Seawrack and the Mother

Lee Berman · 20 Sep 2012, 12:25 · from 2012-September.txt.gz

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From: severiansola at hotmail.com (Lee Berman)
Date: Thu, 20 Sep 2012 08:25:11 -0400
Subject: (urth) Seawrack and the Mother
Message-ID: <SNT123-W6362902E7CA17B864959ECF9A0 at phx.gbl>

>Sergei Soloviev: the creature you mention reminded me about certain strange parallelism 
>of Blue/Green world and the world of Urth and its green moon (there were long discussions
>of that, but I want to mention only one point here). The creature seems to be related in some 
>"metaphysical" way to Baldanders after he became aquatic.

Interesting post. You got me thinking. Actually, I think the metaphysical connection might
be more to Severian, who ends the Sun series as an ocean-borne fish god. He is the human-
shaped Oannes to the people of Ushas. Perhaps the crusted, multi-limbed thing was the 
Neighbor-shaped fish god to the Neighbors left on a flooded planet.

Which brings up the cynical consideration that Severian was duped into creating Ushas to 
make a world more habitable to giant sea-going "gods". Perhaps the crusted, multi-limbed
creature was similarly duped into creating Blue (we know there are ruins under Blue's waves).
I know Marc doesn't like this interpretation, but if GREEN is [like] Urth then perhaps
Blue is [like] Ushas.

I can imagine Seawrack getting rid of the creature by telling him, "hey, the Mother has 
assigned ME to hook up with these new human residents. You are the wrong shape.  You were created 
to hook up with the Neighbors, who left, not these new guys."

With regard to Baldanders, I see his metaphysical (not to mention physical) relationship to
be more to godlings. Throughout the Sun series, Wolfe hammers us over and over with the idea
that godhood is related to great size. From Abaia and Erebus to Tzadkiel to the Mother and
Great Scylla (perhaps even the fish in the Worl's lake) size is discussed and emphasized. If
we didn't quite catch that Baldanders' growth is transitioning him to the god-like status of
the megatherians, the very name "godlings" should lead our thoughts in that direction.

I actually think Wolfe may be hitting us so hard with this concept as a way of justifying his
professed personal belief that the ancient gods of our earth were "real" or had some sort of
reality to them (i.e. they weren't just a product of ancient imaginations). Great size can 
confer all sorts of superhuman, god-like attributes, from strength to longevity to the budding
off of avatars, perhaps even to the creation of pressure-based  biological ballistics as per 
the discussion I recently had with David. (was Zeus a kind of giant electric eel? Heh)

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