Severian's skin color

Chris · 24 Jun 2005, 14:22 · from 2005-June.txt.gz
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From: rasputin_ at hotmail.com (Chris)
Date: Fri Jun 24 14:22:24 2005
Subject: (urth) Severian's skin color
In-Reply-To: <21022547.1119562450020.JavaMail.root at wamui-karabash.atl.sa.earthlink.net>
Message-ID: <BAY102-F191E545C62479D71C16FBD86ED0 at phx.gbl>

Crush said:
>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.

I don't think it's unworkable, I just think it's significantly awkward. And 
when you start trying to divine his intention here, you can go a number of 
ways. Just as one example, does he mean the "Calde" (in its non-obvious 
sense) is Silk's father, or does he mean the Calde (Tussah) is his "father" 
(in a figurative sense - even given the question was about Silk's 
"ancestry", even this can be taken figuratively). I'm sure other 
interpretations are possible, and I'm skeptical of all of them - I don't 
think this quotation does much to back up any theory.

>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.

Tussah was in charge of one city, among how many? Hundreds? I don't think 
this provides any special reason to believe that Tussah is a clone of 
Typhon. And I don't see how it would be especially advantageous to have a 
clone of Typhon "in charge" when the time came - sure, such a clone might be 
genetically predisposed to successful leadership, but then *anyone who 
gained and held that post* would likely be predisposed to successful 
leadership. And children don't always turn out the way you'd like them to, 
even if they have the "right genes" - unless of course Pas was going to 
possess Tussah when the time came, but you've already argued against that.

Here I'd like to make a general comment that applies to things brought up in 
several different posts (and not specifically here) - we have to be careful 
not to give Typhon too much credit for omniscience. What he did was a feat 
of social engineering on a massive scale; it's an inexact science, but all 
in all it seems to have worked fairly well. Still, the plan worked far from 
perfectly. Furthermore this kind of planning does *not* let you micro-plan 
events at an individual level, nor would you want to go about long-term 
planning on such a level. If you put your eggs in the basket of a single 
individual, no matter what their genes, there are just too many 
unpredictable things that can happen to disrupt your planned development.

> >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.

I don't understand this, for reasons somewhat connecting with what was said 
above - it implies instrumental roles for specific individuals in "the Plan 
of Pas", sight unseen. Quetzal would then have to have known their roles 
something like 12 years in advance to get Horn in place. And since Pas had 
been out of commission for some time before that, Pas would have had to have 
planned out the course of events before many of the key players were even 
born.

Aside from that it seems impossible that Horn could possibly have filled in 
for Silk, even if he had supergenes. If the plan was for him to be a backup, 
it would seem safer to seed him in place much earlier.

The alternative here seems to be either to say that cloneHorn was dropped 
into place by some supreme agency capable of micro-managing individual lives 
in a city full of people just from their genes, or else Horn is there for 
some other (possibly purely incidental) reason. I don't think the former is 
viable, and offhand I can't think of a convincing argument for the latter.

> >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?

Lots of people in New Viron knew Horn first hand. And they get to see Silk's 
body when Silkhorn returns to New Viron. I do not think Silk was so old that 
a family resemblance would have been that impossible to discern. Especially 
in a family that striking.

>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.

There are subtleties in play which I only loosely grasp, but they wouldn't 
have sent Nettle because they don't want to lose their ability to 
manufacture paper. Besides which with Horn gone, Nettle presumably falls 
into line out of a keen awareness of how vulnerable she and her family are. 
They want to maneuver it so that Horn's departure is voluntary, to avoid 
creating a martyr. By making the pretext a search for Silk - which they 
presume to be more or less impossible - Horn can go (in which case they can 
later scorn him as a failed prophet) or he can stay (in which case he has 
failed to put his money where his mouth is). Either way, regardless of 
Nettle they can use this to try to discredit the *Book*, and the Book is 
more of a threat to them than Horn and Nettle off on their little island.
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