Lives of the Great Beasts

Lee Berman · 04 Jul 2010, 03:36 · from 2010-July.txt.gz

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From: severiansola at hotmail.com (Lee Berman)
Date: Sat, 3 Jul 2010 23:36:02 -0400
Subject: (urth) Lives of the Great Beasts
Message-ID: <SNT123-W2222D992E700FF1B2BAF44CFB00 at phx.gbl>

Well, we could try to count the mentioned Great Beasts, see if
they add up to 17. Abaia, Erebus, Arioch, Scylla, Ouroboros, 
Kraken,... can we come up with 11 more? Not without debate, I'm sure.

>I've always wondered. Do you guys think Erebus and Abaia actually
>exist, or are they perhaps some kind of boogeymen..

I think they exist. There is the deep voice coming up from Gyoll
beneath the ship. There is the underground giant something that
scares the man-apes of the cave. Moreover, The Mother, living beneath
Blue's ocean, would seem to be a more specifically described version
of such great monstrosities.

>'Group of Severnteen' seems more like the self=selected name of a communist 
>cadre to me.

I agree but why can't they be both? We are given such graphic views of 
Tzadkiel changing shape and pinching off smaller versions of him/herself in 
UotNS. I don't think it is unreasonable to guess that Wolfe included these
graphic views to help explain to us what might have been going on back on
Urth in the previous 4 books among the fallen versions of Tzadkiel.

The Communists, in their heyday, were supposed to be godless atheists but I
think many would agree they were forced to invent their own false gods for 
their people to worship. Book of the New Sun is a Cold War-written story and
shining light on the false gods of communism could have been a part of Wolfe's
intention. 		 	   		  
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