Severian's skin color

Chris · 23 Jun 2005, 12:14 · from 2005-June.txt.gz

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From: rasputin_ at hotmail.com (Chris)
Date: Thu Jun 23 12:14:26 2005
Subject: Fw: Re: (urth) Severian's skin color
In-Reply-To: <23834708.1119541288469.JavaMail.root at wamui-sweet.atl.sa.earthlink.net>
Message-ID: <BAY102-F1411E02E5F936767FEF2A386EA0 at phx.gbl>

Though I try to remain agnostic about the whole clone thing, I might as well 
throw in some things that I think are problematic.

Crush said:
>I settled on this "unnecessary plot complication" only after
>Wolfe himself shut every other door. Wolfe was asked explicitly about 
>Silk's
>"ancestry" and he said Silk was "the son of the Calde and his mistress".
>Unless one argues that Silk is the natural biological son of Tussah and his
>mistress (which is not explicitly denied in the text but is still 
>untenable) then
>we are left to consider who that Calde in Silk's ancestry is.

I find the application of the term "Calde" to Typhon to be very out of place 
here; the natural implication one would normally draw is that Wolfe is 
referring to Tussah. If you assume that Wolfe is being conversationally 
perverse here, then the term "Calde" could be applied to almost anyone. 
Which is not to say it's impossible that things are as you say.

For the life of me, though, I can't think of what purpose it might serve for 
Typhon to do this. It has been suggested that it was a body that Typhon was 
meant to inhabit, but that doesn't really work - why not clone himself and 
possess that body, rather than his son? And if he were going for 
optimization, why go with a natural biological pairing instead of a 
genetically engineered alternative? On the other hand if the embryo is 
supposed to be raised as an actual son for Pas in the new world, he would 
make a dangerous potential rival.

> >And who was that son? Why isn't he in the pantheon? Why isn't he in the
> >books?
>
>I direct you to the Book of the New Sun...the story of Spring Wind
>(synonymous with "Typhon") and Bird of the Woods (the "People and
>Places" section of "Exodus otLS" or "Calde otLS" mentions Chico, Mamelta's
>pet parrot - this bird is not elsewhere mentioned in the whole saga
>-  I take this an identity flag).

I am not sure what you are getting at with this. But all in all if Typhon 
and the-mistress-who-became-Kypris did have a child I don't see why this 
would necessarily need any mention in the books or pantheon. The son could 
have been born during the rebellion, and very possibly killed by Typhon's 
wife and her children before developing a personality extensive enough to be 
worth scanning. One would certainly expect his bastard children to enjoy a 
very short lifespan in those circumstances.

Roy says:
> >I'd like to see the textual basis for that claim [that Horn is a clone of 
>Typhon].

And I would add, I would like to see the textual *purpose* for Horn being a 
clone of any kind.

>It starts with the understanding that Tussah is a clone of Typhon. I
>realize that that is hardly self-evident from the text. As I said. I 
>settled
>on it only after Wolfe shut every other door. But once you read it that
>way, much more starts to make sense. Give it a shot. And once you
>accept THAT, and once you accept that the story is littered with those
>frozen embryos like the ones in the looted freezer Silk and Mamelta
>found...then Horn's discussion about Pas at the beginning of "On Blue
>Waters" and other places start fall in to place.

Those little frozen embryos were enormously expensive and not easy to come 
by, and Horn's family was not of any great wealth. Nor is there any 
indication of who, if anyone, would give such an embryo to them to raise, or 
why. If you are suggesting that he was planted there in order to later be 
exposed to Silk, this would have had to have been planned long before Silk 
even came to that manteion.

>Pas was a god with two heads, both with hair. Tussah was a bald middle-aged
>man. Horn was a teenager. Do you really think whatever simularities they
>had in features were not ignorable?

Later on, there should have then been a marked similarity between Horn 
(genetically Typhon) and Silk (genetically Typhon's son). This is something 
that lots of people should have noticed.

>Also, Horn is the one person that the leaders of New Viron turn to when 
>things
>are clearly going south. He leads a war against the Inhumi on Green.
>Thus his thoughts on the embryos that were given special genetic abilities 
>in
>"leadership" becomes significant.

The subtext I always took from this was that the primary reason they sent 
Horn was to get him out of the way, not because they had high hopes of him 
returning successfully. And Horn knows he is being maneuvered, but has 
little choice in the matter. You could argue Horn as a religious leader, and 
certainly he was influential. Although his influence extended mostly to 
people who had never seen him, through his book - and it's implied that 
Nettle was at least as responsible for the persuasive force of that book as 
he was - but in any event the influence he wields is not the product of his 
face or "command presence".

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