explicitly stated in _New Sun_.
Typhon doesn't show any evidence of having any other attribute of the
Neighbors, including a long nose, an excess of limbs, etc. I wouldn't
presume to call something that obvious a "coincidence", but I think that
the connection is more subtle than that. 

>Wolfe's dream sequences are almost always meant to be revelatory.

I don't see any direct link between the presence of Neighbors in Hide's
dream and the presence of Scylla. 

>of the Neighbors? From darling one-armed Seawrack? 

Obviously, you are more familiar with the book than I, but I never got the
sense that Seawrack was singing in the Neighbors' language, or that Horn
had the opportunity to actually learn it from her. It seems equally likely
that Horn learned the Neighbors' language from becoming Neighborly himself. 

-- 
Wombat, a.k.a. Kevin Maroney kmaroney at ungames.com
Kitchen Staff Supervisor, New York Review of Science Fiction
http://www.nyrsf.com

---

From: Dan'l Danehy-Oakes <ddanehy at siebel.com>
Date: Mon, 12 Mar 2001 12:45:47 +0000

I'll reply to a couple of specific points, but, Robert, it seems to 
me that this (like much discussion on this list) is a flagrant 
violation of Ockham's principle, multiplying entities (in this 
case unsupported hypotheses) with no real need. Nothing you've
brought up is inconsistent with Typhon being pretty much what he
appears to be in tBotNS.

Specific points:

> For starters, it explains why the Blue-Green system was targeted
> by the Whorl. 

Because it had to target _some_ system. 

There is no particular reason to suppose that Ty-Pas knew the 
Neighbors and/or inhumi existed. Nor is there any particular 
reason to believe that there were other star systems, nearer 
to Urth, that would serve Typhon's purposes. Note 
    (1) The timescale; we're talking about a future distant enough
        that the "neighborhood" _will_ have changed.
    (2) We don't entirely know what Typhon's purposes _are_.
    (3) Given (2), we can't say for certain what would serve 
        them -- for example, he may have wanted a certain minimum
        distance from Urth (because, e.g., nearer stars were already
        colonized, or were being monitored by Hierodules and the 
        like to prevent human "infection").
Finally, there is no real reason to assume that Typhon himself
actually picked the target! He's a tyrant; he wouldn't do something
like this for himself. He'd say "I want a system with these 
characteristics," and tell someone else to find it. (We know he
had _some_ boffins he trusted, or he'd never have submitted to the 
Incredible Two-Headed Man surgery.)

[deletia]

> Pas and the Neighbors both have two heads. Coincidence or plot
> point? 

Or maybe just Wolfean obsession. He likes multiple heads.
Cerberus and all that, neh?

--Dan'l

---

From: James Jordan <jbjordan4 at home.com>
Date: Mon, 12 Mar 2001 16:45:05 +0000

>more questions than it generates.

         I'll take the opposite view. More problems than answers.
         1. Typhon has a human wife and human children and a human lover, no?
         1a. They are wife/lover/children of his first body, therefore he's 
human.
         1b. They are wife/lover/children of his second, grafted body; so 
maybe he wasn't human to begin with.
         1c. This is not Wolfe but Star Trek, and humans intermarry with 
aliens all the time!!!!

         2. Typhon's original head is not said, from my memory, to have any 
unusual characteristics that might make us think it was a Neighbor head. 
Okay, Wolfe dreamed up the Neighbors later on, but in that case we'd expect 
Pas to be described as having one weird head. Don't recall any such thing.

         3. I cannot recall evidence that Neighbors have two heads. Neither 
Babbie nor any of the other indigenous lifeforms of Blue do, do they? Have 
I forgotten something here? Even if they do, my other arguments still stand 
(for me, today).
         3a. It's simpler, for me today, to think that Pas has two heads 
because by the time the Whorl was sent, Typhon's original body had died and 
he'd grafted his head onto the second human body.

