Father Inire: teratoid

DAVID STOCKHOFF · 15 Dec 2010, 20:02 · from 2010-December.txt.gz

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From: dstockhoff at verizon.net (DAVID STOCKHOFF)
Date: Wed, 15 Dec 2010 12:02:38 -0800 (PST)
Subject: (urth) Father Inire: teratoid
In-Reply-To: <46378429D4804E0FB49B2EB4142F2F1A@jill>
Message-ID: <340956.46475.qm at web84102.mail.mud.yahoo.com>

You're right. Unless they are known in some vernacular as "monster panels."
"Gimme a hand here with this shipment o' monster panels. By crikey, who needs fifteen pallets of 'em?"

--- On Wed, 12/15/10, Gerry Quinn <gerryq at indigo.ie> wrote:

From: Gerry Quinn <gerryq at indigo.ie>
Subject: Re: (urth) Father Inire: teratoid
To: "The Urth Mailing List" <urth at lists.urth.net>
Date: Wednesday, December 15, 2010, 12:43 PM

From: "Son of Witz" <Sonofwitz at butcherbaker.org>
> So, of course I'm trying to figure out what this teratoid symbol LOOKS like.
> I see that it is mostly a medical term for monstrous abnormality and tumours and such., but I don't find associated symbols with an image search.

I envisage a sort of red octopussy symbol, with rotational symmetry.

Note that the symbol appears on each mirror also:

----------------------
I was delighted to hear his voice, and largely in the hope that he would speak again, I asked, "Where are we, then?"
"On Urth," he answered, and strode across the room to the folded panels. Their backs were set with clustered diamonds, as I now saw, and enameled with such twisted signs as had been on the door.

-----------------------

It may just be alienese for 'quantum reflector' or whatever the proper term for the mirrors is.

That the sign seems teratoid to Severian may not reflect its true meaning, even if it is intended as a hint to the reader that monsters can lurk in mirrors.? Then again he associates the symbol with cacogens, whom he thinks of - at least at this time - as monsters.

An actual meaning of 'monsters' seems a bit unlikely, especially engraved on every panel.

- Gerry Quinn

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