Pike/Oreb

Lee Berman · 04 Nov 2011, 12:24 · from 2011-November.txt.gz

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From: severiansola at hotmail.com (Lee Berman)
Date: Fri, 4 Nov 2011 08:24:40 -0400
Subject: (urth) Pike/Oreb
Message-ID: <SNT123-W589B1803C2BA9FD9BC686CCFDA0 at phx.gbl>

>David Stockhoff: Wolfe is. The clue (if it is) remains readable: Blood = Silk's 
>son. In what sense? In a purely genetic sense (if Silk = Pike), as well as the 
>other sense Silk ponders.Naturally this alone is not enough to build a case on, 
>just a pointer if one is already looking, i.e., if one is looking for confirmation 
>of an already-observed pattern.

Is the already-observed pattern the Zeus-Dionysus, Pas-Outsider, father-son-father
ambiguity (which may also appear in BotNS)? If not, apologies for intruding my 
theory into the discussion. But earlier on, I was wondering if it would appear.

>I think however that the tree will always remain as obscure as the 
>family tree of any god/gods. 

Including Severian's?

>Gods seem to have multiple fathers/mothers/offspring and these change depending on the 
>story or the teller. And after all, once you discover everything there is to know about 
>a god, he/she's not really a god anymore. Just another species/monster/genetic freak!

I REALLY think this gets to the heart of a point Wolfe is trying to make. We learn about
invertebrate biology in high school and college so when a sexual/asexual budding creature 
like Tzadkiel compares him/herself to a sponge, we sorta get the science of it.

When ancient Greeks or someone like Severian or Horn is presented with such a being their
interpretation and description will reflect their own education and life's experience. So
we get stories of angels, gods, monster, etc. The story-tellers are not less intelligent
than we, just operating from a different frame of reference.

We, ourselves, are not sufficiently advanced to succintly grasp the reproductive structure
and family tree of electronic beings who can also possess human bodies/brains. We are left
struggling to find the proper way to express our limited understanding of such things but 
we do our best, much as the Greek mythologists did in their stories. I think this was 
Wolfe's intention.

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