Geography

Alice Turner · 27 Oct 1999, 19:56 · from urth-v0028.mbox · original

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From: "Alice Turner" <akt at attglobal.net>
Subject: (urth) Geography
Date: Wed, 27 Oct 1999 19:56:59
Message-ID: <urth-v0028-0294 at digest.urth.net>
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First, Daniel, there are two lovely trade paperback Borges compendia out,
one fiction, one nonfiction. Check out Amazon. And Dan (the other), very
interesting about DFW.

Roy Lackey said smugly:

> autarch corrects him: "Half  what you said of them was incorrect. They do
> not come from the hot countries of the north [i.e., near the equator], but
> from the continent that lies across the equator." Sorry, alga, but there
it
> is.

No, Roy, there it isn't. Never for a minute have I claimed that Sev's part
of Urth was not in the southern hemisphere. It is, definitely, irrefutably.
My theory depends on two instances of plate techtonics: (1) that the land
mass of Africa is pushing up against Europe (as indeed it is) and by the
time this book takes place the Mediterranean is not a sea but a river, the
Gyoll, which debouches into either the Red Sea or the Nile or a kind of
compendium; (2) that the land mass comprising Afro-Euro-Asia (with some
parts broken off--Scandinavia becoming those southern islands) has migrated
around the globe and southwards to where South America is now.

Thus it beomes possible to have a landscape of the heart, which is how I
once described it to mantis. In my heart I know that Fr. Ultan's library is
in Alexandria, that the labyrinth of the House Absolute is at Knossos, that
the stone town is Athens (and that when you go back a million years [say] at
that lattitude and longitude you find yourselves not in Greece but in South
America), that Lake Diuturna covers Rome, that the Pelerine's camp is in
Switzerland and that Master Ash's house is atop an Alp.

What is more, I can map my geography. Can you map yours? Lay a ruler on a
map from Alexandria NW to Switzerland and have a look. Detour up to Istanbul
for Acis, and Sev then goes overland through the witchy Balkans (then as
now) to Typhon, whom I usually place at Mt. Etna.

I don't want to argue this geography. Let's just say that you're not going
to change my mind. And I'm probably not going to change yours either.

-alga

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