{ "export": { "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/whorl/34", "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": 34, "subject": "several things", "messages": 1, "voices": 1, "first": "1997-01-20T10:20:17+00:00", "last": "1997-01-20T10:20:17+00:00" }, "messages": [ { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Fernando Q. Gouvea", "address": "fqgouvea at colby.edu" }, "date": "1997-01-20T10:20:17+00:00", "subject": "(whorl) several things", "in_reply_to": null, "reply_link": null, "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Hello, all.\n\nI just had a fun time reading the list archives. Lots of interesting things\nthere! Some comments:\n\n1) Quetzal - \n\nHe seems less ambiguous to me than to most of the people who wrote. My\ntendency was to see him as a kind of \"fellow-traveler\": at the moment, his\ngoals match Silk's, he wants to get people to get off the Whorl. It seems\nclear to me that he is the one who attacked Teasel, and he certainly did\nsuck the blood of the little boy who was bitten by a snake (presumably that\nhelped the boy?). He is not completely evil (who is?), and he does seem to\ndevelop some affection for some of the people around him, but his goal all\nalong seems to be to get people to Green.\n\nAs to where he came from, someone said there were indications he was on the\nship from the beginning. If so, I missed them; what are they? My\nassumptions were (a) that the Whorl has been in the Blue/Green system for\nquite a while, and (b) that somehow Quetzal got on board (doesn't the\npostscript suggest the inhumi can move from Green to Blue?).\n\nIs he a shape changer? I had the impression that it was more that he had\nsome kind of power to cloud people's minds, so that they saw (or did not\nsee) what Quetzal wanted them to see. I see his explanation (involving the\nblack robe) as disingenuous. This fits Mucor's \"the man who isn't there\"\ndescription.\n\n2) The gammadion-\n\nThis one caught me by surprise; it never occurred to me to look it up. The\npossibility that it is a swastika is quite intriguing. Can someone offer up\na picture of what a \"voided Greek cross\" looks like? (By the way, some\npeople seemed to assume a cross-shaped-void, but a \"voided cross\" has to be\na cross that somehow was voided, no?)\n\n3) Horn-\n\nI haven't yet reread the set with the idea of looking for evidence of Horn\nas narrator... But one thing that occurred to me was the following. As I\nread the early books, I noticed that Silk is somewhat opaque. One doesn't\nalways know what he is thinking or feeling. In contrast to Severian, who\nclearly knows more than he tells, I got the feeling that I understood\ncertain things better than the narrator. This makes sense if Horn is\nnarrator, since Silk seems to have remained somewhat opaque to him. \n\nRemember, also, that Horn is very good at imitating Silk's voice and ways\nof speaking. \n\nAnother remark is that there's some analogy to the gospel of John here,\nsince Horn seems to conclude his book as an old man. Is he giving us Silk\nas he sees him after many years of thinking about what the man was like?\n\n4) The scene at the Talus factory-\n\nWell, besides serving the purposes that have already been pointed out, this\nscene allows Wolfe to show off his engineering background a bit, partly as\na response to all the critics who insist in classifying his books as\nfantasy. But I agree that some extra thought should go into what the scene\nis for. It is certainly one more illustration of the idea that all the\nhustle and bustle in which various governments and factions are engaged is\nultimately pointless, but it's too extended to be only that. Perhaps\nanother point is that the scene gives us a pretty good measure of the level\nof technology present in the Whorl.\n\n5) Some other remarks-\n\nIn the first three books, moments from the life of Christ are mentioned\n(either they were part of Silk's illumination by the Outsider or Silk knew\nabout them from the writings): the cleansing of the temple in the first\nbook, the triumphal entry in the second, the crucifixion in the third. Is\nthere one in the fourth book?\n\nGiven that Wolfe has established a connection with the Book of the New Sun\nby having Typhon be the creator of the Whorl, are there other links? Jonas,\nin the BotNS, is a chem, no? And the inhumi fit into the large set of alien\nmenaces roaming Urth, though I don't recall a direct mention of them.\n\nWhat is one to make of the appearance of Patera Pike's ghost?\n\nI wouldn't put too much weight on the analogy between the Blue/Green system\nand the one in the Fifth Head of Cerberus. Wolfe often uses similar ideas\nand themes. There are several green men, for example, in several books, \nthe goddess in There Are Doors appears in the Soldier books too, and there\nare real similarities between the house of the narrator in Fifth Head and\nthe House Absolute in BotNS." }, { "kind": "sig", "depth": 0, "text": "Fernando Q. Gouvea\t\t\t\nChair, Dept. of Math & CS\t\tEditor, MAA Online\nColby College\t\t\t\thttp://www.maa.org\nfqgouvea at colby.edu\t\t\tfqgouvea at maa.org\n==========================================================\n\nRenning's Maxim:\n\tMan is the highest animal. Man does the classifying.\n\n\n\nQuestions or problems to whorl-owner at lists.best.com" } ] } ] }