Ansible Interview

Tim Walters · 26 Jan 2009, 00:03 · from 2009-January.txt.gz

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From: walters at doubtfulpalace.com (Tim Walters)
Date: Sun, 25 Jan 2009 16:03:50 -0800
Subject: (urth) Ansible Interview
In-Reply-To: <60016944C0A74B77B9BDFC5E98C39B25@GATEWAY>
References: <60016944C0A74B77B9BDFC5E98C39B25@GATEWAY>
Message-ID: <497CFDE6.2090104 at doubtfulpalace.com>

James Wynn wrote:

>> You are assuming he thought it all strange that the Whorl would cast 
>> shadows. If he made a rough model of his Whorl, he would have seen 
>> shadows and just recorded what he saw.

You're assuming that Wolfe thought of the Whorl as a goofy cartoon 
landscape, and didn't bother to mention it in the text. With Earth-style 
  mountains and valleys, there would be no shadows, so yes, it would be 
strange if it did, and no, he wouldn't have seen them.

> P.S. Trust me. There are far more important plot elements in The Book of 
> the Long Sun that are far, far more subtly presented.

Of course. It's precisely because they're important that they *can* be 
subtly presented. That way the reader has both motivation and reward for 
figuring them out, and when he does, things snap into place instead of 
becoming more mysterious and needlessly complex.

Who knows, maybe the shadows are caused by demons that sit on Silk's 
retinas with the Whorl equivalent of a GPS unit and make complicated 
hand shadows based on where he's standing and the direction he's 
looking. That has as much textual support as overhanging mountains and 
inverted-slope cliffs, i.e., none that I'm aware of. (I'm assuming that 
if there's direct textual evidence of such features you would have 
reminded me of it by now--it's been a while since I read the books.)

-- 

Tim Walters | The Doubtful Palace | http://doubtfulpalace.com

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