Dr. Talos

Bruce Hayles · 10 Sep 2006, 16:49 · from 2006-September.txt.gz

This is the message as the crawl holds it, before anything here touched it. What the conversation shows has been through ingest: transfer encodings decoded, attachments dropped, quote markers repaired, and the archiver’s ? resolved into quotation marks and dashes. Those repairs are judgements and some of them are wrong, which is what this page is for. Email addresses are obscured here as they are everywhere else on the site, so it is before our repairs rather than byte for byte.

From: brucehayles at gmail.com (Bruce Hayles)
Date: Sun, 10 Sep 2006 04:49:36 -1200
Subject: (urth) Dr. Talos
In-Reply-To: <1f7617370609061155v7cd08355r398a878777f8ba06 at mail.gmail.com>
References: <BAY103-F112B220D8005DA1C1ED713D7310 at phx.gbl>
	<1f7617370609061155v7cd08355r398a878777f8ba06 at mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <8476d0320609100949k7f2e60c5gdcac903eed4838fc at mail.gmail.com>

Baldanders created Dr. Talos to be everything he is not. 'Baldanders wisely
made me all that he is not, so that I might counterweight his deficiencies.
I am not fond of money, for example. That's an excellent thing for the
patient, in a personal physician. And I am loyal to my friends, because he
is first of them.' (pg 181 in Sword & Citadel) Baldanders is a scientist and
a creator; perhaps Dr. Talos is an artist and a destroyer. Dr. Talos puts on
plays but always interrupts their performance; he creates Jolenta, but in
the end destroys her. When he kills flowers, I see that as idle destruction.
I think it unlikely that Dr. Talos is now the "master" of Baldaders.
Baldanders needs the beatings to wake him up--otherwise he would sleep too
long. Baldanders created the physician to maintain his growth and keep
himself in check: he expected that his doctor would have to order him
around.

On 9/6/06, Dan'l Danehy-Oakes <danldo at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 9/6/06, b sharp <bsharporflat at hotmail.com> wrote:
> > A cane-sword seems like a unique enough item to merit some sort of
> > connection but I don't see it either.  Talos acquires his gold headed
> > cane as a "dropsie" after one of Baldanders' scary rampages during
> > the play.  A nervous exultant in the audience?  Hard to believe it is
> > Vodalus.
>
> No, I don't think it's hard at all -- we know that Vodalus's people have
> been watching Severian and the krew; we know that Vodalus visits
> the city occasionally. As a spot check, we can look when we get to
> the appropriate part of Book II and see if there's any mention of
> Vodalus's swordcane, but I'll bet there isn't.
>
> > Also, Talos loves whacking the heads off flowers with his cane.
> > What's up with that?
>
> Channeling Seinfeld, B? 8*)
>
> We know that flowers in general are significant in the Book, and that
> roses in particular signify the Conciliator. And Talos works for (& was
> created by) someone who opposes the return of the Conciliator/New
> Sun. H'mmm.
>
> > And what's up with him in general?  A homunculus?  Name from a
> > mythical bronze man?  Hot dry skin.  No sex, sleep or food needed?
>
> "Very little" food or sleep; it's certainly possible that this is a code
> for
> "none," but then we have to ask what his energy source is. He clearly
> doesn't burn fossil fuels! But "hot dry skin" implies to me that perhaps
> he does use some heat-producing power plant.  A mininuke perhaps?
>
> > He seems to understand Urth to Ushas better than anyone else.
>
> Including (interestingly enough)  Baldanders. He has surpassed
> his maker in some significant ways; this might itself be something of
> a "theme" in tBotNS, given the history of the Hiero-foos. But when
> he deliberately evokes Frankenstein, I'm forcefully reminded of the
> most chilling line in Shelley's book: "You are my creator, but I am
> your master. Obey!"
>
> --
> Dan'l Danehy-Oakes, writer, trainer, bon vivant
> -----
> http://www.livejournal.com/users/sturgeonslawyer
> http://www.danehyoakes.com
> I've got a piece of braaaaain lodge in me heeead!!!
> _______________________________________________
> Urth Mailing List
> To post, write urth at urth.net
> Subscription/information: http://www.urth.net
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.urth.net/pipermail/urth-urth.net/attachments/20060910/339b4304/attachment.htm

An unofficial mirror of a public mailing list · about & removal requests · download the archive · before the list · original archive at urth.net