Severian's skin color

James Wynn · 23 Jun 2005, 14:34 · from 2005-June.txt.gz
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From: thewynns at earthlink.net (James Wynn)
Date: Thu Jun 23 14:34:28 2005
Subject: (urth) Severian's skin color
Message-ID: <21022547.1119562450020.JavaMail.root at wamui-karabash.atl.sa.earthlink.net>



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

Cool.


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...

I do think Wolfe was being "conversationally perverse" as you put it. The questioner
asked about Silk's ancestry. He is taking it as a given that Silk is not the natural son
of Tussah. Wolfe acts dumb...he answers the question but with a major misdirection.
I *was* stunned by this answer since at first glance it seemed be saying Silk was
Tussah's natural born son. I recall that Don Doggett, on reading this response was
initially prepared to scrap every all his clone theories and start from scratch...after
all, if the text could be misread to this extent....

But Calde' is not an unworkable appellation for Typhon. A calde' is a combination
executive officer and sole judge. That is an accurate designation for any dictator.
Originally the word was applied to an official over a town, but by the same token an
onager is a half-wild ass used for carrying small loads, not a what-ever-it-is that was
in The Book of the New Sun. Wolfe takes words and uses them by their function, not
their strict definition (at least in the Sun Cycle).

>If you assume that Wolfe is being conversationally 
>perverse here, then the term "Calde" could be applied to almost anyone. 

No. There's no evidence that Whorl technology was capable of producing NEW special
embryos available for implantation. But they did have the technology to implant the
embryos after the fact. If Silk was one of those and it is clear he was, then he came
from Urth.  Now, 1) we know Silk is not naturally conceived, that he was not the natural
son of Calde' Tussah, 2) there is another "calde'" in the story who has a mistress
who takes special note of Silk (and there are no others), and 3) by virtue of becoming Calde', Silk has identified
himself as Tussah's "son not of my body".

There are LOTS of ways to *possibly* resolve this, but I can think of only one way to
take Wolfe's answer as anything approaching the truth *and* put all the other pieces
together:

Silk was Tussah's son because Tussah was Typhon's clone. But he was a son
"not of Tussah's body".

I can't make it work any other way. Prior to this, to have Silk meet
Tussah in the Mainframe struck me as seriously unbelievable. He had never
even met Silk. It was as unlikely (or more so) as if Blood were to seek
Mucor's company after death.

>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?

I don't know whether Typhon intended Pas to inhabit a body when the
colonists disembarked. I kind of doubt it since why would he tinker with
the embryos to give them added leadership abilities if he was only going
to possess a host with a simulation of himself? He *did* clone himself.
When the Whorl came in to orbit around their destination, TUSSAH was in
charge. But the Echidna & Co rubbed out Pas and the Ayuntamiento rubbed
out Tussah. Tussah planned for Silk to rule after him, because Silk was
genetically designed to lead...as Tussah was.

Why use himself and his family and court to make cloned embryos? Why not?
You have to get the clones from somewhere, I'm sure he thought he had the
best of the best starting material all around him. It seems obvious to me that
he would take the genetic material from close by.

I'm speculating here. I didn't decide that Tussah should be a clone so I could
justify having clones wander around the Whorl. I attempted to work out the
mysteries in the text and found that was the only solution left to me.

>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.

I don't think Typhon was concerned about that. The question was whether the
colonies would survive at all. They wouldn't have the technology to return to Urth
or to set up rival empires. He DID genetically engineer leaders for the colonies.
That's clear from the text in The Short Sun. He was trying to give them the best
chance for survival. Any clones leading the colony in the first years would be dead
before they could cause Urth any trouble. And they weren't supposed to be milling
around normal people on the Whorl. Their purpose was to descend with the colonists.
Things went wrong. The embryos leaked out on to the black market. The colonists
did not disembark when they were supposed to. So you ended up with the
embryos being implanted at various time under varying circumstances.

>>>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 and Bird of the Woods

>I am not sure what you are getting at with this...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.

I'm just saying that the children of Typhon and proto-Kypris *are* mentioned
in the books. And yes, you are right, it is not necessary for them to be in the
pantheon but is it not unreasonable that they would be there. The text makes
it clear that there are many lesser gods not mentioned in the LS/SS (Kypris
is a lesser god herself). There are some that *are*  mentioned such as 
Hephaestus and Thyone's Son. If Kypris was scanned it is reasonable any
children she had were alive at that time. If the child was anything but a
baby, or perhaps even then, it might well have been scanned. It would look
no more like Silk than Scylla looked like her original. Maybe he *is* Thyone's Son.


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

The same purpose for Rose having red hair or Kypris having blond hair
while her original looked more like Hyacinth. It provides narrative depth.
I've given thematic purposes for having Horn be a clone of Typhon.
What sort of textual purpose would suffice? The SF New Age writers
provide the multiple viewpoints with limited knowledge to tell a story
and leave reader to divine the gaps. They tell a story with a certain
amount of "negative space". This is just one more thing Wolfe has
left for the reader to find in that negative space. 

>Those little frozen embryos were enormously expensive and not easy to come 
>by, and Horn's family was not of any great wealth.

Neither was Silk's mother.

>Nor is there any 
>indication of who, if anyone, would give such an embryo to them to raise, or 
>why. 

This is a very good point. In my opinion, the person was Quetzal and his
purpose was as a backup plan in case neither Silk nor Awk succeeded in
bringing about the Plan of Pas. That's my guess.

>>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.

As the text states, there were very few people who knew Silk first hand...
certainly not for very long. Most of those who did, were still on the Whorl.
Without the two side-by-side, whose to compare them?

>>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".

Well, you might have said the same thing about Silk prior to the revolution.
Horn was "the leader of the boys at the palaestra". He led a revolt against
the Inhumi on Green. Even if you are right that the leaders of Viron were
trying to get rid of him, what does that say? A hermited paper manufacturer
is a threat to them? 

If it is The Book of Silk that is the danger, then they  should have sent Nettle too.

~ Crush
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