uncritical acceptance

Mark, As far as the distance, we want to believe it is pretty close because the einhumu have to travel between the two whorls. It's odd - so many of the claims I've made have been argued against by a literal interpretation of the text - now the distances themselves are called into question. What purpose does the distorted distance of Green serve the text? I am claiming that the narrator's inability to recognize the signs that urth is blue (possibly) ties in with the theme of the book: after a long separation, both your home and you yourself have changed beyond recognition. You don't belong to each other anymore. That's why the narrator can decieve you about Urth and Blue: to him, they ARE two different places, and his perception makes it seem so. For everyone else, he is Silk, even though he seems to be Horn. The final words of his narrative are: "I should not have come home." Home has changed beyond all recognition, and so has he; they don't belong together anymore. The deceit in the narrators in this book should serve a discernable purpose which can be figured out and set aright. We can know things that the narrator can't. However, we can't know to question figures unless there is need to replace them with new ones. Should we really question everything that comes from the second hand account? What about The Book of the Long Sun? All of that could be totally bogus. But we have to believe something. I think reliability should only be questioned to match an overwhelming theme or message. Honestly, I think I've accepted the least of what the text actually says of almost anyone. (How many times have I heard: "the text ACTUALLY says ..." to argue against me? I can't believe I've been called a textual literalist! Me! Oh well. Marc Aramini

I think this is a very good question. ...

First of all, the distance to Green is probably the most overtly unreliable information in the trilogy. Silkhorn says that Inclito says that Gagliardo says that it's 30,000 leagues, and I find it very hard to see how Gagliardo could know. On the other hand, Wolfe could easily make the most unreliable-seeming statement actually be true. Second of all, it's kind of begging the question to believe things that fit a theory and doubt things that conflict. Jerry Friedman