Summary of the case for Silk as Typhon's clone

Andrew Mason · 20 Jan 2011, 15:53 · from 2011-January.txt.gz

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From: andrew.mason53 at googlemail.com (Andrew Mason)
Date: Thu, 20 Jan 2011 15:53:23 +0000
Subject: (urth) Summary of the case for Silk as Typhon's clone
Message-ID: <AANLkTik4Br9EnaM7BzcS55m=YJnLwWt_kVw0wGQf1oYp at mail.gmail.com>

Gerry Quinn wrote:

. Remember, this is literature, not life. ?It is a variant
> of Checkov's gun. ?A clone must be recognisable as such, or the author must
> give a reason why. ?Wolfe would never write anything so lame.

I think relying on negative evidence is a bit tricky here, because it
seems to me farily clear that Horn does not know exactly as much as he
is saying; he is putting some stuff in as clues, which would be
pointless unless he knew what they were clues to, but he doesn't tell
us. Perhaps he has been influenced by reading some of the works of
Gene Wolfe, preserved in (what was to become) Ultan's library, and
copied into the Chrasmologic writings.

I should say that I do not see any positive evidence for clonehood,
and there are a couple of things that do seem to me to count against.
For one thing, if he is a clone, who is the mother whom he meets on
the aureate path? A male clone does not have a genetic mother in an
obvious sense. In a way, Typhon's mother might be considered his
mother - if Typhon, who claims not to have been born, had a mother..
But in that case is the man who appears with her Typhon's father? In
any case I don't think either Mamelta or Kypris was Typhon's mother.

For another, why is he in Viron? That actually doesn't count against
his being a clone as such, but it does count against his being a
super-special clone of the kind that Dan'l has in mind. I can well
imagine that there are, possibly, clones, or, perhaps more likely,
specially bred children of the gods scattered throughout the Whorl; It
seems a plausible and Typhonic way of producing people of special
abilities. But one would expect a clone destined to be the leader of
the new colony to be kept at Mainframe.

>> Why then would I believe that Silk is Typhon's clone?
>>
>> Typhon is psychically adept in some way. And he isn't willing to have
>> his consciousness downloaded into another (such as Piaton), though the
>> technology is clearly available to him.
>
> He has charisma, aggression and self-confidence, that is certain. ?I'm not
> convinced his powers extend to the supernatural.

He manages to get Severian to see things at an impossible distance, in
a way that implies psychic power. (I'm not sure Wolfe would consider
this supernatural, though. He refers to Silk's psychic powers in an
interview somewhere in a very casual way, which suggests to me  that
he thinks such powers are actually part of the world.)

>
> As for downloading, it could be that Wolfe hadn't considered that option
> when he wrote BotNS.

Almost certainly,. But in the light ?of BOTLS, we can look back and
ask how to make sense of what happens in BOTNS given this new
information (make sense of it in-story, not make sense of Wolfe's
writing it).

I do think there is a problem with downloading - does Typhon download
his personality into an infant or into an adult? In the former case,
we have an adult mind in a child's body, with rather weird
consequeces. In the latter, the person chosen for download already has
a personality of his own - it it completely overridden? If not, it
will make a difference to the way the reborn Typhon operates. (And if
Pas is in fact later downloaded into Silk, he clearly does not
eliminate his Silkishness.)

Also, if Pas was planning to be downloaded into this body, would he
have to give it special abilities in advance? Don't gods communicate
special abilities to those they possess?  I seem to remember Chenille
having special abilites while Kypris was in her.

> From: "Marc Aramini" <marcaramini at yahoo.com>
>> Oh yeah, as far as Mucor goes ... are those dogs she gives birth too
>> the gods of the tunnel or are they different?
>
> Surely it was cats?

Yes, lynxes to be precise. Though it is a puzzle where the tunnel gods
came from. Are they just the result of three hundred years of
Lamarckian evolution? Or were they specially bred?
>
>

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