{ "export": { "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/whorl/1351", "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": 1351, "subject": "Why the Whorl left early", "messages": 4, "voices": 3, "first": "2001-04-13T07:46:37+00:00", "last": "2001-04-17T11:24:36+00:00" }, "messages": [ { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Nicholas Gevers", "address": "vermoulian at yahoo.com" }, "date": "2001-04-13T07:46:37+00:00", "subject": "(whorl) Why the Whorl left early", "in_reply_to": null, "reply_link": null, "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Thanks to everyone who responded to my utopian\ntheorisings; I was testing the waters with some ideas\nfor a paper on TBSS...\n\nOne point: I think that GW intends us to understand\nthat the Whorl leaves very quickly after Silk and Co\nreturn to it after RTW. Reason: Silk-in-Mainframe and\nthe corporeal Silk don't want Pas descending to Blue\nwith Mainframe and all, for the reasons Silk gave\nRemora and because the Whorl needs Pas and Mainframe\nwhere they are. Thus: emergency departure, far swifter\nthan M'to would have thought possible.\n\n--Nick Gevers." } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Michael Straight", "address": "straight at email.unc.edu" }, "date": "2001-04-13T17:55:26+00:00", "subject": "Re: (whorl) Why the Whorl left early", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "On Fri, 13 Apr 2001, [iso-8859-1] Nicholas Gevers wrote:\nOne point: I think that GW intends us to understand\nthat the Whorl leaves very quickly after Silk and Co\nreturn to it after RTW. Reason: Silk-in-Mainframe and\nthe corporeal Silk don't want Pas descending to Blue\nwith Mainframe and all, for the reasons Silk gave\nRemora and because the Whorl needs Pas and Mainframe\nwhere they are. Thus: emergency departure, far swifter\nthan M'to would have thought possible." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "But if Silk-in-Mainframe is enough in charge that he can get the Whorl to\nleave early, he's probably enough in charge to prevent \"Pas\" from escaping\nto Blue.\n\nBut then I'm of the opinion that \"Passilk\" implies that the only Pas left\nin Mainframe is a Pas that is mostly controlled by Silk's downloaded\npersona anyway.\n\n-Rostrum\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": "2001-04-17T08:53:08+00:00", "subject": "Re: (whorl) Why the Whorl left early", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "on 4/13/01 4:55 PM, Michael Straight at straight at email.unc.edu wrote:\nOn Fri, 13 Apr 2001, [iso-8859-1] Nicholas Gevers wrote:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "One point: I think that GW intends us to understand\nthat the Whorl leaves very quickly after Silk and Co\nreturn to it after RTW." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Earlier, I posted an argument that the Whorl does not leave very quickly,\nbut decades after Silk and Co. depart (to be pedantic, we don't know when\nthey arrive at the Whorl, or if they do at all)." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "Reason: Silk-in-Mainframe and\nthe corporeal Silk don't want Pas descending to Blue\nwith Mainframe and all, for the reasons Silk gave\nRemora and because the Whorl needs Pas and Mainframe\nwhere they are. Thus: emergency departure, far swifter\nthan M'to would have thought possible." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "But if Silk-in-Mainframe is enough in charge that he can get the Whorl to\nleave early, he's probably enough in charge to prevent \"Pas\" from escaping\nto Blue." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Indeed, how could Mainframe be gotten onto a loader and off the Whorl\nwithout the cooperation of the Whorl's human inhabitants? (If you argue\nthat the godlings could do it, then conversely they would also have the\npower to prevent the emergency repairs.)\n\nAlso, given the level of technology on Blue, it will be a generation at\nminimum before the colonists there are capable of powering and maintaining\nMainframe. If it were to come down now, they might not even be able to\npreserve its physical integrity, since they can't stop the landers from\nbeing looted and rendered inoperable.\n\nIn fact, I'm not at all sure what Horn means when he says that Mainframe\nwill come to Blue. We don't know, either, on what grounds he says this;\nit's not in his conversation with the surgeon.\n\n--Adam\n\n\n*This is WHORL, for discussion of Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun." } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Michael Straight", "address": "straight at email.unc.edu" }, "date": "2001-04-17T11:24:36+00:00", "subject": "Re: (whorl) Why the Whorl left early", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "On Tue, 17 Apr 2001, Adam Stephanides wrote:\nAlso, given the level of technology on Blue, it will be a generation at\nminimum before the colonists there are capable of powering and maintaining\nMainframe. If it were to come down now, they might not even be able to\npreserve its physical integrity, since they can't stop the landers from\nbeing looted and rendered inoperable.\n\nIn fact, I'm not at all sure what Horn means when he says that Mainframe\nwill come to Blue. We don't know, either, on what grounds he says this;\nit's not in his conversation with the surgeon." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I read this as metonymy (like when Jews refer to G-d as \"Heaven\"); he\nmeans that the gods of Mainframe will come to Blue, presumably by\nposessing humans or animals, not that some (big?) physical computer will\nbe brought to Blue.\n\nAnd based on Horn's comments about the possibility of getting a sacred\nwindow working on Blue, at least one of us (Horn or me) drastically\nmisunderstands how the things work. That *would* require bringing\nMainframe itself to Blue.\n\n-Rostrum\n\n\n*This is WHORL, for discussion of Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun." } ] } ] }