do the Hierogrammates care about the megatherians?

Gerry Quinn · 20 May 2011, 20:23 · from 2011-May.txt.gz

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From: gerryq at indigo.ie (Gerry Quinn)
Date: Fri, 20 May 2011 21:23:24 +0100
Subject: (urth) do the Hierogrammates *care* about the megatherians?
References: <SNT123-W220B7E3214FF82B9BAC2DDCF710 at phx.gbl><AE83B76DDD3A4DCCB4C28DABF86BA1B5@jill>
	<4DD6C327.5090406 at gmail.com>
Message-ID: <739F78CA72D146D3A00DD739B28BE9BC@jill>

From: "James Wynn" <crushtv at gmail.com>
> Gerry,
>
> I think your responses to Lee's points were argumentative without touching 
> on the point he is making.

I don't agree - see my last paragraph.  I am not dismissing the idea of a 
connection from the start - just arguing that there should be some 
indication of what sort of connection there might be, if one is truly 
intended.

>> Cadroe of the 17 Stones is someone who comes to fight at the Sanguinary 
>> Fields.  Not a sea monster, obviously. And there seems no reasonable 
>> association with the Group of Seventeen.  What kind of relationship do 
>> you envisage for Cadroe?
>
> The point is: Why are there 17? Why did the Ascians choose to have 17 
> members of their leadership council? Why 17 stones? Lee proposed a unified 
> origin for the number 17 being significant to Urthlings.

So you are saying that the connection is that the number itself is 
significant?  That Cadroe would style himself as he does simply in order to 
render himself fearsome by using the dreaded number?  And the Group of 
Seventeen might have picked that number, in order to be better feared or 
loved, or as some sort of symbol?  (Like a Christian religious order might 
use the number twelve, after the apostles.)

If so, I'd expect Wolfe to have somebody mention that to Severian, unless 
Severian himself tells us.

>> Also: you haven't explained why nobody in the books refers to them as 
>> megatherians any more!
>
> ? You mean no one besides the Ascians, right?
> Who else do you think fits the designation of Giant Beast? It's fine to 
> say that that the term could *not* refer to Abaia and Co. (might refer to 
> some entirely unidentified company), but what reason would you have for 
> actively disbelieving it?

I'm not sure of the passage you are referring to.  But it's not really a 
terribly strange thing to call Abaia - and unlike the megatherians, the 
reference is singular, right?  However, it *still* doesn't have anything 
like the force of calling Abaia a "megatherian", which is still a different 
word, even if it's root meaning (though not its actual meaning) could be 
translated as Great Beast (or Big Monster, or many other things).

However in the Commonwealth, presumably the source of the book about the 
lives of the seventeen megatherians, nobody ever seems to call the sea 
monsters by that name.  And there don't seem to be seventeen of them, though 
of course we cannot rule it out.

And again, surely the title "Lives of" suggests they are dead at the time of 
writing?

>> So - while it is interesting that the number 17 is used three times, the 
>> contexts seem to be quite different (the megatherians *might* have been 
>> the Group of Seventeen, but I am inclined to doubt it).  If Wolfe mreant 
>> them to be identified, I think he'd have at least made it more plausible 
>> that they are the same kinds of people/things.  And he'd have made them 
>> ALL fit, whereas it's quite hard to imagine that Cadroe's stones are 
>> actually the Group of Seventeen.
>
> This belies every thing we know about many many vague references in the 
> Book of the New Sun. Why at this point you think Wolfe should be expected 
> to make any particular reference clear, detailed, and enumerated, I can' 
> imagine.

I strongly disagree here.  Of course the reason I can disagree is that I 
simply don't recognise many of the so called "vague references" as being 
references at all, so the average vagueness of references I recognise as 
such is much less.

- Gerry Quinn

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