Pike's Ghost

Lee Berman · 27 Nov 2011, 23:42 · from 2011-November.txt.gz

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From: severiansola at hotmail.com (Lee Berman)
Date: Sun, 27 Nov 2011 18:42:05 -0500
Subject: (urth) Pike's Ghost
Message-ID: <SNT123-W27D8F26D4D4F542BE18090CFCD0 at phx.gbl>

>larry miller: I think the more likely explanation regarding Silk as clone 

>is that Silk is not a clone of Typhons original alien body but a clone of 

>the blond haired man whose head is grafted onto Piaton.

Agreed. (and it would solve some debates on the issue of "Silk=Pas?")

>While Jonas isnt a saintly name it is derived from the bible.

yep, and we learn that Jonas isn't from the Commonwealth nor even human so

the saintly rule is not broken with him. (interestingly, neither is there a

Saint Miles)

>all the human characters that are from pre-Conciliator era such as Declan, 

>Hadelin,  Zama,  Herena, even Ymar all named after saints.  Ceryx the 

>Necromancer who also possesses some mental abilities and who is also probably 

>from off-world bears a mythological name. Wolfes naming scheme still sticks.

>...Does he do anything else extraordinary that Telekinesis wouldnt explain?

Still sizzlin' larry! Yep, the Commonwealth names were saintly before the 

Conciliator. And in addition to telekinesis, Ceryx reanimates Zama, in zombie

fashion. Not as good as Severian but still (dark) magic. This dark reanimation

calls to mind some other BotNS characters. Also, I think Ceryx is best seen

as Typhon's vizier scouting out this new wonderworker. After the Ceryx encounter,

Typhon's soldiers start looking for Severian to bring him in. (some interesting 

possibilities might arise if Ceryx is vizier, btw).

>Where does it say when Typhon was grafted to Piaton?

Typhon says it, very specifically. "Nor was Piaton grafted to me. I was grafted 

to him. What do you think of that?"

Also, Piaton's body was strapped down while Typhon waited for his neural connections

to dominate and the corpse appears to still have been strapped down when 

Typhon/Piaton died. So I think we can rule out Piaton's body being used for reproduction.

An interesting question is- in what manner do Typhon and Echidna have reproductive 

sex and have all those kids if they were aliens? And the answer, again, may be found

in mythology.

We could ask how a 40 mile tall monster with 100 heads, snakes for legs, with fire

belching out from all his orifices manage to have sex with a snake woman who lives

in cave? Very carefully? I suppose he has to duck his head when he comes in. But, in 

seriousness, we can't really comprehend such a thing, nor are we really meant to. The 

ancients used impossible images to explain that which human beings can't really understand. 

Gene Wolfe also.

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