Biblical connections

I will leave you guys to debate the deeper relevance of the Gospels to the Short Sun books, but the talk of the Whorl doing a round trip and coming back to Urth (Blue =Earth, Green = Moon etc.) brought an lovely image of the Whorl as Noah's Ark, cruising around waiting for the waters to subside. Lots of animals and humans stored in the hold, two by two is hardly viable genetically! And Oreb as the Raven. On the subject of Horn/Silk not eating, I wonder if this is connected to Horn's experience in the Pit. After the Pit, he found that his eyesight had improved so that he saw the world in a completely different way, he suddenly became a crack shot, and was able to find his way through impenetrable jungle. I used to think that this was because Krait had taken his blood while he was unconscious and that the method used to bring him back to life was for Horn to receive a transfusion back from Krait. This made them "blood brothers" and meant that they shared physical characteristics. (It would also explain why Krait looked so much like Sinew who was bitten by an inhumi when a baby.) This may help to explain why the experience was so shattering to Horn, and why he said that after this "the best part of my life was over". Maybe as the books go on he is continuing to share blood with Krait and Jahlee and this affects his appetite for normal food. (This is all from memory, as I haven't read the books for a while. I intend to start a reread before long to see if I like them any better after a break from all things Wolfeian.) Allan

Nice idea Alan. What happens in the pit in OBW seems central to understanding the remainder of the trilogy, and this is the most sensible sounding speculation I can recall. Re "the best part of my life was over", I regret that the best part of TBSS is then over too. I've been reading The Rings of Saturn by the late W G Sebald recently. Despite the title, it's certainly not SF, but I can recommend it to those (like me) who admire the narrative voice of TBNS. It's calm, contemplative and endlessly digressive - and Baldanders gets an early mention: "Recently I realized that the imaginary beings listed alphabetically in [Borges' Libros de los seres imaginarios] include the creature Baldanders, whom Simplicius Simplicissimus encounters in the sixth book of Grimmelshausen's narrative. There, Baldanders is first seen as a stone sculpture lying in a forest, resembling a Germanic hero of old and wearing a Roman soldier's tunic with a big Swabian bib. Baldanders claims to have come from Paradise, to have always been in Simplicius's company, unbenknownst to him, and to be unable to quit his side until Simplicius shall have reverted to the clay he is made of. Then, before the very eyes of Simplicius, Baldanders changes into a scribe who writes these lines [illustration omitted], and then into a mighty oak, a sow, a sausage, a piece of excrement, a field of clover, a white flower, a mulberry tree, and a silk carpet." Finally Wolfe in his interview complains that nobody mentions one of his favourite short stories, The Death of the Island Doctor. Well I've always loved it, though I confess I've never mentioned this before... Tim

Actually, Horn began finding his way through impenetrable jungle after his meeting with the Neighbors, if I remember correctly, which was before the Pit. ----- Original Message -----