# Digest whorl.v010.n124 *The Whorl list — 2 messages, 2 voices, 20 Jun 2000* > 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. --- ### Alice Turner *20 Jun 2000, 11:31* > Aha. I ruled out Crane because I thought you were speaking more > generally--his -initial- meeting with Silk is "accidental" (as > accidental as anything is--the theme of prophecy*, all true, I'm > beginning to think, runs even stronger in LS than in NS), but after > that he certainly does manipulate things and is behind the political > events. I can post my version of the evidence for this if anybody > isn't convinced, although I thought that part was common agreement > on the list. Yes, the initial meeting is accidental. But you have to assume that Trivigaunte was looking for a candidate to set up as a puppet in a coup d'etat in Viron, and just about as soon as Crane clapped eyes on Silk he thought he'd found just the guy to back: personable, easy to manipulate (so he thinks), well-liked and with a lot of hard-to-put-your-finger-on charisma. Crane doesn't know that Silk is "special" or about the Outsider, but since Crane doesn't believe in the gods, that wouldn't matter to him. Wolfe lets you know that he's up to something: he writes a secret dispatch in very CIA style almost immediately, but of course we can't figure out just what he's up to until several books later. No, I don't think there's common agreement on this, though. > Can I remain a bright young thing five years from now when > I'm STILL a grad student? Sure. Hasn't the truth made you free? What are you studying, anyway? -alga *This is WHORL, for discussion of Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun. --- ### Alex David Groce *20 Jun 2000, 12:02 · follows Alice Turner* alga said: > Wolfe lets you know that he's up to something: he writes > a secret dispatch in very CIA style almost immediately, but of course we > can't figure out just what he's up to until several books later. No, I > don't think there's common agreement on this, though. Yes. In fact, the "Silk for Calde" graffiti shows up shortly after, and Horn lets us in on the (strong likelyhood anyway) that it wasn't one of the schoolboys who wrote it. And this is before the populace would (I think) realistically get going on its own from just Silk's streetside conversation with Blood. On the prophecy thing--does anyone in the books ever attempt to make a prophecy (augury) or even have a dream that doesn't foreshadow events to come? I think that although there's no time-travel going on here, lots of things seem as locked in as in BOTNS. Interestingly, Silk's first enlightenment is sparse on scenes from the future. Is any explanation (other than Silk's "talent" and self-fulfilling prophecy with respect to the thefts in Lake) given for the wild success of augury/random-page-opening? > Sure. Hasn't the truth made you free? What are you studying, anyway? Computer science, formal verification of systems. For anyone who's amazingly, amazingly bored see www.cs.cmu.edu/~agroce/research.html. Average time here at CMU is still 6.5 yrs to PhD. I think it's roughly the same at MIT and all the other top comp. sci. schools. "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. ``` ---