silk flowers, sleepers awake, whorl gazetteer

Ranjit Bhatnagar · 28 Feb 1997, 13:31 · from whorl-v0003.mbox · original

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From: Ranjit Bhatnagar <ranjit at gradient.cis.upenn.edu>
Subject: (whorl) silk flowers, sleepers awake, whorl gazetteer
Date: Fri, 28 Feb 1997 13:31:05
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[Posted from Whorl, the mailing list for Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun]

Rereading Nightside.  What the heck's going on between Silk
and Hyacinth?

I-Ch 6 - Silk has dismissed the monitor and snuck into
Hyacinth's bedroom.  "As he bent over her, something within
him reached out to her; and though he had not touched her,
he felt the thrill of touch."

A suggestive choice of words, as the augur said to the
monitor.  Mucor touches without touching, too...

I-Ch 8 - He's finally made it home after a long night of
breaking-and-entering and attempted extortion. "The
familiar, musty smell of the manse was like a kiss.  He
dropped into a chair, pulled the azoth from his stocking,
and pressed it to his lips, then stared at it."

Kissing an azoth?  Hmm.  Why did Silk fall so hard & fast
for this dell?  Adrenaline & pheremones?  Kypris' Secret
Love Charm?  Another loose bit of genetic programming? Did
Hy or Ky snare him on purpose, or just take advantage of it
when it happened? Should I, as the monitor would say,
abandon this line of inquiry?

I noticed this time while scanning II-Ch4 that Crane has
given Hy cosmetic surgery like Talos did Jolenta.  Does
Crane remind anyone else of Dr Talos?

--

By the way, what's with all this speculation about the
sleepers being genetically enhanced or programmed with
special knowledge?  The only evidence we have is Mamelta
repairing a rocket: heck, maybe she was a rocket scientist
on Urth.

Also, I can't see Mamelta's work reviving the sleeping gods
of Viron; she barely managed to get the monitor
half-working in the independent subsystem of a lander.

--

Just for the heck of it: What cities do we know of?  Gens
("they got tails in Gens"), Trivigaunte ("the girls fight
like troopers in Trivigaunte"), Palustria ("down amongst
the pollywogs, eh?"), Urbs and Urbis (can't find a quote).

--

Finally, another suggestion for the gammadion/voided cross:
a central hub with four screwdrivers (two philips and two
flat?) and four removable, gamma-shaped hex-keys.  With the
gammas snapped into place with their crossbars facing the
screwdrivers, they form hollow rectangles; four hollow
rectangles make a voided cross.

r.

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