Subject: (whorl) viz's Whorlography

From: m.driussi <m.driussi at genie.com>
Date: Mon, 05 May 1997 05:24:00 +0000

[Posted from WHORL, the mailing list for Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun]

Reply:  Item #0057628 from WHORL at LISTS.BEST.COM@INET01#

vizcacha,

I agree with your model except for the part about Viron being in the
middle--don't you think it is closer to the East end of the cylinder?
I always got that impression, but maybe that's just because the East
Pole has a name (Main Frame) and can be seen.

To corroborate with the rest: Using a different approach that I
outlined earlier, if we assume an average distance between cities of
30 leagues (90 miles), we can assign/guestimate how many cities are
on a one-strip segment of circumference (seems like five cities would
be a minimum here, since that would allow for one known neighbor
city on either side of a given city and two nameless sky cities
above) and then go the length of the cylinder.

So if a ring of five cities (5 x 30 leagues = 150 leagues
circumference), then the length would have to be at least 40 cities
(40 x 30 = 1200 leagues) to meet the "couple hundred" cities mark
(literally and minimally).

This particular example gives an asteroid with a diameter of 143
miles . . . but it is 3,600 miles long!  (So okay, let's increase the
cities on the circumference to 24, turning the whole whorl into a big
sundial!  24 cities x 30 leagues = 720 leagues circ.; 9 cities x 30
leagues = 270 leagues length.) ("Pencil" and "fruit cup can"?)

Probably something in between.

Obviously the figures are bigger if we use 50 leagues (the distance
between Viron and Palustria) as the average.

=mantis=