Irritating Loonies and Planet of the Grapes

Rudesind and others of his society can't be expected to be cognizant of what else besides mere irrigation would be required to cover the moon with forest.

Have you not read Planet Of The Apes or seen the original film? The Whorl doesn't need any special qualities to travel through a warp in space and time any more than anyone visiting the Botanical Gardens do.

urth at urth.net wrote: Subject: (urth) Diameter of the Old Sun Date: Sun, 3 Mar 2002 16:17:51 -0800 From: Michael Andre-Driussi <mantis at siriusfiction.com> Reply-To: urth at urth.net To: urth at urth.net Assuming that Lune Diameter = 2160 miles, and Orbit = 150,000 miles . . . And using formula S = 57.3 * D/R Shows us that the angular diameter (i.e., size in sky from Urth) of Lune is 0.82 degrees (compared with Moon from Earth as 0.52 degrees--bigger, but not quite doubled in size). Supposing that the Old Sun is swollen (Supposition 1); further supposing that Lune can eclipse the Old Sun (Supposition 2); this implies that the angular diameter of Old Sun is around 0.82 degrees (compared to Sun's 0.53 degrees). What is the diameter of Old Sun? 0.82 = 57.3 * x/92.960 million miles 76.2272 = 57.3 * x 1.3303 = x = 1.33 million miles According to these figurings, Old Sun has a diameter of 1.33 million miles (2.14 million km), which translates into 0.014 AU. If the above is correct, then there is little hazard of the planet we call Mercury being engulfed by the swollen star, since Mercury orbits at 0.38 AU. =mantis= Sirius Fiction booklets on Gene Wolfe, John Crowley Now with UPDATES! http://www.siriusfiction.com/ -- ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Subject: Re: (urth) Re: The irrigation of Lune Date: Mon, 4 Mar 2002 15:03:34 +1100 From: "Timothy Reilly" <treilly at ozemail.com.au> Reply-To: urth at urth.net To: <urth at urth.net>

----- Original Message ----- From: "Timothy Reilly" <treilly at ozemail.com.au>

Are you sure? What part of which speech do you have in mind?

The bit in SOTL where Typhon and Severian are speaking. "My astronomers had told me that this sun's activity would decay slowly . . They were wrong . . . " clearly implies that the astronomers and Typhon knew what was going on at the sun's core and therefore had a part in it.

No - this certainly doesn't follow logically. Astronomers today think they know what's happening at the sun's core, but can hardly be said to have contributed to it! I've always read the words as naturally meaning only what they say, that Typhon's advisers were aware that the sun's activity was declining, but underestimated how fast. Nor on my reading is there any possible motivation for Typhon putting a black hole at the sun's core - it hardly helps him. He's an evil tyrant, but shows no inclination to destroy all human kind (himself included). -- ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Subject: Re: (urth) Re: The irrigation of Lune Date: Mon, 4 Mar 2002 01:09:45 -0600 From: "Roy C. Lackey" <rclackey at stic.net> Reply-To: urth at urth.net To: "urth" <urth at urth.net>

----- Original Message ----- From: "Timothy Reilly" <treilly at ozemail.com.au>

Are you sure? What part of which speech do you have in mind?

The bit in SOTL where Typhon and Severian are speaking. "My astronomers had told me that this sun's activity would decay slowly . . They were wrong . . . " clearly implies that the astronomers and Typhon knew what was going on at the sun's core and therefore had a part in it.

No - this certainly doesn't follow logically. Astronomers today think they know what's happening at the sun's core, but can hardly be said to have contributed to it! I've always read the words as naturally meaning only what they say, that Typhon's advisers were aware that the sun's activity was declining, but underestimated how fast. Nor on my reading is there any possible motivation for Typhon putting a black hole at the sun's core - it hardly helps him. He's an evil tyrant, but shows no inclination to destroy all human kind (himself included).

I agree. Not only is there no apparent motivation; I doubt that Typhon had the ability. Technology on Urth in Typhon's day was considerably more advanced than in Severian's, but was but a shadow of what mean-old, nasty-old Man possessed in its heyday of galaxy hopping and creating new life forms. The sun's decline led to crop failures, riots, and revolt. Things were so bad that Typhon's cronies left the planet, taking all available transport, and left Typhon besieged on his mountain. Who is responsible for the black hole in the sun is an important plot point, it seems to me, because it bears directly on the ultimate goal of the Urth Cycle; the pretext for, and the coming of, the New Sun. If Man, in his presumptive arrogance, caused the wounding of the sun, that is one thing. If agents of the Increate caused it, as retribution, that is something else entirely. I have always adhered to the latter view, and I think the weight of evidence from the fifth volume of the series supports that view. -Roy -- ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Subject: Re: (urth) Re: The irrigation of Lune Date: Mon, 4 Mar 2002 08:02:34 -0500 (EST) From: Michael Straight <straight at email.unc.edu> Reply-To: urth at urth.net To: urth <urth at urth.net> On Mon, 4 Mar 2002, Roy C. Lackey wrote:

The bit in SOTL where Typhon and Severian are speaking. "My astronomers had told me that this sun's activity would decay slowly . . They were wrong . . . " clearly implies that the astronomers and Typhon knew what was going on at the sun's core and therefore had a part in it.

