Abaia and the undines

John Smith · 09 Dec 2008, 13:26 · from 2008-December.txt.gz

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From: jsmith2627 at att.net (John Smith)
Date: Tue, 9 Dec 2008 05:26:03 -0800 (PST)
Subject: (urth) Abaia and the undines
In-Reply-To: <493DFE6B.6040800 at io.com>
Message-ID: <95063.26628.qm at web180004.mail.gq1.yahoo.com>

Isn't Abaia an alien monster from the stars? 

 This is Jonas'  story of the black beans:

"...others went out in the ships that ply between the stars, returning with treasure and knowledge.  In time there returned a woman who had gained nothing among them but a handful of black beans...

"...-she displayed the beans to the lords of men, and told them that unless she were obeyed she would cast them into the sea and so put an end to the world.  They had her seized and torn to bits, for they were a hundred times more complete in their domination than our Autarch."   (Shadow, XXXV)



Best wishes,

Jack


--- On Tue, 12/9/08, Jeff Wilson <jwilson at io.com> wrote:

> From: Jeff Wilson <jwilson at io.com>
> Subject: Re: (urth) Abaia and the undines
> To: "The Urth Mailing List" <urth at lists.urth.net>
> Date: Tuesday, December 9, 2008, 12:13 AM
> Thomas Bitterman wrote:
> > On Fri, Dec 5, 2008 at 6:12 PM, David Stockhoff
> <dstockhoff at verizon.net 
> > <mailto:dstockhoff at verizon.net>> wrote:
> > 
> >     I don't recall reading anything about the
> origin of Abaia and the
> >     undines. Does anyone "know" or care to
> guess?
> 
> Abaia could be an enormous, ageless leviathan grown from
> some earlier 
> epoch's premiere thaumaturgist, like Baldanders begins
> to be during 
> Severian's reign, or it could be something else but
> still seems to 
> include gigantified beings descended of human stock among
> its "undine" 
> henchmen.
> 
> My pet theory is that Ouen's side of the family has
> undines in the 
> driftwoodpile; this explains several mysteries of the book:
> Dorcas' 
> awakening when buried underwater, where Severian's
> sister is (she's 
> Jolenta), Severian's unfailing ability to survive water
> when his other 
> powers are hit and miss, the ambiguous agression of the
> undines against 
> the New Sun (they want to turn Severian instead of
> "wasting" an 
> irreplaceable double agent, they "save" him from
> Gyoll instead of 
> letting him stay tangled long enough to make it obvious
> he's an 
> undine-bred), and so forth.
> 
> -- 
> Jeff Wilson - jwilson at io.com
> < http://www.io.com/~jwilson >
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