Tzadkiel's ship

Tony Ellis · 28 Nov 2007, 21:37 · from 2007-November.txt.gz

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From: tonyellis69 at btopenworld.com (Tony Ellis)
Date: Wed, 28 Nov 2007 21:37:56 +0000
Subject: (urth) Tzadkiel's ship
Message-ID: <9a33123d0711281337s37baa40bi4d46db5094b1728 at mail.gmail.com>

Jeff Wilson wrote:

>> Dan'l Danehy-Oakes wrote:
>> The fact that we're told this armorial ship is 'a ship volant' is a
>> punning clue that in this case, it's probably a spaceship.

I'm not sure Dan'l would thank you for putting my words in his mouth :-)

>Volant means flying, but could figuratively mean the ship is depicted
>moving swiftly under sail power, vide The Flying Dutchman.

The ship is on a coat of arms, and volant has a special meaning in
heraldry: 'depicted as in flight'. Or even 'with wings spread as in
flight', I see after a little Googling.

For all I know Wolfe had in mind a sailing ship with bird wings on it.
Or a 'conventional' spaceship with wings and booster rockets. I don't
think it matters. In a book where a deliberate ambiguity is created
between sailing ships and spaceships, and where the whole story is
leading up to an all-important space journey the hero will make, I
think it's a pretty good bet that for 'ship volant' on his coat of
arms we're supposed to read 'spaceship'.

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