I read this to mean that Typhon's astronomers hadn't even detected the black hole's effects, that they were telling him about the sun's normal life-cycle as a star, until it was too late.

Who is responsible for the black hole in the sun is an important plot point, it seems to me, because it bears directly on the ultimate goal of the Urth Cycle; the pretext for, and the coming of, the New Sun. If Man, in his presumptive arrogance, caused the wounding of the sun, that is one thing. If agents of the Increate caused it, as retribution, that is something else entirely. I have always adhered to the latter view, and I think the weight of evidence from the fifth volume of the series supports that view.

You've left out the third option, which I think is the correct one, that the wounding of the sun was caused by extraterrestrial enemies of Man, Abaia and Erebus, who swim between the stars (and whose sister, I believe, is the Mother on Blue). -Rostrum -- ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Subject: Re: (urth) Re: The irrigation of Lune Date: Mon, 4 Mar 2002 13:07:02 -0000 From: "Andy Robertson" <andywrobertson at clara.co.uk> Reply-To: urth at urth.net To: <urth at urth.net> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Roy C. Lackey" <rclackey at stic.net>

declining, but underestimated how fast. Nor on my reading is there any possible motivation for Typhon putting a black hole at the sun's core - it hardly helps him. He's an evil tyrant, but shows no inclination to destroy all human kind (himself included).

A point here: I have a background in astrophyics and cosmology, and I know that it would be quite "easy" to create a black hole and drop it into the sun. It is not too far beyond our own technology today. I mean only a thousand years or so. The theory is simple. On the other hand, cancelling out the black hole with a White Fountain is a million times harder. I have no idea how we would go about it even in principle. I have always assumed that the sun was wounded by Typhon. The idea that it was in fact done by Abia and her cohorts is an interesting one: Perhaps Typhon had it done in alliance with her? The idea of Typhon allying with these forces for revenge, or simply as a sort of Sampson strategy, is compelling. hartshorn -- ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Subject: Re: (urth) Re: The irrigation of Lune Date: Mon, 4 Mar 2002 15:59:03 -0600 From: "Roy C. Lackey" <rclackey at stic.net> Reply-To: urth at urth.net To: <urth at urth.net> Rostrum quoted me and wrote:

Who is responsible for the black hole in the sun is an important plot point, it seems to me, because it bears directly on the ultimate goal of the Urth Cycle; the pretext for, and the coming of, the New Sun. If Man, in his presumptive arrogance, caused the wounding of the sun, that is one thing.

If agents of the Increate caused it, as retribution, that is something else entirely. I have always adhered to the latter view, and I think the weight of evidence from the fifth volume of the series supports that view.

You've left out the third option, which I think is the correct one, that the wounding of the sun was caused by extraterrestrial enemies of Man, Abaia and Erebus, who swim between the stars (and whose sister, I believe, is the Mother on Blue).

And hartshorn wrote:

I have always assumed that the sun was wounded by Typhon. The idea that it was in fact done by Abia and her cohorts is an interesting one: Perhaps Typhon had it done in alliance with her? The idea of Typhon allying with these forces for revenge, or simply as a sort of Sampson strategy, is compelling.

Revenge for what? Typhon didn't want to pull the Temple down; he wanted to create a new empire with Urth, the ancestral home of mankind, as its symbolic center. He would have been cutting his own throat to ally himself with any party bent on the future of ice. "I have told you that I was autarch on many worlds. I shall be autarch again, and this time on many more. This world, the most ancient of all, I made my capital. That was an error, because I lingered too long when disaster came. By the time I would have escaped, escape was no longer open to me . . ." The Red Sun wasn't part of his plans. As for Abaia & Co. being responsible for the black hole: if they were, then it was only a symbolic gesture. Man had long ago dispersed across the galaxies. Whatever happened to Urth, a used-up backwater planet, would have no impact on the species, was of no real consequence for Man, at least in this iteration of the universe. Urth's only importance, even for the Increate, was symbolic. If Abaia & Co. were responsible for the wounding of the sun, then they were unwitting agents of the Increate, who were doing His bidding, whether they would or no. The entire purpose, in Wolfe's universe, of the wounding of the sun, of Sev's sham trial, and the coming of the New Sun, was to satisfy the whims of the Increate. As Tzadkiel told Sev: "Or if you wish to put it another way, you have already passed your testing, which was an examination of the future you will create. You are the New Sun. You will be returned to your Urth, and the White Fountain will go with you. The death agonies of the world you know will be offered to the Increate. And they will be indescribable--continents will flounder, as has been said. Much that is beautiful will perish, and with it most of your race; but your home will be reborn." -Roy -- ------------------------------------------------------------------------ From: "Dan'l Danehy-Oakes" <ddanehy at siebel.com>

Jeff Wilson, come on down! You wrote...

