{ "export": { "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/whorl/479", "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": 479, "subject": "Talus derivation", "messages": 2, "voices": 2, "first": "1998-05-22T12:15:40+00:00", "last": "1998-05-22T14:25:19+00:00" }, "messages": [ { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Brownes3", "address": "brownes3 at aol.com" }, "date": "1998-05-22T14:25:19+00:00", "subject": "(whorl) Talus derivation", "in_reply_to": null, "reply_link": null, "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Talos as a guard has some appeal, but I don't think it fills the bill.\n\nWolfe is quite familiar with both engineering and mythological terms, and\ncapable of using either. I don't think he'd turn to mythology to name the\nprime mover of civil engineering, IMO.\n\nFurther, talus deriving from Talos gets the sequence of events wrong. First\ncame the bulldozers that Pas used to create the whorl. Then the personal\narmored vehicles turned up. People would have looked at the tracked vehicles\nand thought they looked bulldozers and used the existing term \"talus\" to\ndescribe the new guardian vehicles. \n\nFinally I'd apply Occam's Razor: the \"heap of rubble\" derivation doesn't\nrequire any change in spelling.\n\nI hope we hear more about the talus in \"Book of the Short Sun\". The scene in\nExodus with the talus makers whet my appetite and raised more questions than\nit answered. \n\nHow intelligent is a talus? As Auk said in \"Nightside\", it takes a lot money\nto bribe a talus. They must know enough to realize the price they need to\npayoff. \n\nWhat happens to a \"paid-off\" talus? I don't believe we've met any of them.\n\nDid Incus (?) and his ilk graft artifical intelligence unto bulldozer-taluses,\nor construct them de novo? Afterall, the yellow talus doesn't appear other\nthan in paintings of Pas creating the Whorl, and there isn't any new\nconstruction going on, nor any clearing of the debris around Lake Limna. What\nbecame of the yellow taluses?\n\nRich Browne" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Mark Millman", "address": "mark_millman at hmco.com" }, "date": "1998-05-22T12:15:40+00:00", "subject": "Re: (whorl) Talus derivation", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "On Friday 22 May 1998, Rich Browne wrote:\nDid Incus (?) and his ilk graft artifical intelligence\nunto bulldozer-taluses, or construct them de novo?\nAfterall, the yellow talus doesn't appear other than\nin paintings of Pas creating the Whorl, and there\nisn't any new construction going on, nor any clearing\nof the debris around Lake Limna. What became\nof the yellow taluses?" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "About the word: \"talus\" is also both what should be the Latin spelling of\nthe Greek \"Talos\" (and, with the Spanish terms and formal Church hierarchy\nof BotLS, Latin as a source of words, rather than the Greek of BotNS, seems\nlikely), and the term for the human ankle-bone.\n\nI can see a couple of possibilities for the origin of the Whorl's taluses.\nPerhaps some bulldozers were left in the Whorl in case they should be\nneeded. They may have been either dumb machines comparable to the ones we\nhave now, or they may have been self-supervising robots that could be given\ninstructions and left to do the work on their own. In the former case, the\nbulldozers may have been converted for other uses and, by analogy with the\nchems, at that time given minds of their own. In the latter case, repairs\nor refurbishment may have given the Whorl's artisans the opportunity to add\na \"human face\" to the taluses that they worked on, to make it easier to\ncommunicate with them, to make them more intimidating, or simply because it\nwas deemed more fitting (in an abstract esthetic way). After a while, the\nyellow paint would undoubtedly have become worn and been replaced or\npolished away. Alternatively, the builders of the original talus may have\nseen the pictures of Typhon's bulldozers (though all the machines\nthemselves had been removed before the Whorl's voyage began) and copied the\ndesign to make use of the caterpillar treads (which seem, as I recall, to\nbe unique to taluses in BotLS). In the latter case, there would be no need\nfor the bulldozers to have been known as taluses; the name could have been\napplied to them in recognition of the similarity after it had become common\nfor the guards. The fact that the taluses run on fish-oil seems to suggest\nthat this is the more likely path; though we don't know what powers such\ndevices as Blood's floater, it seems that little or no provision was made\nfor combustible fuels (unless you want to take the fish themselves as\nhaving been placed in the Whorl as a source of oil, in addition to food,\nenvironmental maintenance, etc.; this would suggest that other cities, more\ndistant from large bodies of water, might grow crops from which fuel oils\ncould be pressed). (By the way, the fish-oil means that taluses are very\nlikely computers that run on internal-combustion engines! Undoubtedly the\nengines are merely used to charge batteries, but I like the steampunk\npossibilities inherent in the idea of an electromechanical computer running\non an oil-burning engine. It accords well with the influences of Dickens\nand Chesterton, and with the canting speech, too.) Of course, the (non-IC)\nengines of any converted bulldozers could have been cannibalized for\nhigh-status items such as floaters, too.\n\nBut ultimately, I don't think we have enough information to answer the\nquestion. Pity, that.\n\nNacre" } ] } ] }