Typhon & Whorl

thalassocrat at nym.hush.com · 20 Dec 2007, 12:28 · from 2007-December.txt.gz

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From: thalassocrat at nym.hush.com (thalassocrat at nym.hush.com)
Date: Thu, 20 Dec 2007 23:28:07 +1100
Subject: (urth) Typhon & Whorl
Message-ID: <20071220122807.D34A8DA827 at mailserver7.hushmail.com>

I just find it really difficult to match up the NS and LS/SS 
scenarios.

If you just took LS/SS by itself, you'd have something like this: 

Typhon was a guy who quickly rose to take over the *Earth*. No hint 
AFAIK in LS/SS of anything like an existing instellar empire, with 
Typhon trapped on Urth through bad luck & force of circumstances. 
The Duko says: "... when there was a war with one ***country*** 
stronger than the other, he was generally for the weak one ..."

He had two heads, for some unexplained reason, and a dysfunctional 
family.

The Whorl was very likely the first & only interstellar 
colonization project. It obviously took a long time and large 
resources to build. There is no hint of FTL capability. A 
generation ship was seemingly the only way to do it, and any 
reasonable size estimates I think lead to the conclusion that 
originally it must have been Ceres, the biggest asteroid in the 
solar system (pace those who don't think it worthwhile to look at 
dimensions etc).

Typhon was close enough to us in time for Latin & French to be 
known languages; for people to have names like "Warren"; for 
familiar ethnic groups to still exist; for our religious writings 
to still be available. 

Abaia etc are in the oceans of Urth during Typhon's reign, and 
given that his family knows about them, presumably he does too 
(whereas in NS their presence seems to be a new thing for the 
"resurrected" Typhon).

If it wasn't for the tie in to Sev and Nessus I'd think that Wolfe 
was just recycling some images and narrative themes from NS to 
LS/SS; or that maybe Pas was actually "Typhon I" (as he is referred 
to by one of the councillors of Viron), versus Sev's "Typhon LXXIV" 
or whatever. 

As it is, I have to think that Wolfe didn't care very much about 
making the two series consistent. But if he didn't, then why the 
tie in at all? So maybe he had something else in mind which I can't 
figure out.

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