Wall of Nessus

Jeff Wilson · 17 Jun 2010, 05:34 · from 2010-June.txt.gz

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From: jwilson at io.com (Jeff Wilson)
Date: Thu, 17 Jun 2010 00:34:09 -0500
Subject: (urth) Wall of Nessus
In-Reply-To: <4C18B454.4060500 at io.com>
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	<4C18B454.4060500 at io.com>
Message-ID: <4C19B3D1.8020202 at io.com>

On 6/16/2010 6:24 AM, Jeff Wilson wrote:
> On 6/16/2010 12:47 AM, Ryan Dunn wrote:
>> And here's the quote, which was referenced earlier...
>>
>> "...just as that smallest and uppermost sail was an entire continent
>> of silver, compared to which the mighty Wall of Nessus, a few leagues
>> in height and a few thousand long, might have been the tumbledown
>> fence of a sheepfold..." (Urth of the New Sun, Chap. XIV "The End of
>> the Universe")
>
> And yet, Severian was able to cross this continent within a shift worth
> of air, as I said to IIRC Roy the last time this came around. There's
> just no consistent detail on the size of the Wall.

I recall that the green Lune is said to be 50,000 leagues away, which we 
have generally taken to mean 150,000 miles and indicate that it has 
moved closer somehow. Maybe instead, the units conversion error is in 
the past of urth, in all or in part, so that learned people of 
Severian's time are parroting an error made popular by some respected 
historian and "G.W." is caught up in it as well.

This could mean that the Wall's dimensions are overestimated by a factor 
of 5:3, which is still pretty big, or it could mean that a measurement 
that G.W. has chosen to translate as "league" has different meanings or 
different idioms for measurements in space than for measurements on the 
ground, or for vertical height vs length.

(It also occurs to me that if the moon's orbit hasn't changed, it's 
gravity and natural lack of atmosphere probably haven't either. In fact, 
the low gravity and lack of weather make it an ideal candidate for being 
largely domed over, similar to the Botanical Gardens.)

-- 
Jeff Wilson - jwilson at io.com
IEEE Student Chapter Blog at
< http://ieeetamut.org >

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