Rudesind and the moon

All right, with all this talk of the differences between the environment of Blue and the environment of Urth, with one of the big ones being that "green" (lune) was a lot closer, according to Hoof, than Green, I thought I remembered years ago puzzling over a shift in the moon in one work of Wolfe's. Low and behold, when I look back, it's right there in Chapter V of Shadow of the Torturer, (page 40 in my SFBC edition of the book of the new sun, at the end of the chapter. The look at the picture of Buzz (or whoever) with the flag and Rudesind the curator says, "Now it is, yes [more fertile]. This was done before they got it irigated. See that gray-brown? In those times, that's what you'd see if you looked up at her. Not green like she is now. DIDN'T SEEM SO BIG EITHER, because it wasn't so close in - what's what old Branwallader used to say. Now there's trees enough on it to hide Nilammon, as the saw goes." (SHADOW, Chapter V) So we know that the moon has moved, and that it could be due to decreased gravity (or some kind of orbitale decay) or something on the part of the sun, and that, more importantly, that isn't an irreconcilable change with Ushas as Blue. Now I am interested in figuring out how far 30,000 leagues is (the distance between Blue and Green at confluence) Still haven't accounted for that doubling of limbs ... damn. Marc Aramini

Yeah, good point. Today we say the dynamics of the Earth-Moon system is chaotic and its evolution cannot be predicted. When Wolfe wrote TBOTNS the consensus was still that the orbit could be predicted, and that the moon was slowly being driven furthur from the earth by tidal forces. Why Wolfe wrote it was "closer in" I don't know. Maybe he knew its orbit was changing but got the sign wrong. I read Rudesind's statement merely as a hint that massve amounts of time have passed: Andy R ----- Original Message -----