Fish and Caves

Considering the fish that ate Mamelta and perhaps the fish in Father Inire's mirrors, I was thinking that it may be a mistake to make the leap to the conclusion that an evocative fish in the Sun series is a Christ-symbol. It may start with Agia's "Jurupari". This is a jungle demon known for swallowing its victims whole so that they live for a time in its mouth, like a cave. This is paralleled by the Jurupari cichlid, a jungle stream fish which broods its eggs and hatches them in its mouth. Next there is the Saltus cave full of man apes. Severian's presence seems to disturb some deep underground presence in a way which reminds me of the giant caecilian which is disturbed by the Millenium Falcon spaceship (in Empire Strikes Back) inadvertently flying into its mouth, mistaking it for a cave. There is the BonNS story of some people who entered the mouth of Ouroboros thinking it was a cave and spent a long period of time there "not knowing they were dead". We have Wolfe choosing the name "Jonah" for one of Severian's companion. 'Nuff said there, I think. During the seance, The Cumaean says she is contacting a being on a planet circling the star, Fomalhaut, "The Fish's Mouth", in the constellation Pisces. The Cumaean is a being described as living in a cave. Echidna and her daughter Scylla are both mythological monsters who live in caves; Scylla's is aquatic. I don't think The Cumaean's cave is unrelated. (Scylla's father is, of course, Typhon) I think Fomalhaut is a very good candidate for the star around which Blue and Green orbit. In UotNS, the "demon" Juturna is seen munching on a fish (I forget if she is associated with a cave). I've already mentioned the fish and caves associated with Scylla in Lake of the Long Sun. Seawrack emphasizes the siren aspect while Juturna emphasizes the mermaid aspect of the myth but these two seem to be quite simliar characters, in derivation and function. Seawrack, like Juturna isassociated with eating raw fish (when she didn't have human flesh) and The MOther provides a cave-like dwelling for Seawrack beneath the waves. I am suspicious of Mucor's choice to live in a cave but I don't have a clear connection to this theme in mind for her. Perhaps others can help me on this. Anyway, as noted, when I see evocative fish in the Sun series my first thoughts jump to this demonic/monster theme rather than to Christ.

Forgot to clarify- Ourobouros, Echidna, Scylla and the Cumaean can be more associated with snakes than fish but I think the myth name Abaia was chosen for the primary demon on Urth because, as a giant eel, he invokes both fishiness and snakiness, serving as a unifying theme.

Plus, as it has always seemed to me, he might theoretically be able to "swim," in Lovecraftian fashion, between the worlds. There's no textual support for this, just a smell of Cthulhu about him.

In mythology, the Hero Against the Serpent is a common icon. Sigurd and Fafnir St. George/St. Michael and the dragons Apollo and Hera's delphic dragon Indra and Vrtra

Lee Berman wrote (22-12-2010 12:44):

Thanks.

David Stockhoff wrote (22-12-2010 14:37):

There isn't?

Grendel? Yes, it's incredibly suggestive once you let it sink in. At first glance, when you first Google the name, you wonder how an Indonesian eel could fit into BOTNS. But of course the name hides as much as it suggests. Serpents also can grant the power of animal speech, but I don't think that applies. Abiaia is not that kind of serpent.

Damn you, Lee! ;) This is a whole new "can of worms," ha ha.

Not as far as I have heard.

Doesn't Juturna claim the ability? I may be misremembering. David Stockhoff wrote (22-12-2010 14:51):

Now, Lee, this mention of Formalhaut, the Fish's Mouth, the first compelling evidence I have seen that in fact?Green/Blue is not just Urth/Lune substitute from Yesod, with the last lines of the Short Sun being Good fishing, good fishing, good fishing, etc. I am under the impression that there is some other mechanism of astral/temporal transport at work that allows Silk et al to go back in time with Rigoglio instead of just across space, that on Green the city they walk through is the ancient remains of Nessus, that they are in a future setting and the bird like man on the cliff with the stiff awkward gate might be the immortal remnant of Sev, etc but what my theory is missing is a compelling reason why they would go to that time period, I can't seem to?realy find one except that Silk is obssessing about the dust of the past or something. (We've seen Silk in weird time paradox situations twice - once in the old lady's story at the beginning of IGJ, and in Long Sun where such a huge deal is made about whether Silk is wearing a blue or black tunic in some scenes - important to keep track of that more carefully on my next read through.) BUT the fishes mouth, well, you know, let's see where that goes. And yes, I agree that the story of Fish and Frog must be very important, too, though I used it once to argue that Pia was Sev's sister (her description of dark hair with pale features, high cheekbones and a thin waist really mirrors?Sevs, and he finds a girl who looks like Pia?eviscerated in Baldander's castle) and that one of them was sent down the river, but someone convinced me the river was headed the wrong way or something. --- On Wed, 12/22/10, Lee Berman <severiansola at hotmail.com> wrote: Considering the fish that ate Mamelta and perhaps the fish in Father Inire's? The Cumaean says she is contacting a being on a planet circling the star, Fomalhaut, "The Fish's Mouth", ...... I think Fomalhaut is a very good candidate for the star around which Blue and Green orbit.

Marc Aramini wrote (22-12-2010 15:06):

It is spelled out in the text that dream travel is in space, and only landing on places previously known to the travellers. Of course, this could be one of those cases of misdirection. I just don't see any compelling evidence that dream travel is across time. If it were, shouldn't the trip with Rigoglio be to the time he left Urth?

Juturna, Abaia's daughter-bride, does claim to be able to swim between the stars. Since she is obviously bound by the laws of physics, given her size/water-bound nature I had always taken this to be a metaphor to explain her alien nature to Severian who, at the time, didn't have a very clear view of space travel. The presence of immature undine Idas on The Ship seems to confirm this. By inference, perhaps we can assume Abaia also has an alien origin. If not just a metaphor this could also be a lie designed to confuse and disguise the true nature of Undines and Abaia, as the Inhumi use their lie of unassisted space travel between Blue and Green. Bu, "swimming between the stars" could reference some sort of dream travel which is not restricted by the laws of physics on material bodies. I think Wolfe jumbles all these ideas together, and, as for Short Sun, we aren't meant to know exactly how it all works together. Somehow the image of gigantic Tzadkiel in the mirror book must also be related to the concept of swimming between the stars. We see him/her on The Ship but perhaps there is a much larger (and more spiritual?) form which is able to swim unassisted in the void? For me, this mirroring of Tzadkiel and Abaia/undines is part of the gnostic aspect of this universe. God is not One here but expressed as paired opposites.

Joseph Campbell would probably categorize these as the same. But I see Grendel as more comparable to Theseus/Minotaur and Gilgamesh/Enkidu and Hercules wrestling with Death and with Antaeus. The dragons and serpents I see as a different kettle of fish. ᚹ

Really? So Silk seeing an astral flying Oreb in his room while the current Oreb is lame downstairs doesn't give you pause? Incanto and Oreb in the grandmother's tale from her youth on the Whorl doesn't seem suspicious? The screwy timeline in the Book of the Short Sun (Sinews kids age not really matching, the times since Horn, Hoof, and Hide not matching), that doesn't make you think astral travel is temporal? There's something else too. The astral travel that Mucor does is not the same as what the Rajan does. Mucor takes hours to reach the Whorl by astral travel. Travel with the Rajan is instanteous. I suspect is Wolfe recognizes an ability for Time travel in order to accomplish this. ᚹ

James Wynn wrote (22-12-2010 16:09):

It would if it were established that Silk saw an astral flying Oreb in his room.

Suspicious but not definitive.

Not really. It's not like the incoherences in the narrative are limited to the timeline. All those can be evidence, but they're not compelling evidence. There may be better evidence that I've missed.

Ok.

So it would take ages for them to reach Urth, but the time is cut short by time-travel, of which they are unaware, and yet they end up on Urth at what is generally considered the present time? Time travel that exactly compensates such a great offset, only to deposit them at the present time, instead of at a point that would make more sense for Rigoglio? (NB this applies whether one thinks the time they land on is the present time or something else, as long as it's not close to the time of Rigoglio's lifetime there.)

2010/12/22 Ant?nio Pedro Marques <entonio at gmail.com>:

Actually, when dealing with interstellar distances the concept of "the present time" is meaningless due to the C-limit and related (relativistic) effects. Wolfe has established pretty clearly that relativity-as-we-know-it applies to the Briahtic universe.

True! I meant Abaia specifically.

Grendels' mom?

Okay. What could possibly establish that for you? Oreb adamantly affirms that it wasn't him. His twin? His father?

How about an alternate theory?

So, you're answer is "We can't explain everything in the books, so the obvious problems with time-line are not really indicative of temporal disjuncture." Once again. I don't know what sort of confirmation would put you over the edge.

I'm not sure what you are getting at. It seems you are defining how things would work if /you/ wrote the books. Wormhole travel is typically defined as simultaneous temporal and space travel (I only recently heard a physicist explain it) --thus the traveler arrives instantaneously at his new location as though he walked through a door without violating Relativity. The point is that the Rajan's travels to Green and to the Whorl are unhinged from the Time-line and consequently Rigoglio's travels to Urth should be assumed to be as well. We have two examples of Time-travel by the Rajan and Oreb. We have a book with a serious time-line issue. There is no evidence to the contrary that the Rajan doesn't Time-travel. In a book with lots of mysteries, it's nice to have one mystery that is so resolvable. ᚹ

James Wynn wrote (22-12-2010 16:55):

So exactly how many people said it was an astral traveling Oreb before Short Sun got published?

Have none ever been presented that do not involve dream travel? ('Hey, I think Captain X stole the jewels.' 'I'm not so sure.' 'D'ya have any other suspect? Than let's arrest him!')

Someone getting more evidence that Silk's vision was the Rajan and Oreb would go that way.

Well, nothing ever isn't a time and space travel. You're travelling in time and space right now.

You'll have to decide yourself. Do the Rajan's travels involve displacement in time or not?

You could make the case (you appear to do so above) that dream travel is a bit imprecise in what regards time. You might further try to find a reason for it to be greatly imprecise in some cases. But you haven't done that. And nothing as impressive as going back a thousand years, let alone thousands as per Marc's theory, has been argued, let alone convincingly.

2010/12/22 Ant?nio Pedro Marques <entonio at gmail.com>:

I think you're asking for too high a standard of "proof" here. A better principle would be Holmes's "When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth." What else, beside time travel in dream travel, remains?

Err...no one? Because astral traveling had not yet been introduced into the story? How many found the astral Oreb odd? Everyone. Didn't you? .

Do you have one?

Ummm...but we DO have evidence of the astral traveling Oreb and Rajan in Silk's room and in the grandmother's tale. So, hurray, right? We have confirmation. The rest of your response is argumentative. So lets stick with these since we seem to be bearing fruit. ᚹ

I agree, especially in the light of paired opposites I'm viewing things in. We've got evil fish symbols and good ones. Maybe comparable to the Long Sun's simple Sign of Addition paired with the gammadion (swastika) to represent "good" vs. "evil", light vs. dark, spiritual vs. mechanical aspects of the Whorl. In my growing view, it is combining the paired opposites which is seen (by wolfe?) as the expression of the One True God. Good fish + evil fish, Severian + Apheta, Silk + Hyacinth, Apollo + Dionysus. Maybe something like that. Since RttW gives us Quadrafons rather than Janus, it may be that the process is more complicated than simple dyads.

Antonio, I acknoledge that the rules are clearly spelled out in the introduction to my full theory, which James Wynn provided the link to early. Here is the first paragraph of my essay. "Paradoxes explain everything...since they do, they can’t be explained." (Krait to Horn as he languished in the pit ~ OBW 211). Certainly, the most basic perusal of Gene Wolfe’s Book of the Short Sun leads one to the inexorable conclusion that Blue and Green are planets far distant from the ancient Urth of The Book of the New Sun, and that the events in its narrative end just as The Book of the New Sun is beginning. We see both places clearly, and the rules of the travel between the two seem to be just as clear: the autochthonous Neighbors of Green and Blue have allowed the narrator of Short Sun to travel across distances instantaneously. However, by a complicated narrative paradox, the entire sequence falls into an astonishingly different light. Krait’s statement is a meta-textual challenge to the reader of Short Sun - begging us to find the paradox that explains the book. http://www.urth.org/whorlmap/chras-writers/marc-aramini1.htm I understand the rules as laid out within the text. --- On Wed, 12/22/10, Ant?nio Pedro Marques <entonio at gmail.com> wrote: It is spelled out in the text that dream travel is in space, and only landing on places previously known to the travellers. Of course, this could be one of those cases of misdirection. I just don't see any compelling evidence that dream travel is across time. If it were, shouldn't the trip with Rigoglio be to the time he left Urth?

I was going to say something about paired opposites too. I don't want to get too programmatic about it, but it does make sense that the Increate has aspects that "appear" opposite to us. Whether they are or not is another question, but the mystery of the Increate is lessened the more we think of him as one-dimensional. He may favor Love and Like, or Orgies and Parties, but it's more dramatic for him to combine the extremes: Apollo and Dionysus, Love and War, etc. This is not necessarily gnostic logic, but it certainly describes the manifestation of True Godhood in a pagan-like universe of demiurges and semidemiurges.

Yeah, sometimes what seems interesting in your own head comes out as a bit hackeneyed and boring when translated to words. For me, anyway.

Well, I suppose Gene Wolfe is faced with some of the same problems in his writing. He doesn't want to be obvious. But he probably knows that using the contrast of "love" and "like" to illustrate his points is not very interesting or compelling. So he has to disguise his polar opposites. LOL@ semidemiurges, but I think that is a very accurate description of some Sun series characters. Might even be some hemisemidemiurges around (Oreb?) Poor guy....erm....girl has his divinity so divided he/she can't say more than two words at a time.

Dan'l Danehy-Oakes wrote (22-12-2010 17:26):

I don't find time travel impossible or even improbable. My comment was in respect to Marc's hypothesis. I don't think there's anything like that kind of time travel that we can point to as reference so that the 'suspension of disbelief' can set in at once.

James Wynn wrote (22-12-2010 17:35):

Weren't there explanations for that episode? If so, have they becoem invalid? Is everyone currently reasonably convinced that an astral travelling Oreb is the echt explanation?

We do know that Incanto inserted himself into the others' tales. NB I'm not saying that's what's happened, just that it could. I didn't even say there was no evidence that dream travel entailed time travel. I asked - and the context was Marc's hypothesis - whether there was solid evidence for it. I think I even said I might just have forgotten it. Do you have to get so excited about everything? The difference between 'travel' as a more or less planned activity even if not wholly under the control of the traveller, and simple displacement, happening at random, as a side effect or not, also seems to have some relevance. Spatial dislocation seems to be of the fist kind, temporal, if the examples adduced are examples of it, not so much.

I like parts of your exposition, Marc. It only seems to me that after a number of insights and interesting deductions, some of your conclusions (Urth = Green (or Blue, even, if it were), the time lapses) are not up to the same standard. You've built quite an interesting building, but I don't think the roof matches the awesomeness of the rest.

Lee Berman wrote (22-12-2010 20:38):

Sometimes we can't even spell it out and sometimes even if we do spell it out thoroughly nobody gets it. For instance, my beloved and I got an extractor hood for our kitchen that is, plainly speaking, a black upright parallelepipede, nothing more, nothing less. However, we don't seem to be able to eplxian that to anyone. When people who haven't yet seen it ask how it is, she says it's... a black upright parallelepipede, a black cube, a black box - you name it - and everyone gives a puzzled look, says uhhhm, and clearly thinks we didn't understand the question and are describing something else.

parallelepipede A new favorite word. I was listening to a Captain Beefheart song in rememberance while looking it uo. Somehow it fit very nicely.

Heh, Antonio I'm afraid I was among the confused people after reading your post. Two completely unfamiliar terms. A bit of Googling informed me that a parallelepipede is what I'd call a rhombus cube or something. And an extractor hood is (as I did guess) what I'd call a stove exhaust fan. Perhaps there are cultural differences at work?

Lee Berman wrote (23-12-2010 17:18):

Then our new stove exhaust fan may be a black upright rhombus cube. Though I don't think so - a cube is a parallelepipede with all 3 dimensions equal (height, width, depth). Ours is taller than wider, and a little more wide than 'deep'.

