Pike's ghost

Lee Berman · 29 Nov 2011, 21:02 · from 2011-November.txt.gz

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From: severiansola at hotmail.com (Lee Berman)
Date: Tue, 29 Nov 2011 16:02:36 -0500
Subject: (urth) Pike's ghost
Message-ID: <SNT123-W12C492799C47FDBDED0409CFB30 at phx.gbl>

>> If a random someone has grown a fetus from a plant root for no apparent reason, I
>> can't see that as a more interesting interpretation than one which explains
>> who created that fetus and for what purpose.

> Okay.  I can't see yours as an interesting interpretation.  That's a matter of taste.

>David Stockhoff: .....except that the whole cloning/in 
>vivo/possession/scanning trope was plainly already in Wolfe's mind, and 
>as such maybe the LS/SS arcs as well. Typhon is a major connection 
>between Severian in the Citadel and the embryonic Silk in the Whorl. So 
>it stands to reason that Typhon created it as a failed experiment on the 
>way to devising his colonization strategies, but it's not a critical 
>plot point.

It is a matter of taste. It also is a constrast between viewing Wolfe's work as a series
of isolated incident or carrying a thread of connection as David illustrates. You may take 
a reference to a mandragora and choose a Biblical connection to Rachel and exclude the 
possibility that it refers to cloning and a mythological man-dragon.

It's just that cloning and Typhon are intensely important themes which Wolfe has developed
in work previous to and post-BotNS. If your preference is to ignore that, and focus on 
an isolated reference to Rachel I am not going to argue that you are "wrong". But I see no 
reason to denounce my preference for seeing multiple internal connections across Wolfe's work.

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