{ "export": { "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/whorl/900", "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": 900, "subject": "Blue not urth.......? (IGJ spoilers)", "messages": 2, "voices": 2, "first": "2000-08-04T11:19:30+00:00", "last": "2000-08-04T12:18:06+00:00" }, "messages": [ { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Ian Smith", "address": "iancsmith at 4unet.co.uk" }, "date": "2000-08-04T11:19:30+00:00", "subject": "(whorl) Re: Blue not urth.......? (IGJ spoilers)", "in_reply_to": null, "reply_link": null, "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Thank-you all for your suggestions re: the change in narrative voice between\nOBW and IGJ, and especially William for making the reply I hadn't got round\nto sending on Alga's comment. The scene I quoted from the end of OBW\ncertainly deems relevant, be it an encounter with a god, babbbie or\nwhatever.\n\nAnother question to which I (perhaps naively) do not have the answer. Has\nthe 'blue=urth, green=lune' theory been discounted by everyone now? I know\nthat the evidence is turning against it at the moment, but it's such a\ndelectable idea I don't want to let it go unless I have to. Unfortunately\nall the evidence I find points in the other direction. One thing I've\nnoticed which definitely weighs against the theory is Wolfe's definition of\nthe Red Sun Whorl as \"the distant planet on which Rigoglio was born\", but is\nit possible Wolfe is simply being obtuse as he is when dealing with\ndefinitions of 'Incanto', 'Rajan', 'Horn' and 'Silk'? Could the distance be\nin time? When I reached the red sun chapter I hunted madly through it for\nreference to anyone recognising 'lune' as 'green' or similar, without joy.\nIn fact, we get the narrator saying \"I look up at the stars then...but I\ncould not find Green there, or Blue, or the Whorl, or even the\nconstellations Nettle and I used to see...\"(349). Ok, so he could be in a\ndifferent hemisphere....did Mantis ever work out the phase of the moon on\nthe night Severian rescued Vodalus in the necropolis? Does anyone have\nanything which can resurrect the theory?\n\nAnd on a (possibly related) matter.\n\nRobert wrote\n\nI'd like to now toss out the following notion: is it possible that the\nentity\nHorn and Seawrack call the Mother is actually Typhon's daughter Scylla?\n\nI agree that if it the Mother was just plain Long-Sun Scylla, she'd probably\nannounce it loudly and do unpleasant things to any humans she encountered,\nbut I love the idea that we could be talking about Typhon's daughter here.\n\nBut why does Wolfe have two Scylla's in his stories, and why make the\nreference to the origional Scylla in the glossary? I suppose the two\npossible explanations to the first question are either 1) Long-Sun Scylla is\nnamed for Scylla on urth, or 2) Urth-Scylla is Typhon's real daughter,\nperhaps transformed in a Baldanders-type fashion. (which would weigh\nagainst her having been loaded up bodily onto the Whorl). Whichever of these\nis the case, if Blue is urth, might the mother indeed be (urth) Scylla?\n\nFinally, the inhumi secret. I'm afraid my thoughts on this have been very\nsilly indeed, but the debate seems to be going in the direction that the\nsecret may be something quite specific which relates to the APPLICATION of\nthe golden rule. As all are agreed, just saying 'right, be nice to each\nother' is not a practical solution, but if there were something in\nparticular that humans could do (or not do) which would change the inhumi\nbased upon this principle... (such as Adam's suggestion of 'not wishing\npeople dead'). My only initial thought is obviously trite , silly and\npants, but I'll give it to you as an example of the sort of thing I mean,\nrather than a serious suggestion: Maybe humans just need to become\nvegetarians? This doesn't work because a) it's daft, and b) Inhumi don't\neat anyway, they only drink blood. But it did make me think of the green\nman......which brings me back to where I started, so I shall stop and go\naway, head in hands in shame.\n\nPlease dissect, mock, destroy and force feed back to me in small pieces\n\nIan\n\nP.S. Why do people keep assuming that Horn's first 'body jump' was into\nSilk's body, and that there was only one?\n\nP.P.S. the narrator looks at his reflection in the water at least once in\nOBW\n\n\n\n*This is WHORL, for discussion of Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun." } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "james.kellar", "address": "james.kellar at quantel.com" }, "date": "2000-08-04T12:18:06+00:00", "subject": "Re: (whorl) Re: Blue not urth.......? (IGJ spoilers)", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I expect this has been remarked on before, but has anyone else noticed the references to 'green' and\n'blue' in The Fifth Head of Cerberus?\nI'm only halfway through it at the moment, but in the first section someone (can't remember who)\ndescribes Ste Anne as green, and in the second section (Dr Marsch's story) Ste Croix is referred as\nbeing blue!\nPresumably this is just a coincidence - and anyway, they can't be the same planets, can they - in\nthe first section Dr Marsch talks about the journey back to Earth taking 20 years of Newtonian and 6\nmonths of subjective time...\nThe inhabitants of Ste Anne also appear to have quite a lot in common with the inhumi, don't they?\nI have to keep reminding myself that, although I'm reading 5HOC last, it was actually written long\nbefore the other books.\nApologies if this comments will sound silly in the light of future revelations in this book!\n\nStill waiting for my copy of IGJ to come from amazon (I live in the UK) but the order status page is\nnow saying \"1 soon to be delivered\", so it can't be long now!\n\nregards to all\n\nJames\n\n\n\n*This is WHORL, for discussion of Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun." } ] } ] }