Marc, I think some of your ideas about the Short Sun are very interesting, esp. Horn as Babbie. I'm less convinced about Neighbours possessing Horn, either your version of it or James's. But I need to re-read the Short Sun trilogy before I make too many comments on those matters. However I can't really accept the theory that Urth and Lune are Green and Blue. Unlike you I see lots of compelling evidence, or perhaps it would be more correct to say that I do not buy your theory that the humans (and animals) of Urth suddenly all mutated into a different species! Also, here is Silk/Horn stating explicitly that Urth orbits a distant star: ******************************** "Soon it will be evening," he said. "If we still haven't gone, we'll go up onto the roof of this house. Standing on the tiles I will point and you will peer until at last you see a certain dim red star. It's a long, long way from here. Think of it now, the sky like black velvet strewn with diamonds in the bottom of a grave, and among the diamonds a minute drop of blood. "There is a whorl circling that star, an ancient whorl. On that whorl, Juganu, there is an old city you have seen, and through it a river. Its waters are turbid and foul, and seem scarcely to move. You know that river; you have sailed on it. There are women in that river, women who swim up from the sea. I do not speak of the feignings of the sea goddess, but of real women. Some are as tall as towers, some no larger than children. Their hair is green and streams behind them when they swim, their nipples black, and their eyes and lips and nails as red as blood. ********************************* (Interesting too that he distinguishes the brides of Abaia from the "feignings of the sea goddess" - and just WHICH sea goddess does he mean? But that's another matter.) As for Fomalhaut, there is one question mark over it, which is its distance from Urth - only 25 light years. That does have the advantage that the Whorl could have travelled at a non-relativistic speed to get there, which at least solves the question of why Typhon, if he commanded such energies, did not himself create a new sun for Urth and Lune. However, that's an excessively technical quibble anyway, as Wolfe is not a hard SF writer. But Fomalhaut's distance raises another technical problem which I think is more serious in the literary context - there appears to have been a significant amout of relativistic time dilation on board the Whorl; perhaps 2000 years have passed on Urth while 300 passed on board the Whorl and Blue/Green. However, a 200-year journey to Fomalhaut would have caused a time discrepancy of only a few months. Of course, Fomalhaut could have moved since our time, but then it would no longer be in the Fishes Mouth! Still, there are minor issues (as is the fact that Fomalhaut is too young for advanced life to have evolved on its planets) - it may be that Wolfe did not worry about them. Overall, I don't see any particular reason to believe that the ancient intelligence contacted by the Cumaean lived on Green or Blue, but no particular reason to rule it out either. - Gerry Quinn ----- Original Message ----- From: Marc Aramini To: The Urth Mailing List Sent: Wednesday, December 22, 2010 3:06 PM Subject: Re: (urth) Fish and Caves Now, Lee, this mention of Formalhaut, the Fish's Mouth, the first compelling evidence I have seen that in fact Green/Blue is not just Urth/Lune substitute from Yesod, with the last lines of the Short Sun being Good fishing, good fishing, good fishing, etc. I am under the impression that there is some other mechanism of astral/temporal transport at work that allows Silk et al to go back in time with Rigoglio instead of just across space, that on Green the city they walk through is the ancient remains of Nessus, that they are in a future setting and the bird like man on the cliff with the stiff awkward gate might be the immortal remnant of Sev, etc but what my theory is missing is a compelling reason why they would go to that time period, I can't seem to realy find one except that Silk is obssessing about the dust of the past or something. (We've seen Silk in weird time paradox situations twice - once in the old lady's story at the beginning of IGJ, and in Long Sun where such a huge deal is made about whether Silk is wearing a blue or black tunic in some scenes - important to keep track of that more carefully on my next read through.) BUT the fishes mouth, well, you know, let's see where that goes. And yes, I agree that the story of Fish and Frog must be very important, too, though I used it once to argue that Pia was Sev's sister (her description of dark hair with pale features, high cheekbones and a thin waist really mirrors Sevs, and he finds a girl who looks like Pia eviscerated in Baldander's castle) and that one of them was sent down the river, but someone convinced me the river was headed the wrong way or something. --- On Wed, 12/22/10, Lee Berman <severiansola at hotmail.com> wrote: Considering the fish that ate Mamelta and perhaps the fish in Father Inire's The Cumaean says she is contacting a being on a planet circling the star, Fomalhaut, "The Fish's Mouth", ...... I think Fomalhaut is a very good candidate for the star around which Blue and Green orbit. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ _______________________________________________

From: "Dan'l Danehy-Oakes" <danldo at gmail.com> 2010/12/22 Ant?nio Pedro Marques <entonio at gmail.com>:

You forget that in Wolfe's universe the c-limit is violated - quite explicitly by Tzadkiel's ship but also seemingly by mirror travel and astral travel. Also time travel exists. So special relativity is in fact repeatedly violated. Thus while relativistic time dilation is a feature of Wolfe's universe, relativity of simultaneity is not. The phenomena listed above make it clear that there must be a preferred frame which can be used to define a universal "present time". The situation can be modelled by Lorentz-Poincare ether theory. Of course time travel (as distinct from FTL) puts a horse and cart through other parts of physics also. - Gerry Quinn

Pike's ghost? Mucor? A lying night chough who managed to jump and flutter a short distance? Note that Scylla was not possessing Oreb at this time. Gods had no reason to escape into animals until Pas returned. Why would an ordinary bird be capable of astral travel? And finally - even if Oreb did astrally travel a few yards, what is that supposed to tell us about time travel? Silk did not see two birds simultaneously, and even if he had, it would be explainable without time travel so long as one of them was asleep. - Gerry Quinn

Gerry Quinn wrote (23-12-2010 18:42):

I think he's saying Patera Pike and the fluttering on the 2nd floor were the Rajan and Oreb from 20-odd years later.

Gerry, I am only going to include the parts of the quote I find especially interesting. Yes, it is far away, But is that distance in time? Why is this whorl called ancient, and this city old? Sure it is far away, but I think that is not necessarily evidence that he can really see it in anything but his mind, but yes, you are right, I can't find a mechanism that satisfactorily explains why they would arrive at that particular time. I don't think the neighbors possess horn at all. I think they hybridize with him to make Neighbor Horn. --- On Thu, 12/23/10, Gerry Quinn <gerryq at indigo.ie> wrote: "Soon it will be evening," he said. "If we still haven't gone, we'll go up onto the roof of this house. Standing on the tiles I will point and you will peer until at last you see a certain dim red star. It's a long, long way from here. "There is a whorl circling that star, AN ANCIENT WHORL. On that whorl, Juganu, there is an?OLD CITY YOU HAVE SEEN, and through it a river. Its waters are turbid and foul, and seem scarcely to move. You know that river; YOU HAVE SAILED ON IT. *********************************

Thanks Antonio. I just feel like the huge evidence of sentient recombinatory hybridizing tree life is more than an echo of the Green Man future, and that the theme of the book is one of homecoming and change: you spend all this time trying to go home, and you realize its not your home (Silk arriving at Horn's house, knowing its not his home, the whorl winding up back at Urth but it being completely unrecognizable)? I know those are kind of opposite themes, but it reminds me of the man crossing the river quote - you can't cross the same river twice, its not the same river and you aren't the same man. I feel that there is an important THEME of true homecoming being an impossibility because of changes in identity that is particularly satsified by the return to a world that is OBVIOUSLY not the cultural home of man. The story Horn has to enact where corpses are cleared from a stagnant water pool to allow a deluge, where he is given a sword, seems like a mythical retelling of Severian's tale, and I don't know what else to do with it. --- On Thu, 12/23/10, Ant?nio Pedro Marques <entonio at gmail.com> wrote: I like parts of your exposition, Marc. It only seems to me that after a number of insights and interesting deductions, some of your conclusions (Urth = Green (or Blue, even, if it were), the time lapses) are not up to the same standard. You've built quite an interesting building, but I don't think the roof matches the awesomeness of the rest.

I didn't mean to misrepresent your theory about neighbour-hybridisation, I was just mentioning ot in passing. I think James's theory could be described as a cross between possession and a sort of psychic hybridisation. But I must re-read the books anyway before I get too deep into the mystery of who exactly Silk/Horn is at any time, though I lean to the belief that he is all human. With regard to the star, the main point is that - at least according to Silk/Horn - you can see it as a dim red point in the night sky of Blue. Therefore (if he is telling the truth) it is not the sun of Green and Blue, but a far distant star. The bits you have capitalised require no special explanation: - Urth is certainly ancient - Jugano has already been to Nessus, and they have already travelled down the Gyoll on the river boat to see monster Scylla. They are going back again to find human Scylla's grave. - Gerry Quinn ----- Original Message ----- From: Marc Aramini

Mount Erebus is a (earth) volcano in Antarctica and iirc, the god/demon Erebus is said to dwell in that location on Urth. Abaia is frequently associated with the ocean or sea or pelagic depths or whatever. It is possible to believe this evidence for their locations and stop there. On the other hand, mythogicla Abaia is specifically a freshwater eel. Diuturna and Juturna can hardly be accidentally similar. Likewise, Wolfe could hardly name a town on the shore of this lake as "Eel" by accident. Severian is told there is a fish god in this lake. It is possible to believe this evidence for the location of Abaia and stop there. Or it is possible to recognize the clues that these are superhuman creatures who can divide and unite with each other and be located in many places at once in ways verily incomprehensible to human beings such as ourselves. Also possible to catch the occasional hints that Abaia and Erebus (and Scylla) are essentially the same being.

For me, the meanings are pretty clear. The words are spoken on Blue so there is only one sea goddess he can mean. The "feignings of the sea goddess" refers to the female figure that erupts out of the water formed from The Mother's back and who speaks in Her voice to Horn. The Undines in various sizes that he describes are distinguished from that "feigning" because these are beings which have been pinched off and separated from the main, bulky corpus of the sea-bound god/demon. The reason it is important to distinguish attached from detached beings is that once a human (or larger or smaller) sized being is separated, the possibility of rebellion becomes possible. This possibility is most clearly raised with the tinkerbell Tzadkiel who is supposedly being punished with banishment. Thematically this aspect of separation is important to recognize as it allows for the possiblilty of "fallen angels"/demons on Urth whom I think we can recgonize. Lucifer etc. could only rebel once they had achieved separation from God, yes? It might even be that Wolfe uses the same principle to allow for the possibility of fallen demons who rebel against their larger host to become angels amongst us. This is how I interpret Seawrack, though I get the impression Horn is never fully sure if she might still be true to The Mother and her purposes. But he is willing to risk it. Yin, Yang, Tao, etc. Gods, angels and demons, no matter their origin, rebel and unite and co-mingle with each other and humans, all according to a higher, perfect Plan.

I would add that, like Severian, Horn in the Sewer on Green is, like Severian, not only armed with a sword but a light. Other than that, Marc, I think you have nailed it to a T. What more needs to be said? We could note the similarities to Bilbo, Frodo and Sam with the sword and light (which may refer back to other legends). We could (and have) talk about the Labors of Hercules and the Augean Stables and how Severian resembles that Greek hero. But, that's just window dressing on the main theme that you have recognized.

But he's speaking to people who have all just seen Monster Scylla on Urth. So it's not so clear. I don't recall the female figure you mention, but as I've said I have only read the Short Sun books once. The figure I associate with the Mother is Seawrack, who is plainly detached. Seawrack claims to be human, but if so she has been heavily modified by the Mother. How are Silkhorn's audience to know he does not mean creatures like Seawrack? I agree with you though that he probably means the Mother rather than Monster Scylla. Still, there is a possible ambiguity there.

Monster Scylla certainly has or can produces attached figures (feignings?), as seen on their astral visit to Urth. The ancestry of the undines is still not entirely certain. You assert they are detached parts of some sea monster, and it seems logical given that Monster Scylla seems to be budding, but there is no proof of it. Severian himself thinks Juturna once lived on land, but grew too large; this is after she injures herself trying to leave the water to get him. (This happens before Baldanders jumps in Lake Diuturna, so that's not where Severian got the idea.) - Gerry Quinn

Well, maybe I could add a little more. There is the parallel of the flooding of the Vincula to consider. Perhaps it was David with whom I discussed that parallel earlier? But the other element which needs to be discussed in the Sewer scene is the blind, old ghoul who is there in the dark, living on the human corpses. He tries to stab Horn in the back when he realizes what Horn intends to do. If Horn is like Severian then who, on Urth, is like the ghoul? My G.U.T. has some answers. Who keeps trying to kill Severian or at least thwart the coming of the New sun and Flood? Who on Urth continues to control the governments of humanity, forcing them to fight endless, pointless wars and, in some manner, feed off the corpses (as The Mother feeds off dead sailors from shipwrecks caused by her siren). We know who is controlling the government and directing the war effort of the Ascians. How about the Commonwealth?

If the Ascians are attacking the Commonwealth, defence against them is hardly a pointless war. - Gerry Quinn

Not just possible it IS ambiguous. That is the point. WOlfe CAN'T be too clear in descriptions of god-like beings.If they were clear, they wouldn't be god-like. Is it really important to distinguish which giant being is which? These things reproduce asexually and have the capacity for interstellar travel. So it probably doesn't matter so much which is which. The human conventions of distinct identity and distinct names may be something only we need, not they.

Horn is making some fish for Seawrack on the boat when:

Since we can't see this giant woman below the waist, I conclude she is budded and not really "standing".

Gerry, are you suggesting that Great Scylla has these waves and waves of budded human female extensions in black hooded robes (abayas) for no reason. They won't detach and become undines, they will just sort of wave around in the ocean without purpose? Even I can admit that seems unlikely. Wolfe is simply not going to hand you the mathematical "proof" on a silver platter. His mysteries have multiple variables to solve simultaneously. You don't ever see a budded undine detach from Abaia or Scylla or The Mother to become its own entity. Right. But you DO see a budded appendage break off and become an independent being with Tzadkiel. She (Tzadkiel) explains the process by comparing it to the budding of sponges. SEA CREATURES.(fishy things) If you can't add these clues together, then I think you might want to consider ending your quest. Wolfe will not ever make it easier to understand than that. I hate to speak condescendingly but I don't know how else to say it. To understand Wolfe you have to stop shrinking away from ambiguity and embrace it. You will never, ever get your "proof". And the reason he writes this way (aside from being so frickin' smart) is that he is religious. He is pointing readers toward the path of having faith in that which you can only understand intuitively, not logically. In a word, God.

Aw Gerry, I can't believe you said that. Next you will tell me that the USA and UK were in grave danger of being invaded by Afghanistan and Iraq? ;= ). (When I say "pointless" I mean from the perspective of the people fighting the war, not those actually in control of things.) I do not think Gene wolfe is so naive about war. Consider the words of the Old Autarch in discussing the history of the war with Severian:

Add this to some cryptic words from Master Ash and we can be quite clear that Erebus is just playing a war game with his millions. We may interpret his desire for control of the south, of "YOU and all the rest" to mean he hopes to control Severian and the coming of the New Sun. Next consider the words of Father Inire's letter. He is spying for the Ascians and supporting the pro-Ascian, anti-Commonwealth actions of Vodalus and his group. Consider Maxellindis' Uncle's story of the women's voices and a deeper voice beneath the water and the giant ship with huge, pale (antarctic) warriors sailing down the Gyoll. Abaia and Erebus are already within The Commonwealth. Like them, Father Inire is playing games with the war. Everything about the war is a sham. It is all about control and manipulation of one particular person, that being Severian. (is Severian the Urthian equivalent of petroleum? heh)

That was in regard to monster sea creatures but there is their heavenly mirror images, also. Apheta does not have a name, until she meets Severian and needs one. She is a larva. She lives in a spiral-shaped cave. Tzadkiel is said to have a "son". Exactly how are these offspring of Hierogrammates produced? We aren't shown but we can guess, looking back to their mirror image race on Urth (and Blue).

Has anyone explored the idea that instead of dividing et al. these are (spatially and maybe temporally) multidimensional creatures?

Well, what I can say is that all that is very well thought out. Maybe I dislike the Urth = Green conclusion in the same way that some dislike the idea that there are two mausoleums - the fact remains that there are two.

You previously said "The words are spoken on Blue so there is only one sea goddess he can mean." I was pointing out that there are in fact two possibilities. Humans reproduce in a variety of ways and have the capacity for interstellar travel. Does it matter much which is which? I think so, even if you do not always seem to! If the condition of being detached is significant, as you say (and I agree, even though I do not fully accept or reject that this is the source of the undines), then Monster Scylla and the Mother are different entities. Long sun Gods can also split off pieces of themselves. Does that make them all the same god? I do not subscribe to what might be described as the 'character soup' theory of Wolfe's books, in which everybody is everybody else. There are confusions of identity, certainly - but such confusions are possible only if there are identities to confuse!

Okay, I remember now. Yes, she is created by the Mother as a sort of puppet figure in order to communicate with Horn. She seems quite like the figures produced by Monster Scylla, which were also used for communication, although the large number is hard to explain - sure,. they could be buds, or maybe Monster Scylla just produced lots of them to make an impression. In short, the figures produced by Monster Scylla were like the "feignings" - and therefore in some sense unlike Juturna and her siblings. Unlike because not detached, or unlike for some other reason? I don;t claim to know.

They have a proximate purpose, i.e,. communication. Perhaps Monster Scylla just created them on the spot and absorbed them after. Maybe they are buds that Monster Scylla carries around for a time and then detaches. But I don't think we know enough to be certain of that.

