Typhon's folly?

Don Doggett · 09 Sep 2003, 01:25 · from urth-v0309.mbox · original

This is the message as the crawl holds it, before anything here touched it. What the conversation shows has been through ingest: transfer encodings decoded, attachments dropped, quote markers repaired, and the archiver’s ? resolved into quotation marks and dashes. Those repairs are judgements and some of them are wrong, which is what this page is for. Email addresses are obscured here as they are everywhere else on the site, so it is before our repairs rather than byte for byte.

From: Don Doggett <harlekin at earthlink.net>
Subject: Re: (urth) Typhon's folly?
Date: Mon, 8 Sep 2003 18:25:17 -0700
Message-ID: <urth-v0309-4080 at digest.urth.net>
X-Urthmirror-Source: http://www.urth.net/urth/archives/v0309/4080.txt.shtml
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable


On Sunday, September 7, 2003, at 10:48 PM, Roy C. Lackey wrote:



    I think it
> has been suggested before, by others, that Typhon somehow tapped the=20
> sun for
> energy in furtherance of his plans for empire, and that it was his=20
> tampering
> with the sun that caused its decline. I am suggesting that he tapped=20
> the sun
> for the energy needed to build the _Whorl_.
>
> If mantis is right about Typhon building the _Whorl_ as a hedge=20
> against the
> failure of his plans for empire, then the irony is that his fall-back
> position led ultimately to that failure. With the decline of the sun=20
> came
> crop failures, a revolt of the masses, his desertion by his most=20
> trusted
> lieutenants and, eventually, his death, alone, behind that curtain on=20
> the
> mountain that bore his likeness.
>
On Monday, September 8, 2003, at 05:48 AM, Andy Robertson wrote:

> Nontheless, I really think we are missing something here.
>
> Wolfe talks at one point of "local"  "solar" and "galactic" levels of
> technology, right?
>
> I think the fundamental significance of the Whorl is that it is a
> starcrosser built be "solar" technology.  It does not have the almost
> existential structure and function of the Ship.  It is complex and=20
> full of
> wheels, not simple enough for a star-sailor to handle.   It is bounded
> within the world of relativity, where events must follow one sequence=20
> (for
> Wolfe clearly understands that FTL =3D time machine and therefore that=20
> the
> Ship can travel back and forth in time).
>
> In Wolfe, technology always has a symbolic function.    The "galactic"
> levels of tech actually merge into the machineries of the Increate.  =20
> The
> failure of Typhon to attain this level of being is signalled by the=20
> flaws
> and malfunctions of his creation.
>
>

Don adds:
I think Roy is right but not quite in the way he intended.  Typhon did=20
cause the black hole through his misuse of solar technology but it was=20
the hieros  I think who put it there in order to punish his hubris and=20
protect their interests.  A dying sun won't build a solar powered=20
empire and the symbolic effects would be devastating.  As they=20
obviously were.


--=20

An unofficial mirror of a public mailing list · about & removal requests · download the archive · before the list · original archive at urth.net