Typhon and Timelines

Dan'l Danehy Oakes · 03 Apr 1998, 12:20 · from urth-v0009.mbox · original

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From: "Dan'l Danehy Oakes" <DDANEHYO at us.oracle.com>
Subject: (urth) Typhon and Timelines
Date: 03 Apr 98 12:20:27
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[Posted from URTH, a mailing list about Gene Wolfe's New Sun and other work=
s]

Hi,

Not quite a lurker; I signed up recently and have been frantically
trying to catch up with the digests.  I'm nearly there, now, and=20
have a few things I'd like to toss out.  Specifically, two quotes
from "Lake of the Long Sun."  I apologize if I err in sending them
to this list, but the "Whorl" list seems to have subsided.  (I saw
something in the archives about these lists being replaced by a
"Wolfe" list and a "Lupine" list; is this actually happening?)

... anyway, these quotes seem to me relevant to tBotNS and the
overarching structure, so I'll toss them in here.

First, from p.116 h/c, a quote from the Kypris-possessed Chennile
that tells us something about how Typhon came to power:

   "...Patterns of beats.  Yes, yes, no, no, no, yes, yes.
    There's this thing behind everybody's eyes. I don't
    understand everything myself. The mechanical woman?
    Marble? Somebody too clever learned he could do it to
    them. Change programs in little ways. People made
    machines.  Just to do that. So that people like Maytera
    Marble would work for them instead of for the State.
    Steal for them. He ... Pas, you call him. He had people
    study it. And they found out that you could do something
    like it with people. It was harder. The frequency was
    much higher. But you could, and so we do. That was how
    it all began. Silk. Through the terminals, through=20
    their eyes."

The second, from P.276, for those interested in timelines,
is the specific quote about Maytera's slipped decimal:

   "What had she told dear Patera Silk the other day?
    Three centuries? Three hundred years? The decimal
    had slipped, must certainly have slipped to the
    left."

Meaning that Maytera thinks it's more likely three thousand.
But note that Lemur, in the sub, seems to think it's been
three hundred ("With the passing of three hundred years,
Pas, Echidna, Tartaros, Scylla, and the rest have faded=20
almost to invisibility," p.297 h/c)

One other note, on something I haven't seen mentioned in=20
the archives.  I'd assumed that "Patera" and "Maytera"=20
were variants on "Father" and "Mother."  But I noticed
in a big dictionary (small ones don't have it) that
"patera" is an old Latin word for a dish used in rites
of sacrifice.

Patera Silk is...a vessel.

***

Vironese name?  Call me

--Roach

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