# BLUE spoilers *The Whorl list — 4 messages, 4 voices, 12 Oct 1999* > 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. --- ### Michael Andre-Driussi *12 Oct 1999, 14:24* 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= *This is WHORL, for discussion of Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun. --- ### Kevin J. Maroney *12 Oct 1999, 17:45 · follows Michael Andre-Driussi* > At 02:24 PM 10/12/99 -0700, Mantis wrote: > 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. 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 *This is WHORL, for discussion of Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun. --- ### Jim Jordan *13 Oct 1999, 10:11 · follows Kevin J. Maroney* > At 02:24 PM 10/12/99 -0700, Mantoid wrote: > > 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. 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. > 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.) 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. > 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. 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 *This is WHORL, for discussion of Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun. --- ### Alex David Groce *13 Oct 1999, 12:04 · follows Jim Jordan* 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 *This is WHORL, for discussion of Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun. ``` ---