Various Short Sun Matters

studio at studiobl.com · 20 Apr 2005, 11:27 · from 2005-April.txt.gz

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From: studio at studiobl.com (studio at studiobl.com)
Date: Wed Apr 20 11:27:43 2005
Subject: (urth) Various Short Sun Matters
Message-ID: <DECE3896-B1C9-11D9-BFD0-000393567C20 at studiobl.com>

I am just finishing a third(?) reading of RTTW.  I felt that I was 
beginning to get some inklings of new insight, and have resolved to 
re-read the entire BOTN, making marginal notes.

I have a few thoughts and questions, though.

Has anyone worked out a timeline of events.  I found that this time, I 
was able to keep track of the different time sequences better than 
previously, but on beginning to reread the first book, I started 
becoming confused just where SilkHorn's time in Gaon fit into the 
timeline.

Why is Seawrack missing a limb.  At one point, I thought Babbie had 
bitten it off, resulting in some kind of psyche transference, but I'm 
not so sure of this now.

Does Seawrack's ability to trigger uncontrollable rutting behavior have 
any thing to do with inter-species breeding experiments?

What is the encrusted thing that climbs aboard Horn's boat?

I thought the broken dome on the island had most likely been a 
greenhouse for genetic experiments.  Possibly human/plant hybrids 
resulting in the Neighbors.  --The Neighbors would then be humans 
transformed to meet new environmental stresses.  Why then, would 
similar domes be at the bottom of the sea, as Seawrack mentions?

Is Horn made part Neighbor on the island?  Or just what the heck 
happens in the pit?

If the Neighbors allowed the Imhumi to became part human in order to 
compare the result with the result of Inhumi infused with Neighbor 
blood, where are the Neighbor/Inhumi?

Why does Horn's son see a Neighbor sitting on a "tree branch" when he 
looks through Horn's ring?

I think much of this fits together as a breeding or hybridization 
program.  The three races (Neighbors, Humans and Inhumi) are brought 
together to create hybrids that are desirable somehow to someone.  This 
is accomplished, in part by bringing the colonists from the Whorl to 
Blue and Green.  The Whorl is to be sent away with a cargo of pure 
human stock, presumably with the idea to repeat the hybridization in 
another 600 years or so.  Possibly this is why the Neighbors have 'gone 
away' --to preserve remaining pure stock for future hybridization.

Have the Neighbors really gone anywhere if you can find one just by 
peeping through one of their rings?  What is that damn ring anyway?  It 
seemed like Horn left it on Green when he was placed into Silk's body.  
Then he got a different ring that seem to turn, over time into the 
original ring.

Is one of the three races the method of hybridization, rather than a 
base stock?  Possibly the Inhumi?

If the gods have hidden in animals, is Echidna in Babbie?  Is someone 
in Oreb?  Is Oreb even the original Oreb?  Could Scylla be in Oreb for 
some reason?  I'm not sure why I think this last, I seem to remember 
some connection between the two, possibly from the Long Sun Books.  A 
lot of what happened around Lake Limna seemed fishy to me.  I think 
there is a lot of hints in that portion of the book that I couldn't 
quite get.

Anything about the ocean-dwelling giants confuses me.  I still don't 
quite get it about Abaia and whatnot.  Was he just an alien who was 
scheming to take over Urth?  Where does the Mother (in Blue's ocean) 
fit into the picture?  She seems to be less malign than Abaia and his 
wives.

I wonder if Mucor is able to assist with the transference of the 
psyches others--kind of like a human Sacred Window.  If she could 
appear to the blind Pig, she may have offered to release the trapped 
PasSilk.  She may also have been removing some rider from Babbie when 
Horn returned to Maytera's island with her eye.  ...either Echidna, 
some part of Echidna, or even part of herself...a sort of recording 
mechanism by which Mucor could plant part of herself, then retrieve it 
later and access its memory.

I don't doubt that some of these questions have been answered 
before...searching the Urth archives can be kind of frustrating, 
though--lots of slogging through barely related material.

Possibly more questions than thoughts...

Brian Lovely

Studio bl
http://www.studiobl.com

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