Shaving Clones

James Wynn · 26 Jun 2005, 12:12 · from 2005-June.txt.gz
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From: thewynns at earthlink.net (James Wynn)
Date: Sun Jun 26 12:12:00 2005
Subject: (urth) Shaving Clones
Message-ID: <18243160.1119813116631.JavaMail.root at wamui-rubis.atl.sa.earthlink.net>


>Chris said:
>That said I would just take it as implicit that a theory like this faces an 
>uphill battle, and needs fairly strong arguments to be convincing, and leave 
>it at that.

Yes, I know. And, I admit, that for someone to find this theory appealing
*at all* you have to unsatisfied with the "obvious"  explanation. It has 
strong arguments behind if that is true, or even if one has serious'
misgivings about that "weak railing" of Silk's second set of parents 
in the Mainframe. 

Otherwise, its arguments are not strong at all, and seem to fly out
of nowhere.

>>Crush said:
>>You find it awkward because (I find this stunning) you
>>found nothing particularly suspicious about Tussah's declaration
>>that Silk was somehow his "son". I found the statement absurd.

Chris said
>If we take it as granted that Wolfe was speaking figuratively [when
>he said of Silk's "ancestry" that he was the son of the Calde and his
>mistress], then the quotation doesn't really provide usable evidence for any
>theory, yours or otherwise. 
>I find it awkward because referring to 
>Typhon as "Calde" in a context where the term is sure to be taken as 
>referring to someone else flouts basic conversational rules - which is 
>obvious, and we agreed on from the beginning. And no, I don't take the 
>awkwardness to be decisive in ruling out your reading, because it's not 
>beyond Wolfe. I just don't see any possibility of a decisive interpretation 
>of that statement either way.

Well, "figuratively" not the word. He was answering "puckishly". I think Calde'
is the correct term for Typhon in Wolfe's mind. Perhaps "Calde'" the the very
title Typhon held in whatever fabled backstory Wolfe designed for 
"The New Sun". He answer precisely and in a manner intended to mislead. 
If on a witness stand, he could be charged with purjury for an answer like
that, but otherwise, it is technically an "honest" answer.

It is a matter of easy deduction: If he answered "figuratively" for "son" then
he must be speaking figuratively regarding "ancestry". But there is no
figurative sense for ancestry. If he was answering candidly, then we must
explain how Tussah is in the ancestry of Silk.

As I read it, his answer did not *answer* any questions. But it did rule 
out several strong alternatives. That's how I came to say "Tussah=Typhon".
It was  exasperating because I realized that while it answered every problem
I had regarding Silk's parentage, it could NEVER be determined, to the
exclusion of other possiblities, simply from the text.

>Yes, I can see how you could read it the way you do, but I can also see
>how it can be read in other ways *even if your theory were correct*.

I would be really REALLY interested in those other ways since, as I said
I found all other doors shut to me. Of course, Tussah=Typhon, cozily
answers every open question I had regarding Silk's parentage, but if
you've got some other options I would love (honestly, I mean it) to hear them.

>Crush asks:
>And why go out of your way to have an embryo succeed you?

[Chris some decent psychoanalytical answers.]

>Crush asks:
>And how did he know that Silk would become Calde'? After all,
>with his leadership skills, he might have ascended to the
>Ayuntamiento or succeded Quetzal?

Chris:
>[Chris notes the "Silk for Calde" signs around Viron]
>Possibly agents secretly loyal to Tussah 
>who were left to watch Silk and push him into leadership
>when the time came?

As Dan'l pointed out, Crane was behind those and Blood's
driver (who was a Trivigaunte agent) confessed to writing 
them. But that was one the methods that brought Silk to
the front even though he really did nothing to place
himself in that position. It doesn't explain how Tussah knew
it would happen. I think I know how he knew. See below.

>>Crush said:
>>And since Silk's embryo came from the Whorl, how did his
>>second set of parents get in the Mainframe?

>Chris:
>All of the original Whorl colonists, including the ones in stasis, 
>originally came from Urth. Perhaps a couple of them were Silk's parents? It 
>wouldn't require that much of a stretch.

Alright, see IMO that *is* a major stretch. Wolfe remarked about 
"literary rules" that if "gun is on the table in Act 1, someone has to fire
it."  To have unnamed undescribed colonists from Urth who are otherwise
unnoted in the story appear in the Mainframe as Silk's parents and then go
away is a serious storytelling violation. Fifteen to Life if you can show the 
writer is not a hack. I just do not believe it would have gotten into the book
without Wolfe or his editor noting that.

>As an aside, Mainframe is a concept that always struck me as odd, and I just 
>don't see how it can possibly work as presented (or why its designer would 
>want to set it up that way). Which possibly points to some further secret 
>about the nature of Mainframe, but if so I haven't been able to place it.

I've decided that  Wolfe wanted a complete religious cosmos for the Whorl.
He has a clockwork world, he has clockwork gods, he needs a clockwork
Heaven. I agree that explaining how it works is problematic. How do chems
get there? That's easy. How do people get there? That's a toughie. But it is
not beyond the realm of possibility and I think that was enough for Wolfe's
purposes. Just as Damon Knight's story "Life Edit" does not explain how
lives were actually gone back in time and edited.

