{ "export": { "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/whorl/815", "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": 815, "subject": "Digest whorl.v010.n101", "messages": 4, "voices": 4, "first": "2000-04-09T15:12:58+00:00", "last": "2000-04-10T21:48:43+00:00" }, "messages": [ { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Kieran Mullen", "address": "kieran at phyast.nhn.ou.edu" }, "date": "2000-04-09T15:12:58+00:00", "subject": "(whorl) Re: Digest whorl.v010.n101", "in_reply_to": null, "reply_link": null, "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "From whorl-errors at lists.best.com Sun Apr 9 13:19:29 CDT 2000\n--------------- MESSAGE whorl.v010.n101.3 ---------------\n\nFrom: \"Timothy Reilly\" \nSubject: April Fool's Day posts" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "_Fascinating_ idea to start TBLS in Vol 3. Maybe if I had I would've\nenjoyed it more. On the other hand maybe it's just hard for Australians to\nenjoy a series where a murderously malevolent goddess is named after a cute\nlittle marsupial like an echidna. (For those who don't know - or possess\nLexicon Urthus - an echidna is similar to a big hedgehog, and even more\nharmless). It's as if the gods are named Pas, Scylla, Goofy, Tartarous..." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Tim" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": " No doubt half a hundred people will write to you that the definition of \nechidna:\n \n echidna \\E*chid\"na\\, n. [L., a viper, adder, Gr. ?.] 1. (Gr. Myth.) A \nmonster, half maid and half serpent.\n \n (Source: Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary)\n \nIs probably the one you want. Unless of course Wolfe meant:\n\n Echidna: Constraint logic programming embedded in an object-oriented \nlanguage. The syntax is an extension of Edinburgh Prolog.\n\n [\"Hierarchical Arc Consistency Applied to Numeric Processing in Constraint \nLogic Programming\", G. Sidebottom et al, TR-91-06, CSS-IS, Simon Fraser U, and \nComp Intell 8(4) (1992)].\n \n \nsince she *is* a computer construct... Nah... ;-).\n\n*This is WHORL, for discussion of Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun." } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Alice Turner", "address": "akt at attglobal.net" }, "date": "2000-04-09T21:11:58+00:00", "subject": "(whorl) Re: Digest whorl.v010.n101", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Ratty remarked:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "Adam asked:\n\n.> Is there textual evidence from TBOTLS that Silk may be in a two-headed\nPas body? (It's been a while since I reread it.)\n\nNear the end of the last book Kypris appears in a Window and says\nseductively, \"Silk, wouldn't you like to be like Pas? We'd be together\nthen....They can scan you in at Mainframe. As I was scanned, Silk, with\nhim. He held my hand....You'll go on with your life, Silk. Just as it is." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "You'd be Pas too. And he would be you. Look.\"" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "And she shows him the image of a \"bronze-limbed man with rippling muscles\nand two heads.\" One is Silk's.\n\nBut there isn't the least textual evidence that he took her up on it." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "There's no evidence that he didn't either, of course, which is also most\nlupine. I suppose we'll eventually find out. \nGiven the \"theology\" of the narrative, which is never far from the\nsurface, I've wondered about this. Silk's ascension to \"heaven\" (past the\n\"border mountains,\" to quote an old hymn), following his death and\nresurrection and preceding his return in the final conflagration of (his\npart of) the Whorl, closely follows the New Testament narrative. In the\ncited passage, Wolfe at least alludes to Silk's ascension to \"the right\nhand of the Father,\" with Kypris as a surrogate for the Holy Spirit. " }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Not so closely as all that. Twenty-two years, IIRC, intervene. We have to assume, from the logic of fiction, that Silk has been alive and active, either on the Whorl or on Green (or on Blue, possibly) during that entire time. My vote puts him on the Whorl." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": " The question raised in my mind is this: Is the Pas of the Whorl the \"evil\nTyphon\" of earth? Clearly he originated there, but he actually seems to be\nthe \"good god\" of the Whorl. If this be the case, then for Silk to allow a\ntranscript of himself to be entered into Mainframe would not be out of\naccord with his character. On the other hand, this might be something like\n\"The Last Temptation of Silk,\" which he should reject. I've never sorted\nthis question out. I suspect that time will tell, and we'll find out\neventually." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I think we probably will find out. But, as I said earlier, I think Pas is mostly dead. Nor is there much evidence that he was good. Kypris liked him, but he was her ticket to the movies, wasn't he? None of the others seemed to like him, and I doubt that you and I would have, either." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "\"Bronze limbed\" is right out of the Bible, I suspect. The ascended Christ\nappears as a man of bronze in Revelation chapter 1:15, and compare Daniel\n10:6." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Well, hell, you can apply it to Brad Pitt too. Didja see how he appeared in \"Fight Club?\"\n\nAnd, btw, Tim, long before a little hedgehog was named an echidna, the name was applied to a frightful monster, half woman, half serpent, who ate men raw and bore a brood of monsters to Typhon. The name means \"she-viper.\" Check it out in any Greek mythology compendium, or go to the source, Hesiod.\n\n-alga\n\n\n*This is WHORL, for discussion of Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun." } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Sheila Herndon", "address": "skherndon at yahoo.com" }, "date": "2000-04-10T11:02:54+00:00", "subject": "(whorl) Re: Digest whorl.v010.n101", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "--- whorl-errors at lists.best.com wrote:\nOn the other hand maybe it's just\nhard for Australians to\nenjoy a series where a murderously malevolent\ngoddess is named after a cute\nlittle marsupial like an echidna. (For those who" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "oh my goodness. big oops. all this time I had been \nthinking of Echidna as Echinoderm without realizing\nit." } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "David Wells", "address": "adw at ovum.com" }, "date": "2000-04-10T21:48:43+00:00", "subject": "(whorl) RE: Digest whorl.v010.n101", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "From: \"Alice Turner\" \nAdam asked:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "Is there textual evidence from TBOTLS that Silk may be in a two-headed\nPas body? (It's been a while since I reread it.)" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "(Replying to Adam) I wasn't suggesting that Silk is two-headed. Though this\nis a fascinating idea and quite in the spirit of previous Wolfe writing\n(\"Did I forget to mention that the narrator is ? Oh,\nsilly me!\").\n\nTyphon was grafted onto Piaton(?) to preserve his life. His excuse to\nSeverian was (AFAIR, again) that his followers needed to see his face to\nkeep their faith in him(*)." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "I don't buy young newt's clone theory: too easy, too trite. " }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I am cut to the quick. But even I wouldn't dignify my suggestion as a\n\"theory\" - merely a speculation.\n\nAnd \"easy, trite\"? Curious. It would seem to me to be interesting indeed if\nHorn merged somehow with \"Silk\" and struggled with this - and the denial of\nit - for a book-and-a-half, before Silk himself turns up... (\"With hilarious\nresults\", or perhaps not).\n\n(old) newt (sadly not even remotely young anymore)\n\n(*) Mind you, I'm not at all sure that I believe Typhon's explanation\n(assuming that I recall it correctly). Because:\n\ta) It's not entirely rational. The idea that his followers would\ncheer for him after a mysterious absence followed by his reappearance as a\ntwo-headed monster seems a triumph of optimism over common sense.\n\tb) It's not entirely rational. And Typhon probably knows this.\nMegalomaniacs are frequently (invariably?) extremely superstitious. But he\nmay well not want to admit this to Severian.\n\tc) Typhon seems to me to be the kind of chap who will gratuitously\nlie just for kicks. I.e. the anti-Oreb. He is - after all - the Satan\nanalog.\n\n*This is WHORL, for discussion of Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun." } ] } ] }