You are the one who is always insisting that theories, however off the wall, should not be criticised - now suddenly you insist that there is only one true way to explain these phenomena. Sponges are not fish. Nor are the gods of the Long Sun Whorl who can also break off pieces of themselves. Possibly the brides of Abaia are pieces of Scylla - it could be part of the sea monsters' reproductive system (but how many sea monsters is there room for? Maybe they serve for communication between the sea monsters). On the other hand, we also have what is apparently originally a man (Baldanders) who becomes something akin to an undine. Like I say, I don't dismiss the theory that the undines have such a source; I just keep an open mind on it. As I said, Severian finds reasons to doubt it, and Silkhorn indicates that the 'feignings' are something quite different from the undines.

I don't shrink away from ambiguity - in fact I have been pointing out ambiguities here! What I don't accept without very strong evidence are theories that are self-contradictory. As for understanding Wolfe, I have some doubts as to whether Wolfe would recognise his stories in your interpretations of them. I don't mean the undines, you may well be correct as regards them - I mean these huge schemata in which Inire controls everything, or every woman is Severian's sister. All these ideas from allusions to Greek gods or fish or whatever may lead to illumination, but to make it useful there must be some winnowing of those which do not find anchorage in the text. Without both figure and background, there is no image; that is to say, the image does not exist until we cull those parts that are not of the image. - Gerry Quinn

Fine - but the fact that the Ascians are the proxies of Erebus's monster faction doesn't mean that the Commonwealth can just lie down and let them walk over them. They still have to fight (there may be an alternative on offer but it is unacceptable).

There's no evidence that Inire is spying for the Ascians. He does (with the Autarchs' permission) allow a heavily infiltrated and probably harmless revolutionary group to persist - such things ae not unknown. We already know there are agents of the sea monsters present in the Commonwealth. That doesn't mean they own it. My impression is that Abaia and Erebus are at odds. The Commonwealth must do what it must to survive. This includes war. - Gerry Quinn

Seeing as the war apparently takes place within Commonwealth territory and is carried out largely by professional soldiers and mercenaries, that view doesn't hold water. Though I don't see what directing either a fake or real war has to do with the man in the sewer. He might represent the antagonists of the New Sun, how is FI an antagonist of the New Sun?

A multi-part question. I think you are on the right track. Yes, if HOrn, armed with sword and a light, invokes Severian and the Sewer invokes Urth then the blind, old guy invokes the enemies of the New Sun who, at surface level, perhaps we can agree, are Abaia and Erebus. So, while it is easier to compare a blind guy in the dark to another BotNS character, it is more difficult to connect F.I. to the creatures in the ocean (or to Ultan). I've spoken before about the idea that IF Father Inire appears in various shapes, sizes, genders and species, then he must be connected to the angels and monsters. I've been through the chain of connection before so I'll leave that part alone and just focus on Erebus and Abaia. To me, the question becomes, why would a Flood be any sort of menace to large sea monsters? If a few humans can survive on the ocean surface, Abaia and Erebus should be fine a few kms below the surface. I've heard weak arguments about "waves of gravity" or fresh water killing them and such but I think we need to be honest here and admit Gene Wolfe intended us to recognize that nothing makes sense about sea monsters dying in a Flood, Scientific "rational" sense I mean. I think the only real answer can be found in mythological/religious allegory. We must look to the Biblical Flood and perhaps the coming of Jesus to understand why Abaia and Erebus have been vanquished. (I can elaborate, if needed).

A very astute question. I don't think that has been explored as much as it should be. Again, Wolfe doesn't give us the full answer on these things. But the most complete answer we can get is by exploring the mirror images. Some of what we don't know about Megatherians can be learned from Tzadkiel and vice versa. So, for Tzadkiel we get the sense he/she has knowledge which transcends our single, uni-directional sense of time. He/she illustrates this with the chess analogy. Severian's is a race of pawns when it comes to time movement and knowledge. Perhaps Tzadkiel is a queen, moving at will forward, backward, sideways and diagonally within the time-space continuum. We never get to talk to Abaia but Juturna, at least, seems to have a multi-dimensional sense of time. She expresses this as the reason she saved Severian from drowning at the beginning of the story. I suspect The Mother on Blue has similar abilities which is why she favors Horn with Seawrack rather than shipwrecking and eating him, as She could easily have done. I think The Mother has a presentiment of Horn's future.

Silk/Horn - you can see it as a dim red point in the night sky of Blue. Therefore (if he is telling the truth) it is not the sun of Green and Blue, but a far distant star.< Of course. I pointed out all this stuff you and others are bringing up years ago -- to no avail. FWIW, here is a similar quote from Silkhorn when he was near Blanko: "...[t]he Outsider, the god who brought our race into being on some unthinkable short-sun whorl circling one of the myriad stars that I have been staring at..." (IGJ, 273) BTW, by no stretch of imagination did Pas bring the human race into being, therefore Pas is not the Outsider. There is another passage where Silkhorn mentions that no doubt the Outsider had created the Neighbors from the dust of Blue, just as he had created humans from the dust of the Short Sun Whorl (the latter according to the Chrasmologic Writings), and the two whorls were not identical. (IGJ, 349) -Roy

Well, this is an offshoot topic from the initial subject. Why dwell upon it exclusively? What about the primary subject, that being the question of the connection between a star called Fishes Mouth in the constellation Pisces and the various monsters in the sea and the various references to fish/snake/eels and mouths and caves. What draws certain people to one part of a thread and away from another..

Lee Berman wrote (24-12-2010 14:17):

How can we know? We don't even know who said the thing you quote. Merry Christmas, folks.

Who said they died anyway? Of course one can point out that they do not seem to be currently active at the end of UotNS, but perhaps they are biding their time and allowing humans to recover. They don't want to kill humans, they want them as slaves. Also, I don't believe that Wolfe intended that Urth be taken as completely inundated as in the film Waterworld. The old Autarch, I think, remarked that the Ascians would do better than the Commonwealth after the coming of the New Sun. Perhaps they live on higher ground. Perhaps they are rebelling against the monsters. We can hope that the coming of the New Sun will in some way allow humanity to throw off the chains of the sea monsters. Maybe it does even kill or hurt them in some fashion, or make them give up in disgust and leave for the stars. Wolfe has not been explicit regarding what happens. - Gerry Quinn

I thought you raised some interesting associations, but there was nothing really specific to grasp. The problem is that one can generate an endless stream of associations regarding fish or wine or any similarly iconic concept that crops up here and there in the text, but it is a long step from there to a secret key that unlocks a meaning that was placed there. Some of those fish associations are likely meaningful - others probably are not. How do we decide which are which? - Gerry Quinn

Gerry, once again I won't pretend to understand the basis of your probability estimates. Treating fiction like a scientific assessment seems to miss the point. I suspect you are not actually counting and calculating anything in your estimates but simply using your intuition to decide what you like and, most often, don't like, just like the rest of us. Now for me, ever since I learned that Wolfe did not invent any of the strange terms or names which are found in BotNS I have been operating on the basic assumption that there is not a single passage or word which does not have significant meaning, with most having meaning on several levels. So you asking which parts of the book are meaningless is, for me, an odd question which betrays an unfulfillng quest. I consider it a possible goal to read BotNS and have none of it seem like pointless gibberish (as parts of it must, to the first-time reader). I'm actually pretty close to this goal. I have a long way to go for Long and Short Sun though. Your quest to maintain meaninglessness is sort of interesting but not really something I could ever share.

Gerry Quinn: [in regard to Abaia, Erebus and scylla] Who said they died anyway? Well, I've already posted how the caloyer of Saltus predicted their "withering" at the coming of the new sun. Is that close enough? I think there is something in UotNS about Severian not sensing their presence, that only Juturna is left as an Ushas demon. Don't feel like finding the quote right now. Maybe someone else does.

So, in other words, all Severian's life efforts and the dragging of a small star across the universe and the manipulations of the Hiero-types were all for...nothing? Or just a nice little genocide? Gerry, your attempts to establish meaninglessness can be a bit perturbing at times.

This doesn't sound familiar to me. Is a there text quote to remind me?

So you are seeing the plot in strictly dramatic, perhaps political terms? No religious aspect to these creatures? As far as leaving for the stars, I think that is rather out of the question. Maybe in dream travel? I'd hate to be the one trying to load a mountain-sized glob of ocean goo onto a space ship. The hint that they arrived as black beans seems to suggest that, like many fallen angels/demons, given their size, they have become eternally earthbound. (a not-coincidental condition many see for Father Inire). I suppose they could break into human-sized pieces and leave; except there don't seem to be anymore spaceships. And, as implied they have probably been "withered".

Well, his act still gives humanity the chance to live on. Whether they will be enslaved, or an improved humanity is an open question. Severian's role does not seem to be to destroy these titans.

I know, I know Roy. I just think obfuscation of location is one of Wolfe's themes this time, and these characters writing those quotes?DO NOT KNOW WHERE THEY ARE, just like Weer doesn't know he's dead. nor do they have any direct evidence of the real outsider. Silk can say I am Horn until he's blue in the face, but that doesn't mean its always true. We'll just have to agree to disagree on the validity of the narrator in these passages. --- On Thu, 12/23/10, Roy C. Lackey <rclackey at stic.net> wrote: From: Roy C. Lackey <rclackey at stic.net> Subject: Re: (urth) Fish and Caves To: "The Urth Mailing List" <urth at lists.urth.net> Date: Thursday, December 23, 2010, 11:26 PM

Silk/Horn - you can see it as a dim red point in the? night sky of Blue. Therefore (if he is telling the truth) it is not the sun of Green and Blue, but a far distant star.< Of course. I pointed out all this stuff you and others are bringing up years ago -- to no avail. FWIW, here is a similar quote from Silkhorn when he was near Blanko: "...[t]he Outsider, the god who brought our race into being on some unthinkable short-sun whorl circling one of the myriad stars that I have been staring at..." (IGJ, 273) BTW, by no stretch of imagination did Pas bring the human race into being, therefore Pas is not the Outsider. There is another passage where Silkhorn mentions that no doubt the Outsider had created the Neighbors from the dust of Blue, just as he had created humans from the dust of the Short Sun Whorl (the latter according to the Chrasmologic Writings), and the two whorls were not identical. (IGJ, 349) -Roy

Roy, one more thing before I wish everybody a happy holiday. I believe we are given visual data that the narrator misinterprets that we are supposed to interpret correctly. "There is a city somewhat like this on Green, but we are not on Green; these houses would be the towers of the Neighbor lords there. ... I've been thinking about it, and about the City of the Inhumi on Green. Those were ruins left by the Neighbors' ancient race; these were left by ours, I believe -- we are as ancient as they, or nearly." (IGJ 320 or thereabouts) "TO UNDERSTAND, you must visualize its sky and hold the vision above you. NOT MY WORDS. NOT MY WORDS. NOT THE SMEARS OF INK UPON THIS PAPER. The sky, a sky purple or blue black rather than blue, a sky whose skylands were always as visible as those at home, though vastly more remote and colder. It was warm there in the deserted, ruined street; but the dark sky made it seem cold, and I felt sure that it would be cold soon, would turn cold, in fact, before the actual setting of the crimson sun. (IGJ 313) I see this as saying in order to understand the setting you have to visualize it, and not listen to the words of the narrator, as if Wolfe is here speaking to us. Yes, the narrator draws the wrong conclusion about the city that seems like the city on Green, because it must be a different place to him. But we are outside and above the text, and here he implores us not to pay attention to his words when other visual overlays will work. He even says NOT MY WORDS TWICE. And you will say, this throws the entire narrator's description out the window, because we can't say anything is true, and THIS IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN LITERAL SCRIPTURE AND THE FREE INTERPRETATION - even with errors you can still reach the truth. This DONTt PAY ATTENTION TO MY WORDS “is specifically LINKED TO SETTING. We have to ask ourselves, is Silk in a position to draw the conclusions we are?” Weer was not, nor was Number Five. It is a common trait of Wolfe's writing that his narrators can't draw the write conclusion. That's all. And yes, I think the real Outsider is of course not Pas, but that the message Silk received and believed to be the Outsider was placed in his brain by Pas, his own mistaken interpretation. Happy Holidays! Marc --- On Thu, 12/23/10, Roy C. Lackey <rclackey at stic.net> wrote: From: Roy C. BTW, by no stretch of imagination did Pas bring the human race into being, therefore Pas is not the Outsider. There is another passage where Silkhorn mentions that no doubt the Outsider had created the Neighbors from the dust of Blue, just as he had created humans from the dust of the Short Sun Whorl (the latter according to the Chrasmologic Writings), and the two whorls were not identical. (IGJ, 349) -Roy

sorry about that egregious spelling error. Of course I meant correct, right, etc. Embarassing. Marc

Thanks to all for the Holiday Greetings!

Witz, this reminds me that I've been operating on a few assumptions about Ushas which may need to be questioned. I'm thinking you are saying that the only purpose of Severian's efforts was the simple and obviousneed to fix the sun. An assumption for many has been that the sun was deliberately broken, the black hole placed in its center (presumably by hierogrammates) because of the presence of Typhon or the Megatherians or some combination. So the fixing of the sun must involve the removal of such creatures if it is to have a real purpose. But this interpretation need not be the case. Do you operate without it, holding the black hole in the sun to be a natural event?

“This DONT PAY ATTENTION TO MY WORDS is specifically LINKED TO SETTING. We have to ask ourselves,

I find it a pretty compelling argument Marc. In part because I find that Gene Wolfe very often borrows story devices from many mythological and SF sources, his genius being in disguising them so well. Here I find a parallel to one of the greatest moments in SF, the Statue of Liberty scene in Planet of the Apes (movie, not book). To understand the intention of the director we must ignore the "evidence" and accept what our eyes (Taylor's eyes) see. I can imagine some here treating that scene thusly: "Oh, yes, Planet of the Apes=Earth is an interesting theory. A bit clever actually. But the spaceship's computers say they are no where near Earth. And if they did crash on Earth, what is the chance they'd land a horseback ride away from NYC. There are no New Jersey cliffs like that to the south of New York. And if the Statue of Liberty was visible, the Empire State Building and Chrysler Building would be even more visible. It must be a delusion or some other green statue. Planet of the Apes= Earth? Unlikely. We disproved that theory 7 years ago." Now there is some convincing counter-evidence to this Green=Urth theory from a Gene Wolfe interview with Nick Gevers, James Jordan and Mantis.

Despite this, I think think your argument has enough merit to consider its possibility. Perhaps the admonition "DONT PAY ATTENTION TO MY WORDS" applies proactively to interview words? Perhaps there is a twist of space-time that allows Gene Wolfe to answer as he does? Or perhaps the question was not asked in quite the right way? I have to say I am struck by the terseness of Gene WOlfe's answer. Quite a contrast to the warmth and efflusiveness he used in James Jordan's own interview. This is more the way he talks to Peter Wright in his interview. I suspect Gene Wolfe is far more open to James Jordan's questions when they are framed within a context of religious faith. I get the impression he doesn't like blunt, "evidence" based material-world sorts of questions about his work. I admit that I am fairly open to theories which rely on the unreliability of the narrator. My own "Father Inire" theory partakes much of that. Some are happy to rely on Severian's report that Father Inire is a Hierodule. I find that Severian is missing a lot with this solo analysis. We readers are privvy to a lot of Earth information about gods and fallen angels that Severian does not have at his disposal.

ISTR the best black hole(s) explanation involved the black beans - possibly supplied by the Yesodis but mis-used by humans in a bid to control by destructive power.

I understand the dying sun as a threat of judgement by the Yesodis. Urth is being judged, and Severian, as the Epitome, stands for all. This much is clear. How this relates to Erebus and Abaia, well, I don't remember any mention in UotNS.

Well, as far as the interviews go, I think sometimes Wolfe is more open than others. I agree, Jordan rubbed him the right way as someone whose world view Wolfe respected, Gevers just wants the quick and easy solution and tries to trap Gene into an answer by his "comprehensive" list of options so that Gene can't get away with any answer, becuase evasion will just look like affirmation. There is a reason Wolfe writes the way he does, and sometimes mysteries should be left open. Questionable interview tactics, honestly, and showing what I feel to be a real lack of respect for the writer's aesthetic goal. I have a feeling Gene thought, I want to write a story where it will be very hard to answer the normal questions: who, what, when, where, why, but one where the didactic message is plain and exposed, an inverted novel. And to just kind of throw that question in there with those permutations seems disrespectful in a way, but he forgot Urth/Yesod, Urth/Verthandi, etc, but I still think Wolfe did not appreciate the question and became intentionally terse. I put no stock in what he tells Gevers, and great stock in what he shares with Jordan.