>Well, backing up from the question of Typhon's preferences for a second: in 
>the broadest terms, either Tussah's being a clone of Typhon was an intended 
>part of the plan for evacuating the ship, or it was not. If it was part of 
>the plan, then this suggests that the same thing would be true in the other 
>cities as well, implying lots of clones brought into play (though I am not 
>sure how that would work in a matriarchal city, for example). If it was not 
>part of the plan, then Tussah's being a clone of Typhon ends up being 
>incidental, and we are left with a big question of how/why this came about 
>that has no good answer.

Well, IMO, Tussah being a clone of Typhon explains the questions of Silk's
parentage. Not much more, except that it opens the door on the question
"Are there any more like him?"  There are still odd reference, themes, and
parallels that connect Silk to Pas *and* Tussah well before Silk *becomes*
Pas. Tussah being a clone does not solve that. 

As for "other clones", I presume there are other clones in the 
other cities. Why would we assume only Viron had a refrigerator full of
embryos under it? As you already know, I think there are multiple Typhons
walking around, I think Silk is a clone. If the embryos are clones then we
know that there are female embryos as well (Mucor). The obvious
assumption is that Typhon cloned his family and favorites for the trip, and
Wolfe may have been quite aware who they were when/if they appeared in
the story. We know more about Silk, and Tussah as his "father" is
important to the story, so pinning a name on them is more likely to resolve
significant questions than with other hypothetical embryos.

But it does open up questions on Mucor.

>But this is just another way of working on the angle that either having a 
>clone (Tussah) in place at that time is intentional, or it is not. If it's 
>intentional, it really stretches the bounds of what we can reasonably expect 
>Pas to have planned, even if he made the plan on the spot just before 
>decanting the clone. And this also does not seem to be a sensible or 
>workable way to plan things.

You make a good point. Pas MIGHT NOT have initially wanted his clone to
lead Viron. He might have not cared beyond that embryos be there to lead it. 
I thought it remarkable (only after deciding that Tussah=Typhon) that just
before planned disembarkation, Tussah was Calde over Viron. But that could
just be a coincidence, or a planned literary parrallel on Wolfe's part (Pas
murdered, Tussah murdered).

>>Okay. For the record, we've moved off of Tussah and on to Horn.

>Well, OK, here I should ask: if Horn was also a decanted embryo, do you 
>think his being present at the same manteion where Silk would eventually end 
>up was intended, or mere coincidence? 

It only means that Horn was implanted in Viron in a poor family.  For Tussah to
drop his heirs among poor families seems to be is M.O., presumably to better
hide them. We have some
information regarding Horn's family but I'm not yet prepared to debate why
or under what circumstances Horn came to be there. It seems likely to me
that positioning Silk over that manteon (he didn't want to go there) might
have been to get the surreptitiously placed embryos together so they could
support one another. 

But I think it is a mistake to ascribe Silk's ascendency to mere coincidence or
even his leadership skills. The gods are in the background possessing and
quitely influencing decisions in Viron as with everywhere else. I think that is
the only explanation for Silk's rapid rise. And I think Quetzals desire to limit
the gods' direct influence in Viron was his specific reason for taking steps to
limit any sacrificial appearance by the gods. 

>If coincidence, what would be the 
>purpose of taking an exhorbitantly expensively embryo and dropping him into 
>a poor family, in a location where he is unlikely to get a great education 
>and where statistically he stands a greater chance of being killed in some 
>random accident or crime before reaching a reasonable age? If he's meant to 
>play some role, or be a backup, why not decant him earlier so that he could 
>be a more reasonable age when the time came?

I don't have my books and Amazon "Search Inside" does not provide the
"People and Places" section of the books, however, IIRC Horn is named
there as "the leader of the boys in the palaestra". So he was still excelling
in that regard.

"My lack of education hasn't hurt much,
I can still read the writing on the wall." -- Paul Simon

Furthermore, as I hinted above, I'm not convinced that Horn and Tussah
were the only clones of Typhon or anyone else walking around in the
story. (Here we get back to "everyone is a clone of Severian" joke,
which is so funny and so biting because it rings so true.)    

>>Crush said
>>Come on! You're telling me that anyone would recognize you as your father's 
>>son without the two of you compare side by side, even if one of your was 
>>paunchy and balding and the other was rail-thin, had long white hair, and
>>a missing eye?

>For the average person, perhaps not (but realistically, maybe). But we're 
>supposedly talking about someone for whom facial features are extremely 
>important, this is what I was getting at. If the "face of command" is 
>genetically passed on, then someone who actually has it will have certain 
>distinctive features, won't they?

I'm not sure where the term "face of command" comes from although I've
seen it used a lot on the list. I don't think Typhon's powers of leadership
come from something special about his face. Neither so for Silk or Horn. 

If we assume,
and I do, that Chenille's face was the image of Tussah's, then we will have
to assume based on Horn's statement that Silk's face was not really that
much like Tussah's. That's why I ruled out Silk being a clone of Tussah
(which would have explained how the second set of parents got in the
Mainframe after all, among other things).

Is it possible for a son to share the same hair color with his
father (and even have a reddish beard, which, incidentally, is a sign of
being a "Typhonian"), yet not look much like him otherwise? Sure it is.

~ Crush
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