Silk's origin

James Wynn · 12 Oct 2011, 19:48 · from 2011-October.txt.gz

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From: crushtv at gmail.com (James Wynn)
Date: Wed, 12 Oct 2011 14:48:04 -0500
Subject: (urth) Silk's origin
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>
>> On 10/12/2011 9:16 AM, Gerry Quinn wrote:
>>
>> > > I?m comfortable with the concept that the relationships are simply
>> > > those described in the book:
>>
>> > > 1. Silk was grown from an engineered embryo bought by Tussah. His
>> > > genetic parents on Urth have no significance to the story. Silk?s
>> > > scanned persona later merged with the remains of that of Typhon.
>> > > 2. Inhumi are animals, and have no relation to vines. [It may of
>> > > course be that particular plants of Green are of some nutritional
>> > > significance to the water-breathing juvenile form of the inhumi.]
>> > Is it possible that Typhonic genes were inserted into embryos? Silk 
>> may
>> > then get some parts of Typhon's genotype but not others. So with 
>> Mucor.
>> > None would look like him.

Unfortunately, for the resolution of the puzzle, the book says far more 
than you appear to be aware of. Including that a character in the Short 
Sun series identifies the Rajan's staff as an inhumi, and that at night 
he talked about it.

>> If Silk has genes for leadership, they may well be the same as 
>> Typhon?s. The same applies to blond hair, height (if they are of the 
>> same height) etc. I don?t really think possessing some genes in 
>> common implies a special relationship. We all possess many genes in 
>> common, after all, and many of our genes are also shared with other 
>> animals and even more distant relatives.
>
> On 10/12/2011 10:32 AM, David Stockhoff wrote:
>
> Let's put this to James. James, does an engineered-genes-insertion 
> link between Typhon and Silk work for your theory? After all, with 
> some wiggle room it makes them brothers, or closer than brothers. And 
> yet they will be as different as Silk and Mucor.

Well, not really.

There's no exposition in the book that ties the genes for leadership to 
height or blonde hair.

Additionally, the references tying Silk to Typhon strike me as very 
personal. Including Horn's speech in OBW about how if Pas is a god on 
the Whorl then he can come and be a god on Blue. I think that is an 
autorial reference to Silk. The best dodge I can come up with is that 
Silk was carrying a piece of Pas in his head since before Tussah's 
assassination. But even that is too many degrees of separation for me. 
For example, why could only Silk be used as a donor to repatch Pas after 
his resurrection, and why did it require going all the way to the 
Mainframe? If it is only that he was carrying part of the god in his 
head, then he only needed to stand in front of a Sacred Window. And I 
still want him to be a son of Typhon somehow to have a hope of 
explaining the two parents Silk meets on the Aureate Path. It's clear 
that Wolfe has all this carefully worked out. I just can't figure out 
how he got there.

J.

J.

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