Well for me that is exactly the point. There IS no mention of why there is the need for judgement, what the basis for that judgment is, how Severian is tested, how he passes the test, why a Flood is needed, why genocide is needed etc. Wolfe spins us around in circles until we are dizzy then puts us back on Urth and Severian's story continues. Things move so fast we don't quite realize we've been given no answers and have no idea what the hell was going on with Tzadkiel and the Ship and Yesod. I actually came to this list some 6 years ago hoping to find the answers and found that nobody seems to know the purpose of Severian's trial and the Flood. So, with no other place to look I went to the only place I could think of to find answers about a Flood: The Bible. What I found was interesting. When we think of the Biblical Flood, we tend to focus on Noah and what was saved. Often ignored is what was destroyed on earth. Why God found it necessary to perpetrate such genocide. What I found in the Bible led me directly back to a portion of BotNS: Dr Talos' play. So much is right there- the fallen angels, their mating with humans, the racial corruption, the Nephilim giants, the demons, the ruined Creation, etc. Confusing but when compared to Genesis, a lot less so. This was the "VRT replaced Dr. Marsch" moment for me, where the whole BotNS story got turned on its head and I realized what is really going on here. Well, I'm not saying it works for everyone but for me it gave meaning to so many dreams and stories and weird references which had never made sense to me before. But best of all, the reason a Flood was needed on Urth became clear.

More specifically, the interviewer (Gevers) is not actually interested in Wolfe as a human being and accomplished writer, he is interested in Gene as a decoder ring for books he liked. It's wildly missing the point. To be in the presence of a great author, and only be trying to desperately "go for broke" to get answers to intentional mysteries is more than disrespectful, it's achingly naive. ...ryan

Well, here's the deal on Sol vs Blue/Green. Marc, you have a couple quotes that give me pause--that have always made me feel that Sol and the sun of the Neighbors are very close. When the Rajan says "I've been thinking about it, and about the City of the Inhumi on Green. Those were ruins left by the Neighbors' ancient race; these [ruins in Nessus] were left by ours, I believe -- we are as ancient as they, or nearly" ...it reminds me of the scene in Dicken's "A Christmas Carol" where the Spirit of Christmases Yet to Come takes Scrooge to hear discussions about a man who has died. At last Scrooge says: "Spirit, I see. I see. The case of this unhappy man might be my own. My life tends that way, now." On the other hand, the quotes supporting this view are scanty and obscure. And Roy--although IMO his refutations often prove far less than he believes they do--in this case I must admit that they are at least as weighty as yours. Secondly, the change from the Ushas we know to the jungles of Green, is really extensive and not really explained. If it resolves any riddles, it seems to create many more. Aesthetically, I really wanted this to be true. But, at this time, the task of swallowing all the implications is just too great. ᚹ

It's worth noting that this list was at the time of that interview in heated debate over Marc's theories about Blushas or Grushas. Marc had posted on a communication he had had with Wolfe about his Blushas theory in which Wolfe had replied "No! Urth is Green!" Gevers had contacted Wolfe for a more elaborate explanation and Wolfe's reply was that he was joking and "Sometimes, I should just keep my mouth shut." Additionally, it had been pointed out that the Blue/Green planet combination was a reoccurring trope and that St. Anne had also had intelligent trees and fairyland-like natives. So, I can see that he saw himself as a representative of the Urth-listers in this interview and saw the question as one that needed to be asked. ᚹ

Understood. Still, anyone who's read the Gevers interview from 2002 would probably agree that the aggressiveness with which he pursues answers to mysteries is nothing if not off-putting. ...ryan

Ryan Dunn wrote and quoted:

...ryan

-------------------------------- What the hell? When did Nick Gevers start using the initials "JJ"? At least get the facts straight. -Roy

Huh. I really, really don't want to get into another tedious Urth/Ushas = Green or Blue debate; it's been done to death. But since you brought up weighty arguments, I don't recall that this one has been brought up before: If the ruined city on Green is actually the ruins of Nessus, then Green is post-deluge Urth, which is Ushas. Unless Urth's Lune was somehow made to disappear and a ringer planet brought in to replace it, then Blue is Lune. Unless science counts only when it pertains to certain subjects (say, how to plant and grow kernels of maize) but can be safely disregarded when it comes to simple physics, the last time I checked, the pull of gravity on the moon is only about one-sixth that of the pull of gravity on Earth. On the LSW, the rotation of the ship simulated gravity. It isn't explicit that the ship's simulated gravity = 1 gee, but I have always assumed that it must have been pretty close. For these purposes, it doesn't really matter because gravity is going to be a problem for this theory, no matter what. Wolfe put enough thought into the ship's simulated gravity to have a Guard floater start "flying" when it went too fast in the wrong direction relative to the ship's spin, the floater that crashed into the pit at the Alambrera. There is no indiction whatsoever that the colonists who landed on Blue experienced any significant changes in their perceptions of gravity; Silkhorn failed to note any difference. We are not exposed to what the colonists who went directly from the LSW to Green experienced when they arrived. But we do have the instances of Horn and Sinew going from Blue to Green on a lander. Horn was born on the LSW, but Sinew was born on Blue. If Blue is Lune and Green is Ushas, Sinew should have collapsed upon being forced to endure six-times his normal weight. Neither father nor son seem to have had any difficulties with Green's gravity. -Roy

As Roy so nicely pointed out, the quote I posted was from James Jordan portion of the triumvirate, not poor Nick who was perhaps unfairly blasted, heh heh. Might not matter so much to the departed, but I think I did see Nick post here recently? Also, in James Jordan's defense, his question qualifiers make it clear he knows he is overstepping the "boundaries" with his question. JJ also was a significant contributor here at the time and I think James Wynn's suggestion that he was acting as proxy for the whole of this List is a good one. Now what Roy misses in his astronomic analysis is that the water from Ushas would have been transported to Lune as the Inhumi flew over there, transforming it to Blue. All that water would increase its diameter and gravity and..... Heh, just kidding. I know Roy's analysis was meant purely as reductio ad absurdum. My recurring point is that Marc is a very intelligent, Wolfe-familiar sort of guy. His theory is compelling enough to generate long-term discussion and generate JJ's interview question. If it has that sort of impact it shouldn't be simply dismissed. The proper process is not to consider it an enemy to be vanquished, etc. but as the insight of a valued member here and worth finding ways in which it COULD work. I'll give it a shot. The Cumaean says she is making a psychic connection to a guy on a Fomalhaut, the Fish's MOuth, planet. There is dream travel between Blue and Urth facilitated by vampires from Green. There are big sea monster/gods in the oceans of Blue and Urth. Seems like a possible basis for a connection of all these planets to me. Consider the words of Duko Rigoglio:

I think the answer is here. It isn't that Green=Urth. It's that Nessus extends past the boundaries of Urth through "psychic" connections all the way to Green. The top of Valeria's tower can't be found on Urth. Where is it? Another time, surely. But perhaps also another place. Urth has been corrupted by aliens who mate with humans. That much is clear to me. We know what happens to Inhumi when they dream-travel to Urth. They become human. They want to mate with humans. And now we have the possibility of an independent way for them to have made the journey.

Actually the weighty arguments I had in mind were the quotes you offered that seems to set Sol far away from Blue and Green. I find those quite bracing. Arguments of practicality are of the second sort I mentioned: * Which planet is Urth? (Blue is a better candidate but Marc places a lot of stock Wolfe's answer) * How did the orbits get so screwy? * If the Whorl has come home why does it leave at the end of the novel? * The unending tap of inferrable technical problems with equating between Blue/Green and Lune/Urth or Verthandi/Urth or Tzadkiel/Urth, et cetera (actually this last sort of problem occurs for explanations that are agreed to be true). Perhaps the Rajan is implying that the Neighbors were originally human. Perhaps he is implying that they are the Hieros of Urth. Perhaps the whole point is for them to return to Urth. So many theories in Wolfe novels start as a filler in what seems to not be explained. ᚹ

Its not an easy answer, but lets luck at the evidence for and against without bias. There is a huge city on Green that is compared to Nessus several times, the story the Neighbors or Vanished People make Horn enact that resembles Severian, the tower which seems like a giant ship (Roy has a point about the structure of the wall), the narrator is thinking about Green before the corruption hit or something during their astral trip there, the Rajan in the old story with crow, the time bending properties of the green man, at least a hint that hybridization is occurring between vegetative life and any life it "eats" catholic communion style to explain the lack of recognizable species. That tall man with stiff bird like gait seems mighty like somebody we may have seen before. And I honestly believe the people don't know where they are, at all, and so there assertions are not trustworthy. HOWEVER, being able to see the light of the Red Sun Whorl in the sky is a BIG PROBLEM as Roy states, and?I am trying to figure out in Urth of the New Sun if there is any description that allows light from a distant past to be seen on a time travelling big ship, if movement across a certain barrier turns the universe back on itself MIRROR LIKE, so that time and distances can be obfuscated. Inire's mirrors or something. I don't know. Is there any chance the whorl is an excavated Lune or is it way too small? Another problem is what the hell is Blue? What is that water from? Marc --- On Sat, 12/25/10, James Wynn <crushtv at gmail.com> wrote: From: James Wynn <crushtv at gmail.com> Subject: Re: (urth) interview questions To: "The Urth Mailing List" <urth at lists.urth.net> Date: Saturday, December 25, 2010, 7:44 PM Well, here's the deal on Sol vs Blue/Green. Marc, you have a couple quotes that give me pause--that have always made me feel that Sol and the sun of the Neighbors are very close. When the Rajan says "I've been thinking about it, and about the City of the Inhumi on Green. Those were ruins left by the Neighbors' ancient race; these [ruins in Nessus] were left by ours, I believe -- we are as ancient as they, or nearly" ...it reminds me of the scene in Dicken's "A Christmas Carol" where the Spirit of Christmases Yet to Come takes Scrooge to hear discussions about a man who has died. At last Scrooge says: "Spirit, I see. I see. The case of this unhappy man might be my own. My life tends that way, now." On the other hand, the quotes supporting this view are scanty and obscure. And Roy--although IMO his refutations often prove far less than he believes they do--in this case I must admit that they are at least as weighty as yours. Secondly, the change from the Ushas we know to the jungles of Green, is really extensive and not really explained. If it resolves any riddles, it seems to create many more. Aesthetically, I really wanted this to be true. But, at this time, the task of swallowing all the implications is just too great. ᚹ -----Inline Attachment Follows-----

There are ruins to be found below the water's surface on Blue. To me, this implies that Blue has had a Flood. This suggests they had a similar problem to the one Urth had/has which needs cleansing. A similar problem to that which Biblical Earth had. The Whorl bringing humans (food) to Blue seems to have reintroduced the problem.

I said that the people don't know where they are, and here is enough proof for me. This is from the first time Silk goes to Urth in IGJ. "I don't understand any of this, Father." "it's very likely no one does ... I wanted to take us to Green, where Sinew is. ... I wanted you others ... to see what real evil is, so that you might understand why we on Blue must come together in brotherhood before our own whorl becomes what Green already is."? I fell silent, forced to think myself about what I myself had just said." p 321 He wanted them to go to Green to see real evil, but instead wound up on Urth. These people don't understand where they are. --- On Sun, 12/26/10, Marc Aramini <marcaramini at yahoo.com> wrote: From: Marc Aramini <marcaramini at yahoo.com> Subject: Re: (urth) interview questions To: "The Urth Mailing List" <urth at lists.urth.net> Date: Sunday, December 26, 2010, 8:22 AM Its not an easy answer, but lets luck at the evidence for and against without bias. There is a huge city on Green that is compared to Nessus several times, the story the Neighbors or Vanished People make Horn enact that resembles Severian, the tower which seems like a giant ship (Roy has a point about the structure of the wall), the narrator is thinking about Green before the corruption hit or something during their astral trip there, the Rajan in the old story with crow, the time bending properties of the green man, at least a hint that hybridization is occurring between vegetative life and any life it "eats" catholic communion style to explain the lack of recognizable species. That tall man with stiff bird like gait seems mighty like somebody we may have seen before. And I honestly believe the people don't know where they are, at all, and so there assertions are not trustworthy. HOWEVER, being able to see the light of the Red Sun Whorl in the sky is a BIG PROBLEM as Roy states, and?I am trying to figure out in Urth of the New Sun if there is any description that allows light from a distant past to be seen on a time travelling big ship, if movement across a certain barrier turns the universe back on itself MIRROR LIKE, so that time and distances can be obfuscated. Inire's mirrors or something. I don't know. Is there any chance the whorl is an excavated Lune or is it way too small? Another problem is what the hell is Blue? What is that water from? Marc --- On Sat, 12/25/10, James Wynn <crushtv at gmail.com> wrote: From: James Wynn <crushtv at gmail.com> Subject: Re: (urth) interview questions To: "The Urth Mailing List" <urth at lists.urth.net> Date: Saturday, December 25, 2010, 7:44 PM Well, here's the deal on Sol vs Blue/Green. Marc, you have a couple quotes that give me pause--that have always made me feel that Sol and the sun of the Neighbors are very close. When the Rajan says "I've been thinking about it, and about the City of the Inhumi on Green. Those were ruins left by the Neighbors' ancient race; these [ruins in Nessus] were left by ours, I believe -- we are as ancient as they, or nearly" ...it reminds me of the scene in Dicken's "A Christmas Carol" where the Spirit of Christmases Yet to Come takes Scrooge to hear discussions about a man who has died. At last Scrooge says: "Spirit, I see. I see. The case of this unhappy man might be my own. My life tends that way, now." On the other hand, the quotes supporting this view are scanty and obscure. And Roy--although IMO his refutations often prove far less than he believes they do--in this case I must admit that they are at least as weighty as yours. Secondly, the change from the Ushas we know to the jungles of Green, is really extensive and not really explained. If it resolves any riddles, it seems to create many more. Aesthetically, I really wanted this to be true. But, at this time, the task of swallowing all the implications is just too great. ᚹ -----Inline Attachment Follows----- -----Inline Attachment Follows-----

The LSW is specifically stated to be a hollowed-out asteroid (List, RTTW). -Roy

At least twice, portals to and from Yesod are descibed as moonlike in appearance, both times in proximity to Tzadkiel's ship as it bridges the gap to and from the first moments after the Big Bang where it can enter or leave Yesod. The White Fountain is also described as a huge portal for energy and matter from Yesod to Briah. It's plausible that the Yesodis could abutt the ends of two such portals to transfer light or a Whorl from one place and time in Briah to another. For a time, this was entertained on the list as a plot device for returning the Whorl to Urth and Lune in a manner similar to PLANET OF THE APES.

yeah I remembered that but what EXACTLY is an asteroid? It's in orbit around the sun. Not sure the difference between the classification of a satellite and an asteroid except perhaps that asteroids are orbiting the sun and not a planet. At least one asteroid I know has its own moon, which doesn't help us. Never could get a grip on how big the whorl was. ripped off from some internet site: Asteroid Naturally formed solid bodies that orbit the sun, have no atmosphere and no signs of gas or dust coming from them. Most are found in orbit between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. --- On Sun, 12/26/10, Roy C. Lackey <rclackey at stic.net> wrote: From: Roy C. Lackey <rclackey at stic.net> Subject: Re: (urth) interview questions To: "The Urth Mailing List" <urth at lists.urth.net> Date: Sunday, December 26, 2010, 11:20 AM

The LSW is specifically stated to be a hollowed-out asteroid (List, RTTW). -Roy

If you check the archives, there was considerable discusssion of the Whorl's possible sizes and shapes in Jan 2009. Short answer: while it is a hollow body made from an asteroid, it need not be the same dimensions as the original asteroid.

"Is there any chance the whorl is an excavated Lune or is it way too small?" Yes, it's way too small. The Whorl is gigantic but not that gigantic. One characteristic of most asteroids is that they are oddly shaped, not spherical. Planets and moons are so massive that their gravity shapes them into spheres. No so with asteroids. The Whorl seems to have been shaped into a regular cylinder from a raw asteroid that may have looked like a potato. I once tried to calculate its dimensions from the hints Wolfe drops, and decided it had to be at least 200 miles long. That's a big asteroid. I visualize the Whorl as having the proportions of a beer can, but that may just be because a beer can is my favorite cylinder.

I'm not too good at such things but I think I've heard 300 mile estimates. Our moon is 2160 miles in diameter. Moreover, Lune is still in the sky during Severian's time on Urth so it doesn't seem like a good candidate for the Whorl either way, to me.

Jack Smith wrote (27-12-2010 09:23):

I had the impression, from the way some cities are described as 'distant', that it would be bigger than that.