         4. If Typhon wanted to Do Something About The Inhumi, why weren't 
the armies of taluses and chems the first ones on board of the landers? 
They'd be the Marines, sent in to clean up Green and Blue, not only because 
they are soldiers but also because they'd be immune to the inhumi. That 
does not happen, and remember that Pas is alive and well by the time the 
landers are sent to implement the Plan of Pas.
         4a. Okay, the Whorl arrives, and Pas learns that the Neighbors 
have gone. Well, all the more reason to send in the chems and taluses to 
clean up the inhumi before the human settlers arrive, or in tandem with them.
         4b. Okay, Pas did not realize the inhumi would prey on the humans, 
because he was asleep when they came aboard the Whorl and was not aware 
that they could. Well, he found out later on that the inhumi were preying 
on humans, if not before, then from Horn; but probably as soon as he 
resurrected and chatted with his sons and daughters. So why not send in the 
chems then?

         5. Well, maybe Typhon/Pas HATED the Neighbors, and the chems and 
taluses were to fight the Neighbors. When he learned they were gone, he 
kept the robot armies on the Whorl.
         5a. That means Typhon is either a Rogue Neighbor who hates the 
other Neighbors, or a human. I much favor the latter, for the reasons given 
above.

         Now, I'm game to the suggestion that Typhon knew about the 
Neighbor system, and sent the Whorl there first. Humans have been in space 
for a long time, and surely this system was known, in which case Typhon 
selected it for some reason. But given the presence of aliens on Urth, he 
could have done so for other reasons, perhaps:
         (a) He knew that the Neighbors were vacating these planets, and 
thus that they were ripe for colonists.
         (b) He had a deal with the Neighbors; but in that case, why not 
sent in the chems and taluses?
         (c) He hated the Neighbors and wanted to take over their homeworlds.
I favor (a).

         Well, in terms of (a), why didn't Pas send in the Robot Armies to 
wipe out the inhumi? That's a good question. At this point, I can only 
assume that the Plan of Pas means humans must fend for themselves. Which 
carries this corollary: That the robots are only for the Whorl, and the 
Whorl was planned all along to make more than one stop.

Patera One-headed Nutria

---

From: Kevin J. Maroney <kmaroney at ungames.com>
Date: Mon, 12 Mar 2001 19:02:43 +0000

>Whorl was planned all along to make more than one stop.

"What was Typhon's purpose in lanunching the Whorl and was the
Blue/Green system the intended destination?"  Knowing Typhon as I do,
he probably had at least half a dozen purposes; but certainly one of
the chief must have been self-aggrandizement -- to return human kind
to the stars would be a very great thing indeed.  Yes, the Blue-Green
system was the intended destination.
<...>
Typhon did not know about the inhumi [and] would have done
everything possible to keep them out of the Whorl if he had.
--Gene Wolfe, 14 Jun 1997 
<http://www.urth.net/whorl/archives/v0006/0350.shtml>

I suppose it's possible to assume that Typhon was a Neighbor and came to
Urth as its conquerer but somehow didn't know about the inhumi. But that
seems to be stretching credulity to support a theory which doesn't provide
interesting answers to any questions. 

-- 
   Kevin Maroney | Unplugged Games 
   kmaroney at ungames.com | (212) 777-1190

---

From: Adam Stephanides <adamsteph at earthlink.net>
Date: Mon, 12 Mar 2001 21:59:38 +0000

on 3/12/01 12:14 PM, Robert Borski at rborski at charter.net wrote:

> there's evidence that the Neighbors know how to bioengineer
> shape-shifting in the inhumi

Where?  Not in Chapter 23 of IGJ, where Horn gives Hide the lesson on the
inhumi and the Neighbors.

> because it's the least complicated. As a Neighbor, he's simply speaking his

I may be missing something again, but I don't see the problem here.  The
Mother is a goddess of the Neighbors; why wouldn't she have been able to
learn their language and teach it to Seawrack?  And Seawrack could have
taught Horn enough to translate the few lines he does (there's no need to
assume it's an impromptu translation; he could have heard the same song in
the boat with Seawrack).

--Adam