# Derivation of talus

*The Whorl list — 3 messages, 3 voices, 19 May 1998*

<https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/whorl/477>

> 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.

---

### Brownes3
*19 May 1998, 13:28*

I don't recall anyone posting a possible derivation of the term of talus on
this, list,although I remember at one point several posts saying "talus" was
still a mystery.

Here's my try:

I'm re-reading Nightside and came to the passage that describes the painting
of Pas creating the Whorl. The message mentions two taluses of a particularly
lovely shade of butter yellow. Obviously, they are bulldozers, but a certain
kind -- yellow is the brand color of Caterpillar Tractors. So I went looking
for associations with caterpillars or butterliesa and such.

I needn't have been so devious.  According to Webster's, a talus is:

"a slope formed by an accumulation  of rock debris."

So a talus is named after the thing it makes:  the slope the bulldozer blade
leaves in the rubbled after it pulls back.

What do y'all think?

Rich Browne

---

### Peter Westlake
*19 May 1998, 12:47 · follows Brownes3*

> At 09:28 1998-05-19 EDT, Brownes3 wrote:
> I don't recall anyone posting a possible derivation of the term of talus on
> this, list,although I remember at one point several posts saying "talus" was
> still a mystery.

See <http://www.gbso.net/zuki/GREEK.HTM#TALOS>, which says "In Greek
mythology, Talos was a bronze man given to Europa by Zeus to guard
Crete. He would clutch people to his breast and jump into a fire so
that they were burnt alive."


Spectacled bear.

---

### David_Lebling
*26 May 1998, 09:38 · follows Peter Westlake*

The nice thing about "talus" as a term for the bulldozer-guard-robots is
that the word also fits nicely within Wolfe's naming scheme, in that
talus is rock debris, or a pile of such debris making up a slope.

So, we have the resonance with the Talos of mythical Crete (which Wolfe
has written about in terms that suggest he "believes" it to have been a
robot), and the nice fit with the Whorl's naming scheme, and the
definitional parallel that the taluses of the Whorl are, compared to the
soldiers, "debris," in that they are somewhat inferior jury-rigged
copies of the real thing.

     -- viz

---