Inire's...Things

m.driussi · 13 Jun 1998, 01:09 · from urth-v0013.mbox · original

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From: m.driussi at genie.com
Subject: (urth) Inire's...Things
Date: Sat, 13 Jun 98 01:09:00 GMT
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Spectacled Bear,

Ah, so magic mirrors are "machines"?  I hadn't really thought of them
in that sense.  A sort of clockwork?  Mechanical?  But not the
Botanical Gardens, surely, nor the second house, for these are
architectural, aren't they? <g>

No, I really am kidding.  Machines, devices, tools, dinguses.  There
seems to be a lack of what standard skiffy calls "robots," but this
might be because the android sailors are a race apart and long
emancipated, and the magical sciences of Urth are more tuned toward
self-repairing biologicals.  The idle idol carvers, loitering in the
lap of long loyal luxury, like lice . . . oh, stop right there . . .
at the turgid Tower of Power in the Cursed Town of scenic Mount Typhon.
But there is the "isochronon," a gift to the autarch from the ruler of
some other planet (III, ch. 34) which might be a nightwatch robot or
just a mechanical clock.

Granted, if there is a pacing tower (which tripod locomotion do you
prefer: (1) "Peg-leg" [ba-BOOM, ba-BOOM]; (2) "Stampy" [BOOM-ba,
BOOM-ba]; or (3) "Whirling Waltzer" [ba-ba-ba, ba-ba-ba]?) at the
root of the continent, we will say that it is Inire's.

But it just seems so =3Ddifferent=3D from Inire's style.  The picture
leading into the second house that also has a metal detector which
traps the individual and summons a human; endless mazes, bending time
in the case of the Botanical Gardens, bending space in the case of
the second house; and when I think of servitors of Inire, I think
first of the imps, the creatures of the mirrors, and unseen spirits
(genii or hatifs or daemons).  Or cagey codgers like beloved old
Rudesind the curator--"That's right.  That's right.  There's a
logical explanation for everything, and don't you forget it" (II, ch.
20).  Maybe even talking mirrors like the monitors of the Whorl, or
talking doors like those on the ship _Tzadkiel_ . . . in fact,
everything on that ship is the sort of Alice-in-Wonderland level of
Yesodic techno-magic I associate with Inire.  Where look, even this
picture in a cabin is a window to another dimension; all you have to
do is place your chair beneath it, then step up and through . . .

Careful with that teleporter as a way to build your ship in a bottle!
I'm still far from convinced that anything "beamed out" from Briah will
be easily found anywhere in Briah; or that anything "beamed in" to
Briah comes from anywhere in Briah.

Anyway, whatever the stampy thing down there is (oh hell, it's
Behemoth to match the Leviathan of Abaia), I thought that it's stamping
was not a signal that it was coming because "the man-apes aren't
coping," as you put it.  My impression was that it was more like a
mother stomping her foot and saying, "Don't mess wif da holy man!  D'ja
hear me?  Git in here, right now, else I gonna whip you little butts!"
That is, calling off the dogs rather than coming out with a shotgun.

And see how they run!

(In a Tolkien setting it would be, what, a Balrog coming up the
volcano vent?)

=3Dmantis=3D

*More Wolfe info & archive of this list at http://www.urth.net/urth/

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