Two Ships

Andrew Bollen · 14 Aug 2003, 14:21 · from urth-v0308.mbox · original

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From: "Andrew Bollen" <abollen at internode.on.net>
Subject: Re: (urth) Two Ships
Date: Fri, 15 Aug 2003 00:21:55 +1000
Message-ID: <urth-v0308-3895 at digest.urth.net>
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The universes of New Sun and Short Sun really don't fit together very
snugly. IMO, if you took them as standalones, you'd say that Short Sun is in
the future, while New Sun is in the *deep* future. A few hundred years
versus a geological age or two. I think that GW did a lot of back-filling to
tie them together. (Not that I really mind - myths are generlly cobbled
together from pieces which don't fit very well, in a logical sense.)

Obvious examples:

- Typhon in New Sun at least desires to rule an inter-stellar empire, and
offers Sev the job of satrap of Earth. How does this make any sense without
superluminal travel? If Typhon can travel faster than light, why build the
Whorl? If he can't, is he really going to feel good about a clunky
slower-than-light hollow asteroid crawling through space while the immense
shp/s of the Hiero-whatsits leap/s over dimesnional boundaries?
- The universe of New Sun has a bunch of human-settled planets in some kind
of contact with each other, if only via port-calls by Tzadkiel's ship. Why
would Typhon think it was a cool thing to send out a slow boat to found a
crappy little colony when these old, established ones already exist, and he
presumably intends to conquer them?
- The literary survivals from our age in the Chras Writings are *really*
implausible for a deep future setting.
- At some point in Exodus Silk talks of French and Latin as extant languages
(at least literary languages). Ditto.
- Why none of the bio-engineered animals from New Sun on the Whorl? No
destriers, no smilodons ...
- Why no chems on Urth, apart from throwbacks like Jonah? Maybe there are
some around at the time of Sev vs Typhon in UOTNS; we don't meet them,
AFAIK. But surely Typhon's army would have been predominantly chems?





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