Subject: (whorl) BLUE spoilers

From: Michael Andre-Driussi <mantis at sirius.com>
Date: Tue, 12 Oct 1999 14:24:18 +0000

Wombat had the subjective time for the flight of the Whorl but wanted to
know what the objective time was.

Subjective time: 332 years, exactly.
Objective time: 1000 years, roughly (III, 242).

This ratio (332:1000) makes it look like a velocity of around 95% c.  And
the target star would seem to be over 900 light years from Urth.

Jim Jordan (howdie, stranger!) wondered where Horn might have been infused
with Silkiness in OBW.

Seems to me the most likely spot would be that =pit= where he =died=!
Remember how we all went over the weird details of Silk dying in that pit
and/or cave-in, then being "found" (revived? resurrected?) by an inhumi
(Q)?  The same thing happens here, with many of the same odd details, but
all sorts of new complications.

And iirc it is after the pit-death thing that Horn kills the animal that
the others are so impressed by (that is, he might be enhanced at that
point).

(Of course, how a hypothetical, blood-borne Silk virus could have gotten
from Q to our new vampire friend is a very puzzling exercise.)

Jim Jordan was wondering about the "timer" going off, to signal landing.
Right, that would appear to be the end of Pas's Planned Time (II, 235)
which was about 100 years before the events in TBOTLS.  If true, then the
Whorl had been orbiting the Short Sun for 100 years.  And then it seems
like Pas was killed because the other gods didn't want to break up their
cozy little whorl.

(To return to the Wombat section above:) If the Whorl arrived in the target
system on time, 100 years ago, then . . .

Subjective flight time: 232 years
Objective flight time:  900 years

Which is a tad faster than the other model, but still under 99% c.

=mantis=

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From: Kevin J. Maroney <kmaroney at crossover.com>
Date: Tue, 12 Oct 1999 17:45:57 +0000

>Subjective time: 332 years, exactly.

I'm sure you've said this before, but what's your cite on that?

Wombat, a.k.a. Kevin Maroney kmaroney at crossover.com
Kitchen Staff Supervisor, New York Review of Science Fiction
http://ebbs.english.vt.edu/olp/nyrsf/nyrsf.html

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From: Jim Jordan <jbjordan at gnt.net>
Date: Wed, 13 Oct 1999 10:11:18 +0000

>all sorts of new complications.

	Good thought. I'm still puzzled at how Horn could have written TBLS
without some kind of help, which is why I suggested a possible earlier info
dump at Manefraim. But there is more going on here, such as Horn's eventual
new body. Additionally, we not only have the death & resuscitation scene in
the pit (Biblical imagery, BTW, as with Joseph, Jeremiah, etc.), but
something also is due to happen on Green. We'll have to see if the death on
Green is followed by resurrection in this new taller body. Clearly we're
into a complicated area that we'll just have to wait to learn more about.
Shuckz.

>from Q to our new vampire friend is a very puzzling exercise.)

	What we need is to appoint someone who is rereading the book to note all
the places where Horn is successful or unsuccessful in shooting a
threatening animal/person, or spearing a fish. When do these happen? Then
we can begin to formulate a hypothesis.
	Here's another. Tell me, O Mantis, what you think of this: Horn in Gaon is
tall. He is a torturer and executioner. He talks about a big long sword
that he got at some point. Sound familiar? So, just WHO got dumped into him
besides Silk? WHOSE body is this? Hey, I dunno. Whaddaya think?
	I'm also thinking that the Distant Possibility I just described was an
Avatar of the New Sun, and anyone whose personality got dumped into him,
via alzabo juice, actually came to life inside of him and accompanied him
from then on as a living personality (unlike what happened to ordinarily
folks who ate alzaboized corpses). Our Later Horn seems "confused" about
who he is, just like my Distant Possibility, who sometimes writes as
Thecla. Sometimes he is Horn, and feels really guilty about his adultery.
Other times he does not seem to be bothered much by it, which is not a
Silkian response, but does fit our Distant Possibility.
	At a literary level, and as a possible HINT, I also notice that Later
Horn, like my Distant Possibility, winds up as a kind of ruler and judge in
a primitive tribe for a long time, before finally leaving.
	Fynallee, I guess we are "sure" that the witchette Merryn is the brother
of DP, and is it possible that she employs witchly astral powers to project
DP to the situation in the world of Silk and Horn?
	So, whaddaya think? 
	There's another possibility to toy with. If Erebus and Abaia came from
Blue to Urth, then consider that the alzabo might have come from Green. The
abilities of the alzabo are much like those of the inhumi, especially the
ability to mimic. A possible variant of the same race of creatures? Maybe
Horn in Green will encounter an alzabo, and alzaboize some people into
himself. Of course, unlike Severian, he'd only get memories, not
resurrected personalities. 

>like Pas was killed because the other gods didn't want to break up their

	Hmmm. Possibility 1: Whorl arrives in Blue-Green system. Invaded by
inhumi. Whoa! Surprise! Maybe we'd better keep these people on the Whorl.
Maybe we other gods need to protect them from the Plan of Pas. In short,
maybe our motives are mixed. Remember that Wolfe's characters are never
wholly evil or wholly good -- they are on a spectrum, with Silk at the
pretty good end and Typhon at the pretty bad end. And some of the gods of
Mainframe seem to love and care for humanity. But then the Whorl starts to
die, and the "loving and protective plan" of Pas's family becomes
impossible to continue...
	Possibility 2: The B/G system was not the original goal, but the Whorl was
stopped in transit by the inhumi. Let say that they drank the blood of the
Whorl's sailors, and learned how to stop the Whorl. It's been a while since
I read TBLS, so maybe this is easily disproved. Do we know whether B/G was
the original destination? Do we know what happened to the sailors of the
Whorl? If so, I cannot recall it. Help!

Nutria

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From: Alex David Groce <alex_groce at gs246.sp.cs.cmu.edu>
Date: Wed, 13 Oct 1999 12:04:36 +0000

Another possible motive for delaying the embarkation, even if Blue/Green is
the Whorl's destination:  by the time of arrival, Pas seems to be communicating
less and not as "in control" as presumably at the start of the voyage.  On
Blue, the gods are even less active than on the Whorl (for obvious reasons),
but there are hints of gods arriving on Blue.  Perhaps Pas's plan would have
put him back definitively in control of things and so the other gods delayed
the plan for as long as possible (or, more precisely, Echidna delayed as long
as possible).

Now they are beginning to figure out how to show up on Blue.  Indeed, Passilk
is probably already there, in some form or other.  Of course, the references
to gods dropping down from the Whorl could refer to Horn's Silkized return--
or Passilkized return.  And bearing in mind what Nutria just said, surely
the Severian at the end of New Sun is in some ways more of a "god" than Pas
& co.

"And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free." John 8:32
--
Alex David Groce (agroce+ at cs.cmu.edu)
Ph.D. Student, Carnegie Mellon University - Computer Science Department
8112 Wean Hall (412)-268-3066
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~agroce