Rudesind and others of his society can't be expected to be cognizant of what else besides mere irrigation would be required to cover the moon with forest.

I'm not at all sure that this is true. (Well, it might be true of Rudesind specifically, but I'm speaking of "others of his society"), for (at least) two reasons: First, while there is obviously a serioius loss of technology among the commonality of Urth-humans, resulting in the "medieval"-level technology, it's not at all clear (at least to me) that this comes from ignorance; it seems equally likely that it comes from lack of resources (which we know to be a serious problem in the time of the Autarchs, viz., "ages" defined as "the depletion of some resource," etc.), possibly/probably including the resource of energy (solar power isn't much of an option here...). But things Severian and others say lead me to think that they have not fallen into ignorance; while an early comment (a blurb?) described the society of tBotNS as "having forgotten what spaceships are for," it's quite clear that he does know what the Towers of the Citadel are and can do (or could if they weren't fallen into disrepair). This is a society where people don't see the Sun rise, they see the horizon fall away from it. It seems fairly clear that they have more scientific and technical knowledge than they can actually make use of.

Have you not read Planet Of The Apes or seen the original film? The Whorl doesn't need any special qualities to travel through a warp in space and time any more than anyone visiting the Botanical Gardens do.

This is absolutely true - but I should hasten to add that passing through a spacetime warp (whatever that is) and winding up back at the Ushas-Lune system <mumble> years later, doesn't do a thing for

the Red Sun being visible in the Bluvian sky. And, no, I'm sorry, that one isn't going to go away because of spacewarps, curved space, or any other explanation short of "the author waved his magic wand and made it happen" - which is the act of an incompetent author, not Gene Wolfe.

First, while there is obviously a serioius loss of technology among the commonality of Urth-humans, resulting in the "medieval"-level technology, it's not at all clear (at least to me) that this comes from ignorance [...] This is a society where people don't see the Sun rise, they see the horizon fall away from it. It seems fairly clear that they have more scientific and technical knowledge than they can actually make use of.

They may not be completely ignorant, but it is plain that they parrot a lot of the lost teaching without really understanding it; they have some general idea, but the details are long lost.

They know a kind of lightning makes some machines go, but not how to construct a circuit.

They know that the Urth rotates, but not that it revolves around the sun.

They know that some statues are actually some sort of exalted taxidermy, but nothing else about it.

It's no stretch to presume that irrigation is a similar summarization of terraforming.

This is absolutely true - but I should hasten to add that passing through a spacetime warp (whatever that is) and winding up back at the Ushas-Lune system <mumble> years later, doesn't do a thing for

not necessary later, it might be earlier

the Red Sun being visible in the Bluvian sky. And, no, I'm sorry, that one isn't going to go away because of spacewarps, curved space, or any other explanation short of "the author waved his magic wand and made it happen" - which is the act of an incompetent author, not Gene Wolfe.

The curvature of space bends the path of light just as it does the path of material objects,

so the spacewarp =can= explain the Sun being visible as a distant star from Urth when looking back along the path that the Whorl took.

This same effect shows up in URTH with Yesod and the ship, and to a lesser degree with the magic mirrors. This doubling of the Sun is no more a mark of incompetence than the doubling of Burgundofara, or Severian and Apu Punchau, or the various Tzadkiels are, or the bilocation of the various Gardens.

If there are a few scientific details separating the hierodule's spacewarp from what you would expect from a proper closed timelike path in spacetime, I can only point to similar technical shortcomings in the description of the function of the magic mirrors, the lifting principle of the flyers, and the White Fountain's white hole nature, among others. GW doesn't lets science get in the way of telling a story.

From: "Dan'l Danehy-Oakes" <ddanehy at siebel.com> 1. Some of the details of tBotSS can be explained by hypothesizing that Blue/Green is a far-future or far-past of Urth/Lune. "Well, then, how did the Whorl get back to the Urth/Lune system?"

True. But I don't think he lets the story get in the way of (at least) plausible science, either - all of these seem to me to fall under the rubric of a technology that can control gravity, which means a radical shift from any of our current theories of how the universe is put together.

From: "Dan'l Danehy-Oakes" <ddanehy at siebel.com>

Hoom. First I should apologize for the Subject line followed immediately by "Jeff Wilson, come on down!" It occurred to me only after I hit "Send" that, in that context, my pun on "The Irrigation of Lune" might be construed as an accusation of looniness against the estimable Mr. Wilson. Please understand that I did not intend any such thing.