Father Inire as Dionysus

Lee Berman · 26 Oct 2011, 17:18 · from 2011-October.txt.gz

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From: severiansola at hotmail.com (Lee Berman)
Date: Wed, 26 Oct 2011 13:18:12 -0400
Subject: (urth) Father Inire as Dionysus
Message-ID: <SNT123-W65AF87B5E0898C2967EEBCCFED0 at phx.gbl>

>Sergei Soloviev: The ships in the citadel are landers - it is noticed several 
>times during the visits of Horn/Silk. They cannot go to the stars. They may
>remain from the epoch when humankind travelled to the stars, but
>only one true starcrosser - Whorl - is really described. But there
>surely had to be more (and Quasar - one of them) at this old glorious
>epoch. By the way, the Neighbours should be familiar with star travel,
>otherwise they would not mention the Whorl as starcrosser so casually.

Okay, I will concede that my mention of the Citadel hulks is not the
best example. But you reminded me of the example I meant to include but
forgot:

The Whorl. I can't understand how you can liken The Whorl to The Ship when they
are so different. The Whorl is a hollowed out asteroid. The Ship is constructed 
of metal with wood decks. The Whorl uses whatever propulsion and is sub-light
speed. The Ship uses mirror sails and transcends the speed of light.

Are you really thinking the Whorl can travel to the ends of the Universe and go
to Yesod? It seems barely able to travel to a star visible from Urth.

Moreover, Hethor crewed on a ship with demon-haunted sails. There is only one
Ship we are shown which has these. The text suggests Tzadkiel's Ship might be
a singular, unique entity threading through time. From these clues I think we can 
discern what Wolfe is trying to say.

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