to one of my comments about the vanished people on green,I was answered:
"? When Horn first met the Neighbors, and they formally turned over possession of Blue to him as representative of all the people, the Neighbor who called himself Horn said, in the course of asking permission to visit Blue at will: "From this whorl we sprang." (OBW, 271)"
I am referring to the statement in In Green's Jungles that tells of how the city of the Vanished People there was far older than anything on Blue. Of course those neighbors "sprang" up from Blue: they were produced just then when Horn fell in the pit on Blue. On the other hand, the terraformed trees did orginally spring up on Urth before being transplanted to Lune, I suppose ... they just evolved further there. (obviously, the older cities are underwater on Blue so the narrator doesn't really know about them)
As far as Babbie looking completely like Horn in the astral travel: Silk looked like a combination of Horn and Silk at certain points. I argue that a huge portion of Horn transfrerred into Babbie at the end of On Blue's Waters, but not QUITE all of him. Of course he looks like Babbie, too, but he is humanoid (note that he is far more humanoid that Scylla in Oreb).
Also, if we want to talk a little bit more about time travel in these books, there is a fascinating conversation between Seawrack and the narrator in On Blue's Waters in which she says she can move events from one time in her memory to another as she recounts her story; she then says the narrator can do that, too. I was a bit baffled by that - could it be related to a time-traversing principle? After all, "certain mystes" aver that the real world exists only in the human mind, and that our dreams are someone else's reality. (Severian as dream of Silk?)
Some good responses to my challenge ... but I'm just not buying the actual presence of God and his angels as a valid explanation for a lot of those things. That's a bit too pat, isn't it? It just doesn't seem like Gene to blatantly put them into such a huge role unseen ... why would God manifest himself to Silk again after his first enlightenment, which occured outside of time and has since stayed with Silk? and how could that be logically determined from the text? Also, some simple shrimp release their gametes into the water and actually form a allopolyploid viable life cycle for a short span, then become haploid again to mature. (let me look this up again and see if I can find a source for you). Maybe the inhumu are like simple shrimp ... but they do, in fact make a point of gathering those vines as symbols of something ... and perhaps that something is the hope of leaving behind their vegetative and animal pasts and becoming true humans.
And as far as the secret goes, I still argue that its importance lies in its ability to incorporate mystical genetic material into offspring in one generation: the parents are not the ones who receive the beneficial properties of the blood, but their offspring do. I still argue for a hybrid understanding of the secret.
Nice point about Scylla - I guess Cillinia was already in the thrall of the sea creature when she was downloaded.
Marc Aramini
Marc quoted me:
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"? When Horn first met the Neighbors, and they formally turned over possession of Blue to him as representative of all the people, the Neighbor who called himself Horn said, in the course of asking permission to visit Blue at will: "From this whorl we sprang." (OBW, 271)"
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and wrote:
I am referring to the statement in In Green's Jungles that tells of how the
city of the Vanished People there was far older than anything on Blue. Of course those neighbors "sprang" up from Blue: they were produced just then when Horn fell in the pit on Blue.<<
I guess I should have quoted the whole paragraph:
"From this whorl we sprang. You spoke of a hundred years, and of a thousand. There are rocks and rivers, trees and islands here that have been famous among us for many thousands of years. This is one such place. I ask you again, may we visit it, and the others?"
The Neighbors did not spring into existence when Horn fell into the Pit. They abandoned Blue for, er . . . greener pastures, many thousands of years earlier.
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Marc also wrote:
Also, if we want to talk a little bit more about time travel in these books,
there is a fascinating conversation between Seawrack and the narrator in On Blue's Waters in which she says she can move events from one time in her memory to another as she recounts her story; she then says the narrator can do that, too. I was a bit baffled by that - could it be related to a time-traversing principle? After all, "certain mystes" aver that the real world exists only in the human mind, and that our dreams are someone else's reality. (Severian as dream of Silk?)<<
I just finished reading OBW again, and recall no such conversation. Have you a source? I think you may have meant Seawrack's comments about trying to forget her life under the sea before she met Horn (OBW, 249):
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"Not what you think. I was trying to forget the water, and everything I did in it. Every time I remembered something that happened there, I would think of something that's happened since I've been with you, some little thing or something you said, and put it there instead."
