{ "export": { "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/whorl/810", "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": 810, "subject": "Horn as antihero; Horn's body", "messages": 3, "voices": 3, "first": "2000-04-05T23:36:49+00:00", "last": "2000-04-06T10:32:21+00:00" }, "messages": [ { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Adam Stephanides", "address": "adamsteph at earthlink.net" }, "date": "2000-04-05T23:36:49+00:00", "subject": "(whorl) Re: Horn as antihero; Horn's body", "in_reply_to": null, "reply_link": null, "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "alga wrote:\n\nrn refers to the episode in the pit, always, as the worst event of his life. I don't think he was altogether rational at the time." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I agree that of the sins I listed, Horn's betrayal of his family in the\npit is the easiest to forgive; and I may have been led by my rhetoric to\nspeak more harshly of it than it deserves. But it was a real shock to\nme when I read it, especially since Horn's offer to Krait was\nspontaneous. I think that there are very few authors aside from Wolfe\nwho would risk alienating their audience by allowing a\nsympathetically-intended protagonist to do what Horn does, no matter\nwhat the provocation. (I'm still undecided whether or not Horn is indeed\nsympathetically intended.)" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Adam wrote:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "if Horn is inhabiting Silk's body,\nwhy doesn't he know it? That he doesn't know it is shown by Horn's\nthoughts on p. 66: Silk \"might have landed on some part of Blue remote\nfrom us. (This still seems possible to me, as I wrote when I began this\nstraggling history.) ... Here I am in a part of Blue a very considerable\ndistance from New Viron, and hear nothing of Silk; but that means\nnothing. If he were a hundred leagues east of Gaon and me--or on\nShadelow--it would explain everything.\" From this passage, it seems\nclear that Horn does not even know whether Silk was on the Whorl when he\nreturned." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "It could be argued that Horn is referring to another lander that\nreturned from the _Whorl_ after Horn's revisitation, which Silk might\nhave been on; but the wording of the next-to-last sentence, which\nimplies that Silk is not now at Gaon _or_ New Viron, makes this\nunlikely. Furthermore, if Horn has Silk's body, and Silk is on Blue,\nit's presumably in another body, in which case there would be no need to\ninvoke distance to explain why Silk is unknown. (Horn clearly thinks\nthat if Silk is on Blue, he is trying to avoid being found.)" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Silk could also be dead. Or he could be in Mainframe, part of Pas or not." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "My point was that Horn apparently thinks that Silk may have been on Blue\nall the time he (Horn) was going to _Whorl_ and back. And it's hard to\nsee how he could think this if he knew he was in Silk's body." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "And if Horn knows he is in Silk's body, why doesn't he say so? True, he\nnever explicitly says that he is in a new or transformed body either.\nBut if he were in Silk's body, this would have more relevance, given his\nfrequent references to his failure to find Silk." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "See above. Horn may think that if he, Horn, is in Silk's body, then the real Silk, whom he reveres and truly wants to find, may be in another body." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "As I said above, if Horn thinks Silk is in another body, and doesn't\nwant to be found, then there is no need for him to cite distance as a\npossible reason why Silk might be on Blue and yet not found. A Silk in\nanother body and hiding his identity would be virtually impossible to\nfind, even if he were living next door to Horn.\n\nAnd Silk's possibly being in another body wouldn't explain why Horn\ndoesn't mention being in Silk's body.\n\n--Adam\n\n*This is WHORL, for discussion of Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun." } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "mark millman", "address": "millman at us.ncipher.com" }, "date": "2000-04-06T10:05:27+00:00", "subject": "Re: (whorl) Re: Horn as antihero; Horn's body", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "At 11:36 pm (-0700) on 5 April 2000, Adam Stephanides wrote:\nAt 11:05 pm EDT on 3 April 2000, alga wrote:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "See above. Horn may think that if he, Horn, \nis in Silk's body, then the real Silk, whom he \nreveres and truly wants to find, may be in \nanother body." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "As I said above, if Horn thinks Silk is in another body, \nand doesn't want to be found, then there is no need \nfor him to cite distance as a possible reason why Silk \nmight be on Blue and yet not found. A Silk in another \nbody and hiding his identity would be virtually impos-\nsible to find, even if he were living next door to Horn.\n\nAnd Silk's possibly being in another body wouldn't ex-\nplain why Horn doesn't mention being in Silk's body." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Well, if Silk were in a two-headed Pas-body, he'd certainly be a\ntopic of conversation and very unlikely to pass anywhere with-\nout notice. We probably won't have much evidence on this ei-\nther way until Horn makes it back to the _Whorl_. \n\nThis argument, of course, doesn't address why Horn doesn't say\nthat he is (or thinks he is) in Silk's body. I think that he is aware\nthat he looks like Silk--I believe he thinks that's why the Gaonese\nmade him Rajan--but we can't yet say whether he's in the body \nformerly belonging to Silk, or in another one that's very like or\nidentical to it.\n\nNacre\n\n*This is WHORL, for discussion of Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun." } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Michael Straight", "address": "straight at email.unc.edu" }, "date": "2000-04-06T10:32:21+00:00", "subject": "Re: (whorl) Re: Horn as antihero; Horn's body", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "On Thu, 6 Apr 2000, mark millman wrote:\nWell, if Silk were in a two-headed Pas-body, he'd certainly be a\ntopic of conversation and very unlikely to pass anywhere with-\nout notice. We probably won't have much evidence on this ei-\nther way until Horn makes it back to the _Whorl_. " }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "And I don't think we'll see Silk's consciousness in a two-headed Pas body,\nI think we'll either see a fragment of Pas in Silk's body (the two minds\nmaking two heads) or Silk's consciousness being used to paste together the\nsplinters of the \"dead\" Pas program in Mainframe (again, two heads).\n\n-Rostrum\n\n\n*This is WHORL, for discussion of Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun." } ] } ] }