Let me just defend something really quickly, and then I want to move on to more fruitful discussions, because I am a bit taken aback by the consistency of throwing away ambiguous statements as meaningless? or statements with words like "I believe" in the text as certifiable definitive disproof of one claim or another. For me, Wolfe's novels have an explicit main idea that can be concisely stated for the most part, a main idea that explains a whole lot of the recurring motiffs and themes and mystery of the work and transforms it. For example, John Marsch is an abo, Number Five is a clone; Weer is dead, etc. These understandings transform the text but are usually a straightforward identity acknolwedgement, with the important caveat that the narrator really doesn't know it or doesn't want it known. So the hints are logical but scattered and somewhat intuitive? One more example, I have had the feeling that Latro is Pleistorus, who has been missing from the pantheon, who is Ahura Mazda, who is like a stand in for God, and that the God of War's disillusionment with war as a Roman avatar will herald in the coming of Christ with the Pax Romana (ie - the Old testament God gets fed up with blood through the experiences of the avatar of the God of War, and heralds the death of Pan). I always thought what brilliant interpretations people had made the first time I read Peace, then I realized ...?when I read Shadows of the New Sun, Wolfe admits Weer is dead there, and explains the mechanics, too, and I thought, wait a minute, did we get that or did he give it away? So I always aproach his books with a look at "what don't I understand?"? "do any words seem supercharged with amiguity or symbolic resonance?"? "Do patterns repeat in the stories (as in the ghost stories of Peace)?"? "What is the theme and how can that help explain the mysteries?"? "What do the narrators know and what are they inferring?" So anyway, when I had read Short Sun I was sure the theme of the book was "you can't go home again."??Home has changed, and so have you. Silk doesn't believe he is Silk, Horn is shunted off in some poor beastie, but I was POSITIVE that the theme applied in general, that the people of the whorl had come back to their home world and where simply unable to recognize it because they had forgotten who they were. This does say something very negative about Severian's rejuvenation, but, as I said, the reason I could not prove that Blue was Urth and knew that I did not have that proof was that Wolfe operates by rules. There had to be a way to prove either Blue was Urth or a parallel between them that would explain the mistaken translation across time and space. And there wasn't one!? I looked everywhere, There was no mechanism. But as soon as "green is urth" came up, lo, there it was, the mechanism, Silk was thinking of Green and wanted to take his people there, the city of Nessus is compared to the city on Green, and know I can't see that city as anything but Nessus. It's so obviously the truth, just as Horn is in Babbie, that to argue about horns versus tusks seems so unbelievably asinine and to assert the text says he rode a beast with three horns on green robs it of its mystery and its ability to explain Babbie's later actions that I am shocked. Its just obviously the truth. ? The problem I addressed to Gene, that I can't find a mechanism for why they wound up on Urth in the past of Blue, was instantly solved by his three words, so it is obviously the truth. So the waters receded and the heat allowed these protoforms of the green man to arise. All this refutation is like bad comedy to me. I'm sorry Roy, your fundamentalist and encyclopedic?approach to Wolfe is fabulous for shutting down incorrect theories, but it does not allow ambiguities to attain any kind of solvent cohesive explanatory power that the ambiguities in Wolfe point to, and it seems to shut down correct readings, too. (Horn in Babbie under a neighbor tree at the end of OBW explains WHY Horn says goodbye, where he ends up, why Babbie says huh huh huh and reacts violently when Horn's son threatened, the narrative shift to positivism, why Silk says I won the game, why the text of IGJ has almost no flashback, and against all that expositive power we have, "the text says he rode that beast on Green."? and "Babbie has tusks, not Horns." For real??????? Are you serious?) I know that I am right, from the stage of my comprehension of the text at the time I ran into my barrier, and the fact that three words overcame the barrier to my satisfaction. Marc

I just realized (this is probably not a satori to anyone but me) that two of the major Wolfean Themes can be summed up in two pithy sentences, and that they are intertwined (and, one might argue, they are central to Christianity as well, although I don't think they're usually phrased this way): 1) You become what you imitate. 2) You are what you eat. Adam

Marc, I was as disturbed as you when the party in IGJ went to Urth by mistake. So, how do we get from the Urth of Severian to the planets of Blue and Green? How do you explain the loss of Lune or the huge change of orbits? For me, that was hurdle that made me decide, well, maybe I'm focusing on the wrong thing. I wanted some attempt to explain that gap. ᚹ

Heh, what futher explanation could one need! Interestingly, I find the same two pithy summations to be true for Frank Herbert and the Dune series (I may be alone in considering the final 3 Dune books to be superior to the first three). We have golden child Leto become an inhuman tyrant by assuming the guise of a sand worm. And we have the foul Face Dancers become benign gods as their imitative and prescient abilities increase. All based on eating that crazy spice. Two SF authors hitting their peak in roughly the same time period and coming to some of the same conclusions. Would be interesting to know what influence they had on each other.

Yes, the question of what exactly Blue is remains a big problem of understanding what happened when the New Sun came, why there is a city there underwater, maybe even what caused the eclipse that spared Severian's life in the time of Apu Punchau. I am going to re-read the entire cycle, but I have a feeling there is some cosmic event in Urth of the New Sun that can shed light on that - either a transplantation of Yesod, a movement of Urth itself, or maybe something that will reveal the New Sun is a hoax, that the orbit of the planet was altered or something. I am really not sure and want to look at the descriptions of Apheta's planet, because there is a scene in Urth where Severian looks up and thinks Apheta is looking at him from the sky or something. Need to find that quote. Any hints that Yesod could have been altered or moved? I have only read Urth of the New Sun twice, once when I was a little boy when it first came out, so my memory of that particular text is weak. I have only read Short Sun twice as well, but that second time was with notes and a fine tooth comb as an adult. Also a very freaky scene where Severian exits through his own ear to find himself in another mirror reality or something, I never fully understood the implications of that doubling ear to ear transfer when he is bowing at the Pelerines altar, I believe. Marc --- On Mon, 12/27/10, James Wynn <crushtv at gmail.com> wrote: Marc, I was as disturbed as you when the party in IGJ went to Urth by mistake. So, how do we get from the Urth of Severian to the planets of Blue and Green? How do you explain the loss of Lune or the huge change of orbits? For me, that was hurdle that made me decide, well, maybe I'm focusing on the wrong thing. I wanted some attempt to explain that gap. ᚹ

Hm. I already mentioned the ruins beneath Blue's Ocean. And I have long thought the "Accepted Lupine Gospel" was on the wrong track with regard to the eclipse ("Tzadkiel's Ship caused it"). What is the direction of your thoughts, Marc? Lately I have been considering the nearly endlessly repeated fuligin imagery we get associated with Severian and remembering that one of the nicknames for the Conciliator/New Sun which confuses Severian is: Dark Star. We hear so much about Severian's association with the White Fountain in UotNS we may be a bit distracted by the fact that white fountain is the paired opposite of black hole. Considered in this (er..)light, it seems almost ridiculous for anyone else but Severian to have brought the black hole to eat at Urth's sun. When did he bring it? I think the concensus is that it was brought at the end of Typhon's rule. It may be that is what Wolfe intended to convey. But I wonder if there is another possibility. As Apu Punchau, Severian can be said to have brought civilization to humanity, with the introduction of modern, durable architecture and effective warfare strategies. Could this somehow be marked by the eclipse and perhaps the arrival of the black hole/Dark Star? It nicely bookends with the coming of the White Fountain, also brought by Severian, marking the end of civilization on Urth. The Ushas that we see is awfully low tech, (but quite spiritual). Just some not-very-organized thoughts to throw out there.

This is an aspect of Marc's evolved theory that people sometimes miss. There is a lot about Blue that might recommend it to a long ago flooded world. That's the way Marc originally saw it. But after Wolfe's comment to him he began focusing on elements of the text that seem to connect Urth and Green. The fact that Marc's theory has dramatically changed direction doesn't undercut it in my mind. A broad theory has lots of moving parts, and it is not uncommon for someone to correctly note that a surreptitious crime has been committed, but then finger the wrong suspects. Happens all the time. Some avoid that mistake by only noting the evidence of the crime's /commission/ such as Ryan Dunn did with Inire & Fetchin & Co's simian traits. But ultimately--to have any hope of making an arrest-- you have to start grilling suspects and you run the risk of people asking questions OF YOU that you can't answer--an investigator prefers to be the one asking the questions. The people who say "nothing's there" feel free to offer the flimsiest excuses for some really bizarre passages (or to just ignore them) while expecting the Theorist to explain the most arcane, vaguely implied technicalities about his explanation. I'm not saying Roy has done that with Marc's Theory. Although, arguably, it hasn't been necessary. You see, Marc's theory has some real posers--I mean, //regarding setting//, not exposition, //not what people say//. Deciding that Green=Urth (or, to a lesser extent, Blue=Ushas) is no less strange to my mind than if the Rajan had come to Urth and found young Severian growing turnips on a farm speaking like a hillbilly. And this weird discrepancy is --at this time, Roy and others not withstanding-- the greatest refutation of the Green Urth theory. (I mean "refutation" as "an argument against" not as "proof that is untrue".) I'm troubled by some statements and events that imply Urth is closer than anyone imagines. I'm troubled much more by the claim that Blue or Green is Severian's planet because the conspiracy is sooo big that I wonder that it could be kept hidden. Some people probably think the same thing when I say Horn was possessed by a Neighbor or Hyacinth is Fava and the Rajan is Hy's father. But I consider physical changes between Urth and Green truly daunting and categorically different. In each of those other cases, I argue, one only needs to re-interpret the scenes and dialog as they are presented. Green Urth means explaining massive events of which we were hitherto unaware. I don't like it, but I think tha's where we are. If I sound like a devout believer who has lost his faith, I'm not. I'm someone who was always skeptical of this theory but did expect it to yield some fruit. But I got to the end and discovered, unhappily, I had the same questions I started with. It explains why the dream travelers ended up on Urth. But it raises up massive really scary puzzles that are left unanswered. ᚹ

"Of all the names of the Conciliator, the one that is, I believe, least used, and which has always seemed the most puzzling to me, is that of Black Sun." - SWORD, Chapter VIII.

URTH XXIII: "Somewhere behind or before us, above us or below us, was a wide circle of light, spinning, frantically spinning, a thing like Lune, if such a thing as a moon of the most brilliant white can be imagined. Gunnie fluttered across it once or twice before she was lost in the diamond-decked blackness. (And once it seemed to me and still seems when I call that frantic memory forth that I saw Apheta's face as she leaned from that moon.) " Urth XLVIII: "I had thought never to behold Apheta again. In that I had been mistaken, for I saw her that night, looking down from the sky just as she had looked down at me when I had left Yesod with Burgundofara. I blinked and stared, but soon saw only the green disk of Lune."

URTH XX: "I thought about it while I relieved myself and washed, and when I returned to Apheta, who lay on one of the divans with her naked loveliness pulsing through a thin sheet, I kissed her and asked, 'Are there no other worlds, my lady?' 'There are very many,' she murmured. She had unbound her dark hair which floated about her shining face, so that she seemed herself some eerie star, wrapped in night. 'Here in Yesod. On Urth we see myriad suns, dim by day, bright by night. Your day sky is empty, but your night sky is brighter than ours.' 'When we require them, the Hierogrammates will build more worlds as fair as this, or more fair. Suns for them too, should we require more suns. Thus for us they are there already. Time runs as we ask here, and we like their light.'

I hate to be a repeater, but did you catch my possible re-interpretation of Marc's theory? I thought it had merit but perhaps it was ignored because it didn't. Or perhaps it was just missed. For me it not only solves Marc's problem of Nessus but presents an ecological succession (Green, Blue, Ushas and Urth all being various stages).

Thanks Jeff. Wow, I don't know what to do with those quotes, but I feel like they are important, very important to understanding what happened to Lune. "Time runs as we ask here, and we like their light"? Sounds too godlike in its implications to really get my mind around without really paying attention to the physical description of Yesod. Has anybody tried to explain why Apheta's face is up there? "when we require them, the hierogrammates will build more"? ugh. --- On Mon, 12/27/10, Jeff Wilson <jwilson at io.com> wrote: URTH XXIII: "Somewhere behind or before us, above us or below us, was a wide circle of light, spinning, frantically spinning, a thing like Lune, if such a thing as a moon of the most brilliant white can be imagined. Gunnie fluttered across it once or twice before she was lost in the diamond-decked blackness. (And once it seemed to me and still seems when I call that frantic memory forth that I saw Apheta's face as she leaned from that moon.) " Urth XLVIII: "I had thought never to behold Apheta again. In that I had been mistaken, for I saw her that night, looking down from the sky just as she had looked down at me when I had left Yesod with Burgundofara. I blinked and stared, but soon saw only the green disk of Lune." 'When we require them, the Hierogrammates will build more worlds as fair as this, or more fair. Suns for them too, should we require more suns. Thus for us they are there already. Time runs as we ask here, and we like their light.'

I'm not sure I understand what it is. Are you saying Green/Blue circle the Black Hole? ᚹ

In Chapter XXIII, I believe it is plain that Alpheta's face is there because she's standing on just the other side of the portal through which Sev and Gunnie have just plunged; why it lingers on for as long as it does, perhaps she is supervising his safe return to The Ship, and it is not a given, even though Tzadkiel has seen him return? In Chapter XLVIII, that is a toughie. It is not just a fleeting glimpse like one might expect of an absent but expected or remembered person, but seems to linger for a time...possibly another portal opened to watch over him?

Two theories on why they ended up on Urth during astral/dream travel: - Urth and Green are thematically similar. The characters are in a dreamlike state so distance is cognitive distance, not physical distance. Most times when they travel they end up physically close because places that are physically close tend to be closely associated mentally. This trip they are going to someplace close as measured by the author's (and maybe reader's) mental map. - They are close on bookshelves. If Krait can travel into another character's story, why can't this character travel to a different book? Krait travels to a temporally close story, Silk/Whomever travels to a somewhat more temporally-distant one. As a bonus, given the way books are generally shelved, Long/Short sun and Urth are generally physically close together.

I'm glad to see that Brunians is back.

Heh. What? Noooo! But does ask an interesting question. Did Blue/Green's sun ever have a black hole in it? Here is an abbreviated version of my suggestion. The words of Duko Rigoglio:

Marc is suggesting that Green=Urth because Nessus can be seen on Green. But what if they were separate planets but that city manages to be in both places- "a city larger than the whorl on which it stands". Not being able to count the towers seems likely to refer to Valeria's tower,(and others) which cannot be found by Severian by flying around the top of the Citadel. Valeria's tower is in the Atrium of Time, making it likely the tower top exists in another time. The future, I think. But then Duko also mentions the sub-cellars. Some of them would also exist in another time, the past; and perhaps in another place. Green? We have discussed whether there are/were Inhumi on Urth. Antonio recently asked whether undine space travel ought to be considered in light of dream travel. I think this is a good question and not only for undines. The Cumaean seems to do something like dream-travel to Fomalhaut. Perhaps there is more to that connection and Wolfe tries to make it clearer in Short Sun. There is an Inhumi-Green-Urth connection established with dream travel. Perhaps it isn't only living beings but cities which can connect in this manner. (as far as ecological succession, trying to work with Marc's hypothesis, Green had long ago been flooded and now supports mostly Inhumi. Blue has been flooded for a while and may be on its way to becoming like Green. We see swarms of Inhumi at the end of RttW. Urth has relatively recently been flooded to become Ushas, has a greenish demon in Juturna and Ushas is the future of the Green Man.... ...If I understand Marc's theory correctly) [p.s. thanks, Jerry. Dark Sun, not Dark Star]

En garde! - If, at one point, a character can write himself into a story, why can't it happen again? How far did Krait have to travel to do that? - Wolfe has already used the sorting order of books for a joke. In 5HoC he makes the Vernor Vinge/"W" joke. We almost never ascribe something to Wolfe's sense of humor, but certainly he must use it every once in a while. - The idea that astral travel uses mental maps rather than physical ones is a good one, at least as good as the "Silk = Blue" or "Blue is a time-traveling version of Green" theories that are going around.

Well, I don't know what to make of Blue, if it isn't the terraformed Lune or a transplanted Yesod (or was Urth transplanted? I don't have a good explanation) but I am pretty sure Blue isn't Green, and therefore isn't Urth. This astral travel of Silk is clearly normally through space, with at least some smal?evidence of passage through time, but I can't fathom the correction "no,no,no, Green is Urth" if my starting hypothesis, Blue was Urth, was in any way, shape, or form correct. Blue winding up the color blue was an authorial switch (read red herring) to hide the mechanism of Silk thinking about the evil on Green and "his" son Sinew the first time he goes to Urth, and the blurring of the planets fits with the blurring of the narrator's personality, where it is very difficult at first to determine who he is in what combination. Lee, are you saying Urth effectively "tripled"? One extent somewhere out there in space, Nessus bridging the gap, and an urth from a different time in the same solar system as Blue? This doesn't seem intuitively like the right solution, I think we need to look at what caused the deluge. Did any astral bodies move? I don't think any of these planets are "master ash" type possible futures, I think Urth and Green are the same planet at different times and that Blue is something else, but whether it is Lune seems almost impossible to determine at this time without some further hint, which I must scour for. Now, why is Apheta's face specifically linked to Lune? If it's a portal, then we DO have movement from Yesod directly onto Lune (is Lune a portal in this scheme? Is the Cummean curled up in the moon in another of Severian's visions?)? Is this kind of movement capable of planting a city there? Is there ever any indication of alien life on Verthandi? My memory of the astronomy in New Sun is atrocious because I never focused on it at all, never cared for kaballah and whatnot. Apheta's face mentioned twice on the moon and the Hieros ability to create suns and planets MUST be important, I just don't understand the nature of those planets.

