Shaving Clones

Chris · 27 Jun 2005, 17:59 · from 2005-June.txt.gz
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From: rasputin_ at hotmail.com (Chris)
Date: Mon Jun 27 17:59:40 2005
Subject: (urth) Shaving Clones
In-Reply-To: <18243160.1119813116631.JavaMail.root at wamui-rubis.atl.sa.earthlink.net>
Message-ID: <BAY102-F12B19F223BAF5F4D653B3786E10 at phx.gbl>

Crush said:
>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.

Yes, it is pretty much exactly as you say. And I'd even put this together 
with something you mentioned earlier - it's not just about the Wolfe quote 
from the interview, or even primarily about it. The quote is extra-textual, 
and by some schools of thought that precludes it from entering into the 
interpretation process at all. But for all the attention we've given it your 
theory doesn't (or at least as far as I can tell shouldn't) rest on it. The 
meat of the issue lies elsewhere; I've just unfortunately let myself devote 
to much time to arguing that the quote is ultimately unhelpful. Because:

>Well, "figuratively" not the word. He was answering "puckishly".

Whether you call it "figurative", "puckish", "mendacious" or merely 
"non-literal", it doesn't make for good evidence for much of anything. Nor 
is it even *capable* of ruling out much of anything, either.

>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.

It seems like what needs to be answered, at least in part, is why Tussah 
feels that Silk is his "son". Because regardless of questions of DNA and 
physical fatherhood, you have additionally raised this as a question. I gave 
some possible impressions there, if only partial.

Now, on your picture Tussah is a clone of the person whose son Silk is a 
clone of. (Pardon the awful grammatical construction). This is a position to 
take toward the DNA aspect; do you count it as the answer to the 
psychological question as well? Because if that's what you are implying then 
you're putting forward an even stronger assertion than I thought, since it 
implies that Tussah somehow knows all this.

I do have some thoughts about Silk's parentage but they are just hazy enough 
that I will have to put them on hold until I can go back and re-read the 
series to get the context of the passages I'm thinking of - I have made 
mistakes on that before. So I am not much help there.

> >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.

Well, Quetzal also provides a fairly practical vector for Tussah to count 
on. Just how much he'd count on Quetzal I don't know, but he's not an 
insignificant factor by any means.

>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.

Do they have to be unnamed? Has anyone ever suggested Mamelta? She actually 
might be another instance of a "gun on the table", come to think of it. The 
only thing I can find from Wolfe on the subject of Mamelta is that the 
etymology is probably "Not Careless".

This of course seems a stretch. But right now we're only talking about guns 
on tables needing to be fired, and it's as good an answer as any.

> >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.

Or perhaps it's unproblematic, it's just that what Mainframe *does* is not 
what they think it does. Or perhaps, per the "heaven" suggestion, it's not 
Mainframe we should be thinking about at all. I agree with you about the 
role of Mainframe in the story as far as Wolfe is concerned, though.

>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.

Elsewhere you suggest that the modified embryos put in storage would be 
based on Typhon and his family, but if we're talking about a significant 
number of clones then there is a practical reason you *wouldn't* want to do 
it this way: genetic diversity. You may laugh this off as a factor but as 
the number of clones increases it becomes more and more of a concern. And 
not just for reproductive reasons - entering a new and unpredictable 
environment, it would be a bad thing for all of your uberleaders to be 
genetically vulnerable to the same diseases. All things being equal and 
given the resources you're spending on the project, why not make things as 
diverse as possible.

>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.

Silk's mother was not quite *that* poor. Horn's family lived, basically, in 
a slum. And arrangements were made, for Silk, as well. He got a very good 
education, and he didn't enter the priesthood by accident.

On the other hand there's no apparent reason at all to put Horn where he 
was, and no special opportunities afforded by that position, UNLESS you 
count exposure to Silk.

>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.

Quetzal certainly had the power to arrange it this way. But it's difficult 
to explain *why* he would - if he really were making these plans 15+ years 
in advance, he could have equally arranged to put them together under other 
circumstances. But this starts to suggest the same sort of long-term 
micro-management that I find dubious.

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

I am not at all suggesting that the uneducated can't be good leaders. I am 
however suggesting that if you're going to make an expensive long-term 
gamble, you'd try to give the child in question every advantage possible. 
Even the rich in our own world do not make a point of sending there children 
to poor inner-city schools.

>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.

In this case you disagree with Typhon, then. And ultimately Typhon is the 
one who arranged the pleasure-cruise; if anybody made arrangements to put 
clones on board, it would have been him.
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