"Can you do that?" I was incredulous, as I still am.
"Yes!" she said fiercely. "So could you."
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There's nothing there about time travel.
-Roy
On Tue, 19 Mar 2002, Roy C. Lackey wrote:
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"Not what you think. I was trying to forget the water, and everything I did in it. Every time I remembered something that happened there, I would think of something that's happened since I've been with you, some little thing or something you said, and put it there instead."
"Can you do that?" I was incredulous, as I still am.
"Yes!" she said fiercely. "So could you."
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This is probably forshadowing Silk trying to replace his own painful memories with those of Horn's.
-Rostrum
As far as Babbie looking completely like Horn in the astral travel: Silk
looked like a combination of Horn and Silk at certain points. I argue that a huge portion of Horn transfrerred into Babbie at the end of On Blue's Waters, but not QUITE all of him. Of course he looks like Babbie, too, but he is
humanoid (note that he is far more humanoid that Scylla in Oreb).
Humanoid is one thing, but why doesn't he at least resemble Horn?
Maybe he just likes Hoof because he likes Silkhorn and understands that Hoof is SH's son in some sense.
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Also, if we want to talk a little bit more about time travel in these books, there is a fascinating conversation between Seawrack and the narrator in On Blue's Waters in which she says she can move events from one time in her
memory to another as she recounts her story; she then says the narrator can do that, too. I was a bit baffled by that - could it be related to a time-traversing principle? After all, "certain mystes" aver that the real world exists only in the human mind, and that our dreams are someone else's reality. (Severian as dream of Silk?)
I took this as moving memories from one "slot" to another but not changing the "time stamps" on the memories.
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Some good responses to my challenge ... but I'm just not buying the actual presence of God and his angels as a valid explanation for a lot of those
things. That's a bit too pat, isn't it? It just doesn't seem like Gene to blatantly put them into such a huge role unseen ... why would God manifest himself to Silk again after his first enlightenment, which occured outside of time and has since stayed with Silk?
Because (from the Catholic point of view) this is the reinstitution of the real Eucharist and the narrator is in the "real presence" of God. He says so. Some saints and angels might want to be spectators. I wouldn't bring them up for the interpretation of a lesser event.
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and how could that be logically determined from the text?
I don't see that it can, but it's the most sensible explanation that I've seen.
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Also, some simple shrimp release their gametes into the water and actually form a allopolyploid viable life cycle for a short span, then become haploid again to mature. (let me look this up again and see if I can find a source for you). Maybe the inhumu are like simple shrimp ... but they do, in fact make a point of gathering those vines as symbols of something ... and perhaps that something is the hope of leaving behind their vegetative and animal pasts and becoming true humans.
I think that's true. They're building houses like ours.
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And as far as the secret goes, I still argue that its importance lies in its ability to incorporate mystical genetic material into offspring in one generation: the parents are not the ones who receive the beneficial properties of the blood, but their offspring do. I still argue for a hybrid understanding of the secret.
I can see there's a thematic relationship: the "hybridization" of the inhumi and the people whose blood they drink gives "better" inhumi; cross-pollinating pure strains of corn gives better corn; Horn's spirit in Silk's body gives a truly good person who is not (so) depressed and is comptetent on Blue.
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Nice point about Scylla - I guess Cillinia was already in the thrall of the sea creature when she was downloaded.
Very charitable of you--something like that is what I should have meant, but not what I did mean. I was forgetting about the difference between Cilinia and the real Scylla on Earth.
Jerry Friedman
Urth Net