One reason may be that after Sev associates the visually similar moon with portals to Yesod, and from Yesod. Urth Chapter XV: "Then we were through and seemed suspended in azure light; behind us, where once I had seen the corona lucis of the young suns, I now saw our universe, a circle no larger than an ebon moon in the sky of Yesod, a moon that soon shrank to a solitary mote, then vanished."

The Yesodis' creations are mighty, but are not true planets and stars. For example, the ocean covers a huge Kirbyesque machine larger than a terrestrial planet, but it has less gravity than Urth due to the space inside for access by the Yesodis and merely gigantic beetle-like subordinate mechanisms. There's also no tide, despite a normal-looking sun, so whatever that is, it has even less mass than Lune or must be incredibly more distant than a normal star.

Marc, first let me say that I agree with your approach. Wolfe creates Labryinths, not wide open worlds. When we turn a corner of the maze and see a "character" that resembles another, the chance is just as likely that we are seeing an old character misidentified in some way as the chance we are seeing a new character. There is no reason this can't be true of whole planets. I encourage you to keep exploring your idea. But I agree completely with James; a lot of time correct ideas are tossed in the wastebin not because they are completely wrong but because some of the final conclusions don't pan out. When this happens you should backtrack and find new branchings rather than throw out the whole thing. So, in this case, if you can't make the planets match up, go back to the original insight you had. It was the city, not the planet, by which you made the original connection. Could the city exist on two different planets? The name Nessus seems similar to "nexus". I think the city serves the purpose as a hub of connections in BotNS. Perhaps it also links Short Sun and BotNS. ("Nessus" also invokes Hercules, poison, blood-stained cloaks and centaurs. I don't think Wolfe has ignored these aspects of the name; Neighbors always remind me of centaurs.) My general philosophy is that Wolfe books are written at several simultaneous levels. When answers can't be found at one level, they may be found at another. So if the SF/astronomy approach leaves gaps, perhaps the literary socio-political or religious/mythological levels can fill them in. In regard to Apheta's face I don't think it is meant to invoke Lune. In fact, Severian wonders how something like a Lune can have white light instead of green light. I think Jeff is on the right track noticing that Briah appears to Severian like an ebon moon in the sky of Yesod. Apheta has said that she has made a special study of Urth. We are not told how she makes her observations. If she is peeking through something that looks like a dark moon on Yesod, how would the peephole appear in Briah? If energy is moving from Yesod to Briah then it should look like the light moon that Severian sees. There may be mythological implications. Despite their mating (or perhaps because of it?) there seems to be a brother-sister vibe between Severian and Apheta. If Severian is the new sun, casting Apheta in moon light might suggest the Apollo-Diana or Helios-Selene pairing. (also Semele, mother of Dionysus, has moon associations; with the birth of Ushas, Apheta and Severian can be seen as moon mother and sun father of it).

Touche

What makes you think Krait can do that? When did he do that?

Oh. You're making a serious point!

Do you really think this is a possibility? ᚹ

I'm not crazy about Lee's postulation either. If Nessus is connected to the distant cities of Green, why is it not connected to any city in the galaxy that has a mirror in it? But the idea that Green and Blue are in Urth's past or future doesn't feel right either. In The Book/Urth of the New Sun, we have a clear "Dying Earth" world. We have a constant sense of wandering around in grandmother's attic. The familiar is all around us, but it is changed and Severian can't know it for what it is. The Book of the Short Sun is different. Nothing could be more alien than the planets of Green and Blue. There's another possibility, but it's a stretch like everything else. Severian says that the technology to travel in Time is the same that allows escape to Yesod. What if Green and Blue orbit Sol in another Briahtic iteration? So, when the Rajan's party planned to go to Green, they skipped to Urth. Practicality: Once the Neighbors made it to the Whorl, they could easily travel all the way to Urth, even Urth before the launch of the Whorl. Then --just as the Rajan traveled to the grandmother's tale to take his role in her story BECAUSE he had heard he was in it-- the Neighbors could have traveled to meet Typhon in order to convince him to launch the Whorl. They could then emplant the technology in the craft to make the trip to Green and Blue. Naturally, I like this because I've always entertained a suspicion that the Neighbors were involved in the launch of the Whorl. Problems: 1) The only real evidence is the same evidence we've always been looking at: Obscure references that the Neighbors and Humanity are equivalent. 2) If the Neighbors' technology allowed instantaneous transport another Briah, why is the Whorl a generation ship? ᚹ

Lee Berman wrote (28-12-2010 13:24):

You mean the city that is bigger than the planet it is in? Yeah, the fact is that unless someone has some insight they haven't shared yet, "What the hell is the purpose of the City of the Inhumi."?

James Wynn wrote (28-12-2010 15:17):

Besides the fact that it is the probable way a travel powered by the mind would work?

I can't even imagine the mechanics of this. It sounds more like mysticism than fantasy or SF. Either that is like one of those cartoons from the 1930s where the characters walk in and out of books. Are you saying that the Rajan psychically emplants himself in the memories of other people or are you saying he's a meta-fictional character than can travel through Wolfe's own novels? ᚹ

James Wynn wrote (28-12-2010 16:26):

Sorry, you've lost me. You seem to be replying to Thomas's hypohtesis that dream travel occurs between books that are close to one another in the shelf. That's not what I commented on.

Oh. Sorry. It's just that was what I was commenting on. That's what the thread was about. Your correction is quite terse. What are you talking about? ᚹ

James Wynn wrote (28-12-2010 16:59):

No, the thread is about more than that and I was talking about the bit of Thomas's message to which you appended your comment. "The idea that astral travel uses mental maps rather than physical ones is a good one". Nothing there about bookshelves.

Getting moderately frustrated. Let's start again. You say "Besides the fact that [astral travel uses mental maps rather than physical ones] is the probable way a travel powered by the mind would work?" What the heck does this mean? I understand what Thomas meant. He means that the Rajan travels within the stories and themes of Wolfe's fiction (possibly he is being sarcastic or silly). What do YOU mean by it, since you apparently DO NOT mean what Thomas meant. Do you mean anything by it? ᚹ

Antonio Pedro Marques: >Besides the fact that it is the probable way a travel powered by the

This seems right to me. I can't imagine checking star charts and making careful mathematical calculations before engaging in dream-travel.

The latter seems like a very cool possibility. I think there may be some examples of this in classic literature but for some reason all I can think of is R. Daneel Olivaw managing to insert his god-like presence into three different Asimov universes, tying them together. I get the sense that Gene Wolfe is more aware of himself as a god-like/demiurgical creator of his books than Asimov. I'm not as familiar as I should be but I think James Joyce does something like this in his work.

There certainly are instances of characters jumping between short stories..when I first read "Ain't you 'most done" and got how it related to "Blueberry Jam" was my GW lightbulb moment......... STUHAMM.COM FACEBOOK/STUARTHAMM myspace.com/stuhamm Skype? stuart.hamm ? ?? --- On Tue, 12/28/10, Lee Berman <severiansola at hotmail.com> wrote: From: Lee Berman <severiansola at hotmail.com> Subject: (urth) planetary problems To: urth at lists.urth.net Date: Tuesday, December 28, 2010, 9:50 AM Antonio Pedro Marques: >Besides the fact that it is the probable way a travel powered by the

This seems right to me. I can't imagine checking star charts and making careful mathematical calculations before engaging in dream-travel.

The latter seems like a very cool possibility. I think there may be some examples of this in classic literature but for some reason all I can think of is R. Daneel Olivaw managing to insert his god-like presence into three different Asimov universes, tying them together. I get the sense that Gene Wolfe is more aware of himself as a god-like/demiurgical creator of his books than Asimov. I'm not as familiar as I should be but I think James Joyce does something like this in his work. ? ??? ???????? ?????? ??? ?

Okay, there's also "The Island of Doctor Death and Other Stories" as well where a character in a short story reads a book of short stories, and they all know they are characters in a short story. But if someone is claiming that that is what is happening in The Book of the Short Sun, get ready for some aesthetic blowback. And I'll be puffing along side them. ᚹ

If you had read what Thomas wrote, there's quite a bit there about characters dreamtraveling according to connections within their minds, e.g. wishing to go to Green while in the company of the Duko took the Rajan to Urth instead of Green because putting together the Rajan and the Duko there is a mental connection between Green and Urth. 'Mental maps' refers to the characters, not to Wolfe. The bookshelf stuff came as an aside, but not necessarily a silly one.

It seems to me that we do. Jahlee and...can't remember the one who looks like a little bald guy. And both of them want to do one thing on Urth- mate with humans. It seems like there HAS to be a thematic purpose to that. (Wolfe is American, meaning he might put gratuitous violence in his stories but not gratuitous sex ;- ) ) I don't think we are supposed to think that the dream-travel we actually see involving inhumi is the only dream-travel any of them ever engage in. Moreover I am interested in Marc's theory regarding Nessus as establishing a more permanent connection between Green and Urth. Perhaps some inhumi travel to Urth simply by climbing a staircase or going through a mirror or painting or whatever Rudesind does to get from the Citadel to the House Absolute.

I'm certainly not of a mind to believe the reason the Rajan ends up on Urth is purely metatextual. Any metatextual layer in these books must surely be accompanied by a more direct narrative link. However, there is certainly a theme in Long Sun/Short Sun of the power of stories, and the Rajan/Horn demonstrates that he can enter the stories of others (Fava in her story of her youth on green(?) and the Grandmother). The nature of dream travel seems at once figurative and literal. However, I feel like it has to have elements of both, not one or the other necessarily. I'll admit that when I first read Short Sun I was fully expecting to find that Green and Blue were Urth and Lune. I looked hard for evidence to support that. I just don't think much of what has been presented is that compelling. Mostly because I just don't see the purpose of it, in terms of the large thematics (and the notion of 'you can't go home again', while a good thread to follow, is subsumed by much stronger themes, in my opinion, which makes a theory like matching Urth to Green in order to fulfill the 'can't go home' theme a stretch too far). Why does the Rajan end up on Urth? Some people point to the Duke, which is a likely element, but what about Oreb/Scylla? Am I completely off base and misremembering here? Wouldn't Scylla's desire to return to Urth be a powerful element of changing course from Green to Urth? Syclla and the Duke just seem like such likely and comprehensible (What, in a Wolfe story???) explanations, that to me pretzling around to find out a way for Urth to be Green (or Blue!) is unnecessary. What is the link then between Blue/Green and Urth/Lune? Well, on a certainly level, for me, it is mostly thematic. They left a world destined to be flooded, and landed on a world post flood (clearly Blue was the subject of flooding at some point in it's past). Megatherians on Blue and Urth seem to have a connection. To me, it is just i irresistible to conclude that the Mother is connected with Scylla/Erebus/Abaia and also to the consciousness contacted by the Cumean. Is it possible Blue had it's own version of a Conciliator in the past? How ironic that if the Cumean was attempting to contact an old consciousness on Blue, a planet which may have already seen it's own 'conciliator' facilitated flood, she was doing so in the presence of Urth's conciliator. Who's to say that the consciousness contacted on Blue by the Cumaen (in this unlikely scenario) didn't recognize that fact, seeing Severian for what he was? Anyway, that's a riff of another color.

This happens in BotNS, so why not? Sev obviously is a character in his own autobiography, and there are many examples of his character Severian diverging from the narrator Severian as he consciously and perhaps subconsciously omits certain items that remain directly or indirectly referenced in other places. But he is also firmly convinced that he is a character in a play, of which life on Urth and elsewhere is a collection of plays put on for the benefit of an unknown audience, and he's not talking about the Yesodis, by then whom he knows very well.

Well, that's not really what I meant, and I suppose you know that. But for clarity, I meant that if Wolfe had intended to imply that inhumi were active on the Urth of Severian, apart from the Rajan's trips, the Rajan should have met some of those others--especially if they were descendants of the inhumi who traveled with him. (I "should" in the Rules of Good Story-telling sense.)

The thing is --and the Rajan makes this quite clear to Hide-- an inhumi in dream travel is human. Every bit human. Because they have a human soul. So IF an inhumi in dream-travel can reproduce with with a human, then the children would be human. Not blood bats, you see. There's no guarantee that they CAN reproduce. I believe that Hyacinth is just such a being, but Silk and Hy's marriage does not seem to have produced children.

Hmmm...you and I seem to have been reading different Americans.

As you know, I don't believe it is. But, if they are extensive and common I would expect to see such travelers encountered by the Rajan's party, as one meets other tourists when he vacations on a cruise ship. Perhaps, Merryn? Wolfe says she's human, which I always thought strange. If she's an inhumi in dream-travel, though, then she is human. ᚹ Free Associating: You know, I wonder if Wolfe is implying that the Rajan IS Dionysus? If he can Time-travel, he can go as far as he likes into Urth's history and become the original figure of the mythology. That's the trouble with Time-travel: Where does it end?

Doesn't one of the inhuma say, we are here, we are everywhere, on Urth I think in RttW, or am I misremembering? ---

It

It is emphatically the case that the Mother on Blue is connected to Megatherian Scylla. Whether they are of the same species or whether Mother is some sort of branch from the original, I can't say. Return to the Whorl (somewhere around page 406) "I am a prisoner in a cell," [the Rajan] told Oreb, "and that tall man in black will return with my death warrant. I know it, and can't do a thing about it. Tell Nettle I loved her, please. Will you do that?" "Bird tell." "Thank you." He sat again, his head in his hands. "I loved Sinew, too. And Hoof and Hide and Krait. Jahlee and Seawrack. I should not have loved any of them--they were almost as selfish as I am, Oreb. But I did, and I asked the Greater Scylla on the Red Sun Whorl how I could find Seawrack again. [snip] She taught me how to communicate with her sister here. That was our bargain; but I have not used the information. I would never have used it while Nettle was alive. [snip] Most of all, I loved Silk. I tried to model myself on him, and see what a mess I made of it. When at last I was given the chance to actually do something for him, I failed."

It's not really the same thing as what Thomas seemed to be implying. It's true that Wolfe constantly demonstrates how myth becomes real, how real people become myth, how lies become truth. I've tried to show that The Book of the Long Sun and beyond is mapped over the story of Aristaeus. However, if the Horn encountered a white rabbit with a pocket watch who was late for an appointment and a little blonde girl chasing him, or a detective in a hunter's cap who was investigating the Hound of the Baskervilles, this would be a different kind of story. It's definitely a story Wolfe might tell. I just don't believe he's telling it here. Speaking of which, has anyone else read "The Eyre Affair"? It's light reading but I think Wolfe would appreciate the joke. ᚹ

I think you are exactly on target with this, Jordon. Fomalhaut and Pisces imply there is some- thing fishy going on there...heh...well, maybe just something oceanic? Probably both.

Argh! James you are so close to seeing what I am saying. First, if Wolfe was to actively show inhumi on Urth it would betray everything BotNS has built up. They are entirely hidden. we can only deduce their presence; we can never see them. Not on Urth. Second, the Biblical explanation for the Flood continues to be ignored. I don't understand this. There is such a willingness to associate Severian with Jesus and such a resistance to connect him to the more immediate biblical event his actions associate with. I remember in a recent discussion, Antonio said he thought of Jesus first and foremost as a teacher. Is this true of Severian? Severian is patterned after Greek heroes. They are another way of saying "Men Of Reknown". Big guys with special powers who have mixed parentage with the gods. They were heroes to Greeks. And Sumerians and others. But they were evil Nephilim to the Hebrews. Sons of fallen angels and human women. Like Goliath the larger-than-life heroes of outsider groups are the evil enemies of the Hebrews in their Bible. The Biblical Flood was due to the "wickedness" of men but there is the strong implication the wickedness stems from demonic matings and a corruption of the human race. I don't know if or how inhumi made it to Urth and were able to reproduce but DNA compatibility would suggest, just as you do, that they would need a conversion to being fully human to do so. But is it fully? Consider the lesson of Dr. Veil in 5HoC about abos. The one difference between abos and humans, no matter how closely imitated, is that abos would retain their ability to shapeshift/imitate. And we see that the supposedly fully human Inhumi on Urth do go back to being Inhumi when they get back to Blue. The Bible associates the Flood with demons and giants. Dr. Talos' play does the same. Blue and Green have implications of Floods and have demons and giants all around (vines and trees; inhumi and Mother). Urth basically NEEDS demons and giants to warrant a Flood, so...where/what are they? In regard to blood bats I am not insisting they are inhumi. Wolfe may not even have thought of them during the writing of BotNS. I am suggesting they may imply a demonic presence on Urth. They leave their marks but are never seen. There is the veiled process of blood sharing noted for khaibits and Mamas, who are enslaved people of Urth. There is a weird bat-like image on the cheek of a chatelaine during a Thecla dream sequence. There is a frequent "sunken cheek" appearance of BotNS characters. (demons and the Lilith/Jahi myth track directly from Lamia to vampires) As previously noted, if there is a more direct connection between Urth and Green per Marc's theory it might allow for actual non-human inhumi to show up on Urth. But we can't know the exact mechanics of it. Just as for Quetzal on the Whorl, the whole thing is completely hush-hush. The biggest secret there is.

