Seawrack/ mother plot / + three whorls

Somewhere I read a suggestion about Seawrack and the Mother having a hidden scheme in Short Sun. What is it? Where is it? I REALLY don't get final bit about The Mother and the brides of Abia unless Urth is Blue. I appreciate all the arguments against that idea, and i'm not convinced, but this aquatic mother, and buried walls under the sea just really seem to scream out that Urth or Ushas is Blue. Or are we to suppose that a Sea Mother Goddess is inherent on watery worlds? It just seems so much more tidy if there are only 3 whorls and not 5. And Horn/Silk keeps saying "I've drawn the three whorls again" Why would there be two additional whorls. Jordon pointed out to me that if Ushas is Blue, then the projection of Horn and Co to the Red Sun Whorl is not in simultaneous timeline to Horn's, which is maybe problematic, though maybe not. we've scene time travel, and astral projection, why not both at once? ~witz

There are some possibilities. Maybe Blue is where Abia's 'race' is from? I've always assumed Abia came to Urth at some point. Must have come from somewhere, no? And I am against the theory of Ushas as Blue, you know from our discussions. However, there are so many resonances between the two worlds (some of which you point out), that I think we are being directed to the idea that what happened on Urth/Ushas happened on Blue as well. Perhaps there was a "severian" equivelant on Blue. One of the Neighbors. And we have the Abia analogue, just like Urth. There is more to this, which until I finish on this read through of SS I don't want to lay out, but I think the multi-limbed beings and what not are a clue to this. And I can't get with the idea that Horn is a Neighbor. Doesn't make a lick of sense to me, thematically or contextually.

I was an enthusiastic proponent of Marc's Blue Earth theory, because it was an attempt to resolve some open puzzles originally rather than must shrug your shoulders, and because it made several comments by Horn make a lot of sense. But, guess what? When I realized that Horn was Typhon and the Raja was a Neighbor, those comments made comprehensive sense and Blue Earth ceased to have any value I'm afraid. Also, a puckish comment by Wolfe to Marc caused him to flip and declare that Urth was Green instead. Actually, there is thematic value to having Blue or Green be Verthandi. But I simply don't believe it is. Just as I don't believe Blue and Green are St. Anne and St. Croix.

Dream-travel self-evidently involves or enables Time-travel. This is so obvious from the Long Sun and the Short Sun stories that I'm a little impatient with those that don't casually accept it. So I'd best not get into it again. But I don't believe that the Short Sun is Sol. It is a pointless flourish on a narrative that is already troubling enough. J

The best argument that Urth is Blue (or Green), to my mind, is the thematic argument, which Marc made long ago, that The Book of the Short Sun is all about returning. I can't seem to dig up Marc's old post... Together with the corn genetics symbol and the hyacinth symbol at the end, I'm afraid Marc has me convinced that the Whorl has returned whence it came. (But Blue/Green still isn't St. Anne/St. Croix.) I'm much more convinced of this than I am that resurrected Horn is a Neighbor--a proposition I've never been able to find much textual support for. But I'll be reading SS later this year with both ideas in mind.

It's here: http://www.urth.org/whorlmap/chras-writers/default.htm See http://www.urth.org/whorlmap/ for the whole site. J.

Yeah, but i seem to remember a much more succinct post on the old list about the thematic argument, without so much of the hard-sf defense of the idea, which does less to convince me than just the idea of return being important.

Dang. I didn't think of that.

I'm cool with the dream/time travel trip. I threw it out there to see if there were strong objections to that idea. I don't think SS=Sol would be a pointless flourish. "I've drawn the three whorls again" "Return to the Whorl" Hoof sees Green in the sky. He's looked at Green his whole life. If it wasn't Green, wouldn't he make some sort of comment about a change. I think that if I just "traveled to another whorl, and looked up and saw a moon that was different than my home planet's Lune, I wouldn't call it Lune. I'm not convinced, I just think the Three Whorls, and the Return make A LOT of thematic sense. So much, in fact, that I'd consider two more Whorls in a book constantly talking about Three Whorls a pointless flourish. The real problem, aside from hard SF moon distance/size tidal issues stuff people bring up against the idea, is that Blue has a lot of ruins of an ancient race, and very strange flora and fauna. Is it at all possible that The Whorl jumped sequential creations? don't know. I don't have a problem with the idea that The Whorl might have been out there thousands of Urth years before returning. You can't count on any of the cargo's timeframe ideas, can you? but if Neighbors can be trees (I haven't really grokked Aramini's argument) couldn't that be descendant from the Green Man? And every time I read about the Neighbors' anatomy, I was reminded of Plato's Androgyns. What were they called? they're like Two people in one. Some are are hetero/some homo pair ups. Anyway, a huge theme in New Sun seems to be this Androgyne quality in the epitome. Much was made of the Old Autarch's androgyny, and of course the true Epitome was Severian/Thecla/+++++. I think there is really something to this idea that a better humanity is truly androgynous. Perhaps somewhere in Usha's future, these physical androgyns evolved, immigrated, or were engineered? Who knows. And, hell, if that were a "fact" in the future, it might resonate all the way back to create Plato's Myth about them. :-D ~Witz

Oh, there were. But I'm not going to get into it again, either. Just don't take everything thrown out here as accepted wisdom. Far, far from it. -Roy

Roy, Do you have a link to an actual refutation of where the second Oreb came from in Silk's room, and how the Raja showed up in the Grandma's story? Part of my...well, let's just say it... hostility to the positions of the other side (when I discussed it) is that they seemed to just wave their hands and say "Well, the Long Sun/Short Sun isn't a Time-travel kind of story." I don't care to re-hash it, but if this was actually dealt with I would mind reading it. J