Father Inire: teratoid

Lee Berman · 14 Dec 2010, 18:03 · from 2010-December.txt.gz

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From: severiansola at hotmail.com (Lee Berman)
Date: Tue, 14 Dec 2010 13:03:54 -0500
Subject: (urth) Father Inire: teratoid
Message-ID: <SNT123-W96762855FE6DF5063CDE4CF130 at phx.gbl>

>David Stockhoff-  I think the answer is in the word "teratoid." Teratoid means monster-like---
in other words, RESEMBLING  A >MONSTER.  What could this be but a"universal" symbol denoting the 
presence of monsters and connoting danger? Three pairs of horns >and three sets of tentacles would 
do the trick for most people.

I'm okay with that. But here's the thing..the only thing we see coming out of those particular mirrors 
is the  silver fish-thing in the Domnina story (though I think Inire says there could be more creatures 
to come if given more time). Borski has suggested the fish is a "potent Christian symbol" or
something like that.

Our only other BotNS view of such mirrors is the old Autarch's book, in which we see an island-sized 
version of angelic Tzadkiel. How can these two mirror creatures be reconciled with the monster association?

I'll toss out what I think is another related phenomenon. On Tzadkiel's ship we are told the apports
are creatures which have been inadvertantly transported by juxaposition of the ship's mirror sails.
We get as crazy a collection of aliens as we'll ever see in a WOlfe book. But, we are told, sometimes the
apports are people, though (from an angelic point of view?) people can be categorized as monsters from
a higher being's perception, or something like that. Apheta explicitly defines Severian as a monster.

How can we encompass all these mirror views with meaningful understanding? Any thoughts?

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