How about a scientist who plays God by performing forbidden experiments in a castle by a lake, or a mechanical workman who has traveled many leagues looking for a way to fall in love, or a forgotten king of kings represented only by some ancient statuary in some distant, uninhabitable corner of the world he once ruled?

I'm afraid it is probably a vain hope. One interviewer had the cheek to ask Gene Wolfe how long he thought or hoped his books would be read. And Gene Wolfe actually had an answer: 300 years. We won't have Gene WOlfe with us for too much longer. But we must accept that he hopes his work can be read long after his death in the same light it has been read for the past 40 years.

All totally different. The first is an example "persons becoming myth" that I spoke of. The second is literary allusion: the author embedding literature into his narrative, not the characters escaping their narrative into another work. The third? Well, I don't think Wolfe considers that merely literature. That's just the equivalent of Severian going to Lake Diuturna-- (a real live lake that happens to also be in Wolfe's story, like putting Dracula in London. ᚹ

Actually, that's the opposite lesson of Dr Veil and of the evolutionary loss of the carapace. If the abos are perfect imitations, then they must lose the ability to shape-shift away from their imitation.

Here's the deal: I've read that story since before I could read and I never associated the wickedness of all mankind due to the Nephillim. I've never heard or read one teacher claim that. It is true that tBotNS does imply a sense of judgment on mankind. That is precisely what Severian is told. The Hierogrammates are serving judgment on mankind for the pain mankind put them through to become who they are. The ability of the Megatherians and the inhumi to torment mankind is due to his own wickedness and corruption. I think that the Ushas flood was intended as a reboot for the human race--like performing a reset on your computer to get rid of viruses. But the viruses were internal--the Megatherians were like boils on infected skin.

But we have bat creatures in An Evil Guest and they are (seem to be) good guys. I don't think we can draw anything universal about that. As for Lilith/vampire, you are on the right track: Jahlee, the Fire Aelf, Sabra She shows up over and over. I'm not a believer in your Chariots of the Gods G.U.T. It would take pages to list every problem I have with it. And why bother? I think your reasoning for reading Wolfe is valid. And one of the useful things about it is that it allows you to appreciate much of what Wolfe is doing allusively in the text. But I think your initial axioms are off. ᚹ

This is to be understood, if you've had a modern Christian upbringing. "I read it before I could read" has interesting connotations. I had a similar conversation with James Jordan (who is extremely devout) years ago and the same exact thing bothered him. Modern Christians tend to reject the competitor gods and demons and Nephilim and such found in the Old Testament as not compatible with the One True Kind Good God of the New Testament. It isn't taught. Still, they remain there to be read about (as seen below). I'm quite sure Gene Wolfe has done this reading. How could he not have? He puts demons and Nephilim, giants and vampires, human-demon matings etc. in the play called Eschatology and Genesis. I have no personal opinion on the matter so I am interested in the topic only from a Gene Wolfe perspective. Despite the modern Christian view, the older (gnostic?) view can be found extensively with any internet search of "Genesis" or "Nephilim" or "fallen angels" etc.

True, but the giants and demons exist in Wolfe's stories as real beings. Why deny them simply because they cannot always be seen.

Are the Inhumi really all bad? I'd say they have a certain charm. Are the Megatherians pure evil? The Gods of the Whorl? Godlings? Undines and sirens? Do they not serve God's purpose and play their roles in equal faithfulness to God's Plan as the angels and we humans? James I am not trying to convert you. I think you have good reasons for your beliefs. But I admit to using you as a foil here because you have a knack for bringing up the exact issues that need to be addressed. And others may be interested. Genesis 6 1And it came to pass, when men began to multiply on the face of the earth, and daughters were born unto them, 2That the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair; and they took them wives of all which they chose. 3And the LORD said, My spirit shall not always strive with man, for that he also is flesh: yet his days shall be an hundred and twenty years. 4There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown. 5And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. 6And it repented the LORD that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart. 7And the LORD said, I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth; both man, and beast, and the creeping thing, and the fowls of the air; for it repenteth me that I have made them. 8But Noah found grace in the eyes of the LORD.

They are only as bad as we are. If people did not prey on each other, then the ensouled inhumi would die shortly after birth. Only the animal inhumi would survive. I believe this is the lesson that the Neighbors learned. Humanity has a certain charm as well. But even the charming inhumi must prey on us if they are to survive and have anything but animalistic children. The Rajan loved Jahlee. But he ended up kicking her to death.

No worse than our other tyrants. See An Evil Guest.

They are in charge of the functions of the ship. As the Rajan declared, Typhon did not design the Whorl to be hell. He designed it to be pleasant. He was made by the Outsider and thus has a beneficent aspects as well.

Same as Pas.

Even Baldanders.

Sure. Jewish Writings say the Assyrians were instruments of God's wrath, but that doesn't make them nice. But Wolfe tends to draw all his villains as morally ambiguous. The Hierogrammates are not evil despite engineering the slaughter of almost all of humanity. ᚹ

Let me amplify and see if that makes things clearer. The original problem I was looking at had to do with what the rules of astral travel were. In particular, the primary rule seemed to be that one could only go someplace "close". This sounds like a good rule, but it led places I found baroque, so I thought I would see if there were some other way of interpreting the idea of "closeness". The first way is that "close" might mean "thematically close" or "mental-map close". That is, if two stories have similar themes, or similar characters, or the like, then one could travel between them. Kind of like "There are Doors", but for stories, or maybe Heinlein's "Number of the Beast", but with limited travel "distance". The second way to be "close" is physically, but in a strange way. I was looking at my bookshelf and the Urth and Long/Short Sun books were right next to each other. Physically touching. Normally I wouldn't bother writing about it (it does sound funny), but the whole "Vernor Vinge shelved in the Ws" thing rang a bell. I suppose if we start seeing Tom Wolfe characters in Gene Wolfe stories then we'll know something is up.

Hey! That's not what I said. You'll seldom nail me revealing what I think about religion or religious figures. I ventured 'his teachings' in answer to your question 'what would a contemporary Jew find special about the early Jesus, if anything'. And I took the opportunity topoint out once again that we know almost nothing of the Conciliator's teachings, if there are any, and this ommission bothers me (it's probably one of the reasons I don't think of the Conciliator as a Jesus figure: churches come along with ideas, what ideas come with the cult of the Conciliator? (is it really a cult?)).

But, Lee, if Wolfe is truly keying off of Genesis 6, where is Noah? The ark? The animals? The ark can't be the Whorl because it wasn't written yet. Noah can't be Severian because he's the flood. Most people would consider this refutation trivial. But I know you will get it. If the nephilim are important, then Noah is doubly important. Granted Wolfe could have the megatherians play the animals as well as the nephilim, but there is no evidence of what happens to them. ᚹ

But it is possible that later, when he had written Urth, Wolfe thought, oh, wait, my purifying flood needs an ark to preserve humanity, who will come back after the deluge is gone ... The whorl. --- On Wed, 12/29/10, James Wynn <crushtv at gmail.com> wrote:

But, Lee, if Wolfe is truly keying off of Genesis 6, where is Noah? The ark? The animals? The ark can't be the Whorl because it wasn't written yet. Noah can't be Severian because he's the flood. Most people would consider this refutation trivial. But I know you will get it. If the nephilim are important, then Noah is doubly important. Granted Wolfe could have the megatherians play the animals as well as the nephilim, but there is no evidence of what happens to them. ᚹ

But in the original, the ark was played by the ship that Severian went to Yesod on, the sailors who survived where dropped back off, no? This would be a retcon, a multiple ark story line. --- On Wed, 12/29/10, Marc Aramini <marcaramini at yahoo.com> wrote: From: Marc Aramini <marcaramini at yahoo.com> Subject: Re: (urth) planetary problems To: "The Urth Mailing List" <urth at lists.urth.net> Date: Wednesday, December 29, 2010, 7:55 AM But it is possible that later, when he had written Urth, Wolfe thought, oh, wait, my purifying flood needs an ark to preserve humanity, who will come back after the deluge is gone ... The whorl. --- On Wed, 12/29/10, James Wynn <crushtv at gmail.com> wrote:

But, Lee, if Wolfe is truly keying off of Genesis 6, where is Noah? The ark? The animals? The ark can't be the Whorl because it wasn't written yet. Noah can't be Severian because he's the flood. Most people would consider this refutation trivial. But I know you will get it. If the nephilim are important, then Noah is doubly important. Granted Wolfe could have the megatherians play the animals as well as the nephilim, but there is no evidence of what happens to them. ᚹ -----Inline Attachment Follows-----

On Dec 28, 2010, at 8:03 AM, Ant?nio Pedro Marques <entonio at gmail.com> wrote: yet, "What the hell is the purpose of the City of the Inhumi."?

I like how my blunt question has become a fill-in-the-blank rallying cry for you, complete with typo. We should shake every branch and shout it.

James I think this objection is entirely to the point....but ONLY if this is our earth, our universe. And I know that is your interpretation. So I can see why it doesn't work for you. In my view this is a gnostic, non-Christian planet which was never purified with a Flood as ours was. I think this is what Gene Wolfe is doing; showing us a planet which never had a Christ. And the Flood was a preparation for Christ. The Nephilim HAVE to be important. That word is mentioned in Dr. Talos play. Nephilim are mentioned only twice in the Bible, once in connection to The Flood and later, in Numbers 13:33 in a passing reference to giants:

Wolfe can't use this term lightly. He must know of the Biblical demonic significance as he uses the term in BotNS. Baldanders is a giant and plays a "nephilim", though he doesn't seem very demonic...at first. Your point is well taken about the need for an Ark (and a non-demon corrupted Noah family) to complete the allusion. Marc's post addresses this in a similar manner to the way I would.

Well, I agree. In the first four books Wolfe was content to deal with Ark/Noah issues in Dr. Talos' play by discussing "new seed" for the new Creation and having demonic Jahi hoping to mate with Meschia and Nephilimic Nod hoping to mate his daughter to Meschia to corrupt the new Creation as they did the first. But when called upon to add to the story, with UotNS, Wolfe had some "Noah's Family" types placed on Ushas from the Ark-like Tzadkiel's Ship. Since they had boarded that Ship earlier in time they (I assume) were uncorrupted by the later demon infestation of Urth. The Whorl is certainly ark-like. But Wolfe has said that Typhon did not know about the Inhumi. I suspect Typhon was manipulated into sending the Whorl for a sinister cause. I wonder if perhaps the Whorl is an anti-Ark, built not to save humanity from evil demons (and the cleansing Flood) but to provide demons with fresh meat. Quetzal seems like a benign character who outfoils the evil Ayuntamiento. But in reality he is demonic (by human definition) with plans designed to bring fresh meat to Green. I think there may be a similar evil old guy serving as Typhon's vizier who manipulated the creation of the Whorl for the same purpose. He is called "Ceryx" in UotNS. But I don't think he really dies before Typhon does. Instead he lives on, to create The Commonwealth, starting with Ymar.

I think if the Short Sun trilogy has a one sentence theme, it is man's inhumanity to man. That, after all, is the condition on Blue, and it underlines the secret of the Inhumi. As for things that are "obviously the truth", for me one of those things is that Urth and Green orbit different stars. - Gerry Quinn ----- Original Message ----- From: Marc Aramini To: The Urth Mailing List Sent: Monday, December 27, 2010 3:28 PM Subject: Re: (urth) themes, one sentence solutions etc Let me just defend something really quickly, and then I want to move on to more fruitful discussions, because I am a bit taken aback by the consistency of throwing away ambiguous statements as meaningless or statements with words like "I believe" in the text as certifiable definitive disproof of one claim or another. For me, Wolfe's novels have an explicit main idea that can be concisely stated for the most part, a main idea that explains a whole lot of the recurring motiffs and themes and mystery of the work and transforms it. For example, John Marsch is an abo, Number Five is a clone; Weer is dead, etc. These understandings transform the text but are usually a straightforward identity acknolwedgement, with the important caveat that the narrator really doesn't know it or doesn't want it known. So the hints are logical but scattered and somewhat intuitive One more example, I have had the feeling that Latro is Pleistorus, who has been missing from the pantheon, who is Ahura Mazda, who is like a stand in for God, and that the God of War's disillusionment with war as a Roman avatar will herald in the coming of Christ with the Pax Romana (ie - the Old testament God gets fed up with blood through the experiences of the avatar of the God of War, and heralds the death of Pan). I always thought what brilliant interpretations people had made the first time I read Peace, then I realized ... when I read Shadows of the New Sun, Wolfe admits Weer is dead there, and explains the mechanics, too, and I thought, wait a minute, did we get that or did he give it away? So I always aproach his books with a look at "what don't I understand?" "do any words seem supercharged with amiguity or symbolic resonance?" "Do patterns repeat in the stories (as in the ghost stories of Peace)?" "What is the theme and how can that help explain the mysteries?" "What do the narrators know and what are they inferring?" So anyway, when I had read Short Sun I was sure the theme of the book was "you can't go home again." Home has changed, and so have you. Silk doesn't believe he is Silk, Horn is shunted off in some poor beastie, but I was POSITIVE that the theme applied in general, that the people of the whorl had come back to their home world and where simply unable to recognize it because they had forgotten who they were. This does say something very negative about Severian's rejuvenation, but, as I said, the reason I could not prove that Blue was Urth and knew that I did not have that proof was that Wolfe operates by rules. There had to be a way to prove either Blue was Urth or a parallel between them that would explain the mistaken translation across time and space. And there wasn't one! I looked everywhere, There was no mechanism. But as soon as "green is urth" came up, lo, there it was, the mechanism, Silk was thinking of Green and wanted to take his people there, the city of Nessus is compared to the city on Green, and know I can't see that city as anything but Nessus. It's so obviously the truth, just as Horn is in Babbie, that to argue about horns versus tusks seems so unbelievably asinine and to assert the text says he rode a beast with three horns on green robs it of its mystery and its ability to explain Babbie's later actions that I am shocked. Its just obviously the truth. The problem I addressed to Gene, that I can't find a mechanism for why they wound up on Urth in the past of Blue, was instantly solved by his three words, so it is obviously the truth. So the waters receded and the heat allowed these protoforms of the green man to arise. All this refutation is like bad comedy to me. I'm sorry Roy, your fundamentalist and encyclopedic approach to Wolfe is fabulous for shutting down incorrect theories, but it does not allow ambiguities to attain any kind of solvent cohesive explanatory power that the ambiguities in Wolfe point to, and it seems to shut down correct readings, too. (Horn in Babbie under a neighbor tree at the end of OBW explains WHY Horn says goodbye, where he ends up, why Babbie says huh huh huh and reacts violently when Horn's son threatened, the narrative shift to positivism, why Silk says I won the game, why the text of IGJ has almost no flashback, and against all that expositive power we have, "the text says he rode that beast on Green." and "Babbie has tusks, not Horns." For real?????? Are you serious?) I know that I am right, from the stage of my comprehension of the text at the time I ran into my barrier, and the fact that three words overcame the barrier to my satisfaction. Marc ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ _______________________________________________

There are ruins below the water's surface on Earth too. Does that mean the Bible story of the Flood is literally true? - Gerry Quinn

I can't speak for Son o'Witz, but I think the black hole was placed as a consequence of the actions of Typhon. Typhon is long gone, and his successors operate differently, at least insofar as interstellar politics is concerned. - Gerry Quinn

I made no estimates - I just noted that if one free associates ad infinitum on the subject of fish, a proportion of the associations that come up will probably have no meaningful relation to the text.

Even if this is assumed, not every association of every word will be meaningful.

Where do I suggest that parts of the book are meaningless? I have said that some possible interpretations of parts of the book must be wrong. I wouldn't have thought that would be very controversial. - Gerry Quinn

-----

Not being able to count the towers is a common enough way of saying there were a lot of towers. The city is enormous with its towers and sub-cellars. Rigoglio's assertion that the city is bigger than Urth is simply hyperbole IMO. - Gerry Quinn

The Cumaean makes it clear that she is not contacting anyone on Blue or Green: "The red star there is called the Fish's Mouth, and on its one surviving world there dwells an ancient and acute mind." The planetary system containing Blue and Green has at least two surviving worlds. - Gerry Quinn

Great point Gerry! Thanks.

Gerry Quinn wrote (29-12-2010 21:57):

Almost makes one think of Mater Ash in his Red Sun Whorl.

Well, one could argue Green is not surviving, as in there may be no intelligent life there at some point.

Gerry Quinn wrote (29-12-2010 21:17):

Then again, isn't it? What's the meaning of 'wrong' in this context?

Yes, it does.

Seems like almost all you do is assert that various interpretations of the book must be wrong. If we follow that trajectory, all interpretations are wrong and the book is meaningless. Gets a bit tiresome. How about a change of pace? Leave out all mentions of the "wrong" and discuss what you, Gerry Quinn, think is the right interpretation. It would be refreshing to hear something positive from you. Antechamber=spaceship was good. More, more!

