planetary problems

Lee Berman · 29 Dec 2010, 18:43 · from 2010-December.txt.gz

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From: severiansola at hotmail.com (Lee Berman)
Date: Wed, 29 Dec 2010 13:43:40 -0500
Subject: (urth) planetary problems
Message-ID: <SNT123-W15700434AF681F82A87FE2CF020 at phx.gbl>

>James Wynn: if Wolfe is truly keying off of Genesis 6, where is Noah? The ark? The animals?
>The ark can't be the Whorl because it wasn't written yet. Noah can't be  Severian because he's 
>the flood. Most people would consider this refutation trivial. But I know you will get it. If 
>the nephilim are important, then Noah is doubly important.

James I think this objection is entirely to the point....but ONLY if this is our earth, our universe.
And I know that is your interpretation. So I can see why it doesn't work for you.

In my view this is a gnostic, non-Christian planet which was never purified with a Flood as ours was.
I think this is what Gene Wolfe is doing; showing us a planet which never had a Christ. And the Flood
was a preparation for Christ.

The Nephilim HAVE to be important. That word is mentioned in Dr. Talos play. Nephilim are mentioned only
twice in the Bible, once in connection to The Flood and later, in Numbers 13:33 in a passing reference to 
giants: 

>We saw the Nephilim there (the descendants of Anak come from the Nephilim). We seemed like grasshoppers 
>in our own eyes, and we looked the same to them."

Wolfe can't use this term lightly. He must know of the Biblical demonic significance as he uses the term in 
BotNS. Baldanders is a giant and plays a "nephilim", though he doesn't seem very demonic...at first.

Your point is well taken about the need for an Ark (and a non-demon corrupted Noah family) to complete the 
allusion. Marc's post addresses this in a similar manner to the way I would.

>Marc Aramini: But in the original, the ark was played by the ship that Severian went to Yesod on, 
>the sailors who survived where dropped back off, no? This would be a retcon, a multiple ark story line.

Well, I agree. In the first four books Wolfe was content to deal with Ark/Noah issues in Dr. Talos' play
by discussing "new seed" for the new Creation and having demonic Jahi hoping to mate with Meschia and 
Nephilimic Nod hoping to mate his daughter to Meschia to corrupt the new Creation as they did the first.

But when called upon to add to the story, with UotNS, Wolfe had some "Noah's Family" types placed on Ushas from
the Ark-like Tzadkiel's Ship. Since they had boarded that Ship earlier in time they (I assume) were uncorrupted
by the later demon infestation of Urth.

The Whorl is certainly ark-like. But Wolfe has said that Typhon did not know about the Inhumi. I suspect Typhon 
was manipulated into sending the Whorl for a sinister cause.  I wonder if perhaps the Whorl is an anti-Ark, built
not to save humanity from evil demons (and the cleansing Flood) but to provide demons with fresh meat.

Quetzal seems like a benign character who outfoils the evil Ayuntamiento. But in reality he is demonic (by human
definition) with plans designed to bring fresh meat to Green.

I think there may be a similar evil old guy serving as Typhon's vizier who manipulated the creation of the Whorl for
the same purpose. He is called "Ceryx" in UotNS. But I don't think he really dies before Typhon does. Instead he lives 
on, to create The Commonwealth, starting with Ymar.

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