Urth-Earth links

larry miller · 18 Oct 2011, 15:21 · from 2011-October.txt.gz

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From: biglar1984 at gmail.com (larry miller)
Date: Tue, 18 Oct 2011 11:21:02 -0400
Subject: (urth) Urth-Earth links
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Where in Urth does it say that?  It was always my understanding that
there were many alien beings on Urth and part of Severians
unreliability as narrator was his inability to distinguish them from
other beings.

On 10/18/11, David Stockhoff <dstockhoff at verizon.net> wrote:
> On 10/17/2011 11:32 PM, Jeff Wilson wrote:
>>
>> I don't believe there are any strong distinctions. Before the Short
>> Sun rerconnage, the final word from on high was in URTH where the
>> Yesodis say there was no extraterrestrial higher life in Briah, only
>> Man and Man's modifications of himself and lower animals, and their
>> modifications, etc. Baldanders gives himself gills by altering himself
>> technologically, likely as did Idas' forebears and similarly those of
>> the other sailors born on Urth who Sev remarks "appeared hardly human
>> to me."
>>
>> This implies that the great beasts are not quite the Lovecraftian
>> Things we have been lead to expect, but titanic masses of quasihuman
>> flesh that used to be something like an individual.  If Baldanders can
>> double his size in 50 years, the thousand years since Typhon's reign
>> could allow similarly growing humanoids to double 20 times over. This
>> potentially if improbably allows increasing their size a million times
>> but is more than enough to achieve the mountainous size claimed by Jonas.
>>
>> It also would satisfy David's desire for dire beats with dread mind
>> powers, because they could have the genes for psionic abilities as
>> easily as Decuman and Typhon and Ceryx seem to have them.
>>
>>
> More importantly, it fits their proposed (observed?) ability to squeeze
> off undines, making psionic powers unnecessary to postulate. It also
> seems to fit the "horror" theme of mindless, almost cancer-like growth
> that pops up here and there. And it makes Baldanders a straightforward
> key to the Beasts' nature. It explains the lack of any hint of
> personality among the Beasts. In fact see no reason to assume they were
> originally "individuals" at all except in a technical sense.
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