Occam's Razor and Pas's Heads

Michael Straight · 15 Nov 2002, 20:03 · from urth-v0211.mbox · original

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From: Michael Straight <straight at email.unc.edu>
Subject: Re: (urth) Occam's Razor and Pas's Heads
Date: Fri, 15 Nov 2002 15:03:19 -0500 (EST)
Message-ID: <urth-v0211-2110 at digest.urth.net>
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On Fri, 8 Nov 2002, Jeff Veyera wrote:
> There is a simpler explanation for all of this---Wolfe simply needed a qu=
ick
> visual way to alert longtime readers as to who the builder of the Whorl
> really was.

Exactly.  If Pas had only one head, we'd have spent the last 7-8 years
arguing about why Pas only had one head.  And Robert Borski would have a
5000 word essay demonstrating that the "Typhon" of the Long Sun was not
Severian's Typhon but an alternate version from a past/future where
Severian wielded Occam's Razor instead of Terminus Est which he had used
to forcibly remove Piaton's head yelling, "There can only be One!"

And then Wolfe, despairing over our density, would have written five
seperate scenes in Return to the Whorl in which Horn/Silk muses about how
of course it would have made no sense for Typhon to create Pas in his
temporarily two-headed image.

-Rostrum

--=20

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