Urth-Earth links

David Stockhoff · 17 Oct 2011, 15:53 · from 2011-October.txt.gz

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From: dstockhoff at verizon.net (David Stockhoff)
Date: Mon, 17 Oct 2011 11:53:51 -0400
Subject: (urth) Urth-Earth links
In-Reply-To: <3C73DB2689BB4061A0B9B69256EE0370@Rover>
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On 10/17/2011 11:21 AM, Gerry Quinn wrote:
>
> He is a man who ? inspired by the sea monsters ? is trying to make 
> himself into a god by the use of technology. He intends to attain 
> immortality, and, like many animals of our own Earth that do not die 
> of old age, this requires continuous growth. He may well be centuries 
> old already, and when he meets Severian at the end of _Urth_ he has 
> not aged in fifty years, just grown larger.
> Perhaps his large size also accommodates a larger brain. In any case, 
> he has given himself gills because he knows he must eventually enter 
> the sea and dwell there.
So your explanation for his growth is technological as well? Is it a 
side effect of immortality? Has he somehow managed to turn off a death 
gene in his own body, or turned on a growth gene?

I don't disagree with these possibilities, I just think natural genes 
are an easier path. I know a few decades ago it was popular to wonder if 
body death wasn't programmed, simply because it was then discovered that 
cell death was programmed. The two may or may not be related. But at 
least the presence of such an idea in popular culture might lend the 
theory some substance without needing strong evidence.
> > Would it not work just as well if he's of Juturna's race and size, and
> > those are natural gills Sev mistook for scars? Are we to believe 
> Juturna
> > must come up for air like a whale? What is her race anyway: is she a
> > large human who swims deep, or a fish evolved to be humanoid? Let's get
> > our assumptions straight.
> Juturna is not human, I believe, nor fish either. She has been created 
> or spawned by one of the sea monsters. If we assume that the bean 
> story refers to the sea monsters, then eggs or nanofactories or 
> whatever were thrown into the seas of Urth, eventually becoming them. 
> Their origin was off-Urth.
> Whether she comes up for air I don?t know, but I think if she had 
> gills like Baldanders then Severian, who gave her a good looking over, 
> would have noticed it.
Eh. Maybe. Who knows what gills look like on a humanoid or what Severian 
notices. Recall that he had to get in bed with Baldanders to notice his 
gills.
> As for Baldanders gills being natural: Baldanders is not natural, he 
> is sui generis and a self-made man, right down to the gills.
>
This reads like a thematic assumption applied top-down to prove itself. 
If he's natural, so are the gills. I like Baldanders as self-created and 
-experimented on, but what evidence is there that he's _entirely_ 
unnatural or self-"made"?

Are you assuming that Baldanders was born a human man?


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