No Lee, it doesn't indicate the veracity of the Bible. It does potentially indicate a deluge drowning an older civilization, but there are hundreds of Deluge Myths, why single out The Bible? Why not the babylonian myths?

Considering the Epic of Gilgamesh gives the story of Utnapishtim and a global flood far older than the old testament, and yet very similar in detail, I'd say it's something that goes beyond biblical veracity and just into probable ancient history.

Ideally, all but one, or at most a few, should be wrong. How large a proportion of posited theories are wrong will depend on the number of theories posited, which in turn will depend on the extent to which the positors screen their ideas for consistency with the text. My observation is purely statistical.in nature.

You seem to think that the Solar Cycle has some secret history that is its fundamental theme, that is everywhere obscured by misdirection and hidden away in allusions. I don't subscribe to that. I don't consider it a negative action to point out problems with proposed explanations. - Gerry Quinn

Why not one of the 100+ Flood myths listed at this site: http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/flood-myths.html Gerry's question was answered at the level in which it was asked. Ruins found beneath a body of water, whether on earth or in fiction, mean either that there was a Flood or that it was a mermaid city or that somebody went through a lot of trouble to yank your chain with fake evidence of a flood.

Lee Berman wrote (30-12-2010 00:43):

The Mediterranean dried up in recent geological history. Not human history, but there was no reason why it couldn't have been in human history. Then one day the Atlantic burst through the Gibraltar strait and corrected that. It must have been awesome.

Yes, Gerry. Ignore the words and pay attention only to numbers. Evidence is meaningless unless quantifiable. "One surviving world" implies there was one and only one world. Just pretend the meaningless "surviving" doesn't exist in the equation.

But Gerry has very valid points here. We have to look at the text. The most straight forward explination I can think of is that a Red star would be in much the same shape as Urth...not giving off much heat, because it's near the end of it's life. That is typically the state of red stars. So, most of the worlds around it would be ice cubes, no doubt, as will the planets of Urth's system without a new sun. It is very interesting that a being of great age is being contacted around another dying star, however. That is another mark in the column against it being Blue and Green. Those planets aren't circling a red star. I think it's safe to say, in my opinion, that textually Blue and Green are ruled out. The 'ancient intelligence' being some sort of Megatherian isn't ruled out at all, but goes mostly nowhere, probably.

You are on the right track Gerry, but veer off with the idea of what is "fundamental". In SotT, Severian and Dorcas discuss the "keys to the universe". In fiction, as has been discussed, "universe" is equivalent to "story". I think we are wise to consider the key they discuss in relation to the stories in the brown book:

Gerry, your emphasis on the first meaning, the plowman's viewpoint is understandable. You are a mathematician and find little value in soothsayers and the transubstantial. You want proof and grounding in the physical reality of the universe in everything you think about, be it physics, farming or god. This material reality is a very important part of a story and it cannot be ignored. However, you might consider being a good chap and respect the discussion by others regarding symbolism and mythology and religion and other such rubbish as is being purported as hidden within the words of the story. You do have the author's word that such meanings are of equal importance to what you consider to be of sole importance.

----- Original Message -----

[--]

I fully accept that there are different levels of meanings to be found. (The concept is analogous to and may be derived from Aristotle's theory of causes.) What I do not accept is the idea that every proposed such meaning is valid, even if it contradicts the text. Just as there can be wrong theories regarding the practical meaning, there can be wrong theories regarding the soothsayer's meaning or the transubstantial meaning. You seem to consider it disrespectful and a sign of smallmindedness when anyone points out a problem with any such proposed meaning - or even dares to make a general observation that proposed meanings could in principle be wrong! - Gerry Quinn

I think you are right on track Jordon. What bothers many about my view of BotNS is that it involves Severian being the product of alien/fallen angel types and humans mating. Too Creepy! Scientifically impossible! etc. etc. This doesn't bother them reading a story about Hercules or Gilgamesh or other giant demi-god folk heroes. But when it comes to SEVERIAN, well! (consider American folk heroes such as Paul Bunyan and Joe Magarac. They are also in the tradition of "Nephilim" giants, "men of reknown", but their origin remains secular as befits our Constitution, and their heroic exploits were related to construction and natural resource exploitation as befits US history). Wolfe tried to open up awareness of cross-species mating with his pairing of Severian and Apheta, largely to no avail. His words on the subject in the James Jordan interview:

We are creeped out by the possibility of Severian's being partially inhuman because the story is told in first person. He is SO human to us, in contrast to Hercules or Gilgamesh. Severian himself is so creeped by his alien heritage that he lies or feigns ignorance and refuses to openly discuss the creepier aspects of his being, hinting to us only with labels like "Father" Inire. (Inire does not call himself that). For example: We know from mythology that the mermaid's "kiss" confers the ability to breathe underwater. We have Juturna's word during an erotic interlude that she can give Severian this ability. We have Baldanders with strange scars on his neck, an association with Juturna and him breathing under water. Then, at the end of UotNS we have Severian encountering Juturna again a couple times. We have Severian able to swim for hours or days underwater. We have Severian mistaken for a fish god. But never does he admit "kissing" Juturna. Come clean Severian!!! What are you not telling us??? You screwed the undine and you have gills. Your being is partly from Fomalhaut in the constellation Pisces. Wolfe expects us to figure these things out, despite his lying narrators and the counter-evidence he places to fool the casually skeptical who value "evidence" over gestalt vision. Wolfe knows such skeptics are likely to be atheists; that's why I once asked Gerry Quinn if he believed in God. I could ask Roy C. Lackey, Tony Ellis or other professional skeptics here the same question and I think I'd get a similar answer.

As discussed with David Stockhoff, the fish theme is not purely demonic. There is the suggestion that Jurturna and her father-husband are fallen but of the same stock as the angelic beings in the story. Excerpts from the sequence in which Severian encounters the environment in the stateroom of Barbatus and Famulimus (Ossipago is a machine, it doesn't matter to him):

...

(Interestingly, in mythology, Undines are more benign water sprites and need to mate with a human male and bear a child to obtain a soul. Kelpies are more malignant water creatures and are likely to steal, drown and even eat human children)

Hercules' and Gilgamesh's stories don't include extended meditations on numerous scientific principles, and they do not appeal to the authority of science to suspend the reader's disbelief in their fantastic elements, while Sev's story does many times over.

Whose father does? Did your dad introduce himself to people as "Father Berman?"

Given the profound difference in scale, how could Sev's encounter on the strand with Juturna be characterized as erotic? And how is he connected to Fomalhaut? The Cumaean is, but her use of a link to a familiar power to help her call Apu Punchau to manifest doesn't make it a full circuit.

That's because Hercules and Gilgamesh are stories from earth's past, before science was invented. Severian is on Urth, which is probably not even our universe. Also, Hercules and Gilgamesh did not keep diaries, as Severian has sort of done. Those heroic guys were not just big stupid idiots! If Hercules had kept a diary of his travels and adventures what would it be like? Extended mediations and pondering of philosophical principles? Damn right. Gene Wolfe has given us his opinion- Hercules' Diary would be something like a combination of BotNS and the Soldier series. Latro, hello!

I don't catch your drift, Jeff. The last Mass I attended was presided over by Father Missimi and he would refer to himself thusly. My father was my father. Does any of Severian's paternity reside in Inire? If so, we really don't have a problem here.(FWIW, children I know who have some confusion on their paternity will refer to their two fathers as Daddy Dave and Daddy Steven; perhaps Severian's usage is similar)

Jeff you really need to re-read that section. Severian even comments on the likely disbelief of his readers but he avers the sexual nature of the attraction anyway.

Fomalhaut: Its name means "mouth of the whale", from the Arabic ?? ????? fum al-?awt. WOuld you also deny that this star has anything to do with Jonas? C'mon Jeff. This is the constellation Pisces. The Fish/aquatic theme extends from undines to Hierodules to Abaia to The Mother to Seawrack and more. In constellations we must "connect-the-dots" If Wolfe had mentioned an alien contacting someone from the planetary system of Sirius I would be looking for dog connections. But he didn't. He used Fomalhaut and I am finding a lot of "good fishing, good fishing, good fishing"!

Lee, I don't think Roy is a skeptic. His encyclopedic knowledge of every Gene Wolfe text reminds me way more of a biblical fundamentalist. He knows his Wolfe, he just doesn't allow any ambiguity or contradiction, and any such ambiguity is refutation. Roy knows these books inside and out with an admirable capaciousnes I could only hope to emulate?... but his quotes are always so black and white, and these narrators are SO fallible in Wolfe. Marc --- On Thu, 12/30/10, Lee Berman <severiansola at hotmail.com> wrote: “that's why I once asked Gerry Quinn if he believed in God. I could ask Roy C. Lackey, Tony Ellis or other professional skeptics here the same question and I think I'd get a similar answer. ?”? ???????? ?????? ??? ?

Marc, I have the utmost respect for Roy and his lupine knowledge. I call him a "skeptic" because of the more recent years of his contribution here, which is to jump in only when there is a chance to undercut a theory. In the older days, Roy had his own theories he contributed. I think perhaps criticism of one's theories stings a little and some people have decided which side of that sting they prefer to be on. As you suggest, unreliable narrators are a trap for text evidence detectives. I'll use my recent example of Aunt Jeannine who firmly asserts that Dr. Veil has hung 50 pounds of theory on nothing in hypothesizing that abos have replaced humans. Then we find Aunt Jeannine IS Dr. Veil. How much more unreliable can one be than that? And all that was just in 5HoC the novella. You'd have to be a super-hyper genius or something to conclude that Veil's hypothesis is actually correct from the information Wolfe gives us in 5HoC the novella. All we get is that Number Five is able to scare off Dr. Marsch by calling him an abo. Who the hell could figure that out, especially as we are distracted by the clone/Mr Million story. Wolfe had to write the full novel before we could figure it out, and even then, only toward the end. I liken it to a jigsaw puzzle. WOlfe throws all the pieces into the text and we are supposed to find them and sort them into a picture. BUT he also throws in contradictory evidence. Basically these are puzzle pieces that don't fit into the big picture. Wolfe ALSO expect us to identify these as false evidence and discard them (like Aunt Jeannine's 50 pounds). This is where the skeptics are fooled over and over again. They hold onto the false pieces, ignoring the big picture, and using the fake evidence to discredit the big picture. These false leads can be identified because they never lead to a big picture. They are orphans out there by themselves, treasured only by certain people to undercut the theories of others. I guess maybe an example would be the focus on the planet around Fishes Mouth in the constellation Pisces. Some point to there being "one surviving planet". Some to the red sun status mentioned. What is the point of that? To prove that Fomalhaut is a meaningless throwaway reference that Wolfe tossed in for fun? Fish. FISH! Look at all the fish; they are everywhere. Don't throw away the fish picture. Throw away the fake pieces. They lead nowhere. FWIW, I can imagine Gene Wolfe deciding to write this way after a career surrounded by engineers who, tried to assemble their God and Jesus (or deny the existence of God) using the nuts and bolts evidence of the physical world, oblivious to the need for a spiritual leap of faith to see the big picture. (God, like Wolfe, throws us some false evidence, like fossils, to prove to the naive materialist that God does not exist)

Not so; they did not have the scientific method, of course, but there are appeals to the authority of the useful arts and natural principles in the central pot devices of Aesclepius and Icarus, for example. Aesclepius even addresses the conflict of science and myth!

I don't see any particular inhumanity in Severian as a person of his time. I advanced the theory that he's part undine, but with the proviso that the undines are just humans treated to live in the water, like Baldanders becomes.

I'll stipulate he gets aroused checking out the giant naked woman on display, but that doesn't usefully distinguish it from the bulk of other times he meets a halfway presentable woman or image of one.

But he already has a completely different star devoted to him, and Fomalhaut's not even the right color!

Lee, though, really now. Turn a little to the left and try to see that you are capable of doing the exact same thing as everyone else in this regard. Hey, I was totally willing to go along with the idea that The Fishes Mouth was Blue, or Green. Gerry came along and presented some textual evidence to the contrary. It got me thinking, and hey, you know what? It didn't hold water anymore (oh man, no pun intended...or can I claim that pun in retrospect?). For me, the big 'killer' on that theory is that I have every confidence that Blue/Green weren't even in Wolfe's mind when he wrote that passage about the Cumaen. I just don't credit him THAT far. So why should we try and shoe horn significance to Blue/Green on that passage, when such significance didn't even exist in the mind of the author (most likely) at that point? It's not a matter of trying to prove that Fomalhaut is a meaningless throwaway reference that Wolfe tossed in just for fun. Just that it no longer makes any real sense to try and shoehorn it with Blue and Green. So, I don't BURY that mystery, I just leave it unsolved and put it back in the pile to try and fill in the whole puzzle. To be indelicate, I sometimes sense that some on this board (turning your metaphor around a bit), take a piece they are SURE fits somewhere and jam and jam and jam it until it awkwardly sits in the puzzle, edges bent and twisted up against other pieces that just don't fit with it, but they are both BLUE or RED so they MUST belong right next to eachother! ;) Some of us are more liable to say: hmmm....that doesn't really fit, let me throw that one back into the mystery pile. That said, I'm no literalist. I think the 'third level' of meaning in this book is the most important, and is what interests me the most. But I don't think you and I are building the same picture. I sure do dig the hell out of watching you build the one you're building though! And your metaphor about the puzzle pieces is a good one. But you need to see, I think, that you are every bit as guilty of holding onto puzzle pieces that don't fit your big picture as anyone. Or at least as some. Generalizations do suck, I admit. Your pieces may be different that Roy's or Gerry's, but when Gerry responds to you, he's trying to sharpen his view of the puzzle against yours. I welcome that sharpening, even if I don't always accept it, because it causes me to reflect and really try to dig at whatever scab I was picking at. Gerry helped me to see that I'd ignored some really clear evidence from the text, and that made me realize how I was pretty foolish for trying to hang my hat on something the author couldn't have possibly intended given the chronology of New Sun/Short Sun. I really love your contributions to the general weft of theory on these books. Oh man, I've gone too meta... So, on to Sev's Humanity vs. Monstrousness. While I conceed the point about heroes of old often or nearly always being the product of Gods/Men Demon/Men hybridisation, I think that very fact (and the fact that we DO see such cross breeding throughout the books) is an argument in strong favor of Severian being purley and utter human, not a hybrid. If the Hierogrammates wanted a hybrid to be the epitome of earth, they could have chosen Baldanders, who is certainly a monstrous hybrid of his own creation. Severian matters because he IS a man, the epitome of man. Unlike many, I think Severian's journey and transformation shows him to be a man increasingly good, increasingly willing to give up his own petty will to the greater will of the increate. He is also a man who carries other men and women around inside of himself. Monsters have tried to get in on the game, and steer him one way or the other, but this MAN stays the straight path to the end. He mates with Apheta, who is ABOVE him, which is lawful. It is the lower looking to the higher. (This is also why I think the Rajan says it would be wrong to mate with the inhumu...that is the higher lowering themselves to the lower in an inappropriate way, but this isn't the place for that). This idea of the ladder of being, the chain of being, and the neccesity of putting someone on the step below you you just occupied is a strong one to me. But it requires that Severian be a man, who rejects the base monsters below him, and instead more and more casts his eyes upward toward that which is higher. Also, if you identify Severian and Noah at all, Noah was a Man right? Isn't that one of the reasons God loved him? he hadn't yet been tainted?

I'm completely with Flato here.

Or, Jordan, as is commonly supposed, the creation story of the bible is an amalgamation of at least two different sources, one of which is babylonian (ie - its just a retelling of another old myth - what makes the older one any truer?)? The bible has disparate sources, too. --- On Wed, 12/29/10, Jordon Flato <jordonflatourth at gmail.com> wrote: Considering the Epic of Gilgamesh gives the story of?Utnapishtim and a global flood far older than the old testament, and yet very similar in detail, I'd say it's something that goes beyond biblical veracity and just into probable ancient history.

Well, that is right. I suppose I'm not trying to make the argument that the older version is truer. In my opinion, the story is at once an esoteric one, for which serious hermunetics are required, and a probably echo of actual ancient floods (one of which may have hit the area around Babylon, seeing as how they have now seemingly found ancient structures on the bed of the Persian sea...).

Jordon, (and Witz) excellent post! You cut quite to the heart of things, imho. Please keep in mind (and I admit this often) I am playing a role here. A counter- balance role that I find necessary. From what I could see, the sting (and fear) of criticism was turning this List from a lively interchange of ideas to a moribund place destined to become a frickn' cemetery. If the stultifying "skeptics" contributions had instead been a string of theories based on gorgonzola cheese and oil derricks over the past 6 years I assure you I'd be the one jumping in as text police trying to keep the ideas closer to the book and the author's intentions. (in fact I do fill that role on some other message boards). I truly do appreciate all efforts to keep me from trying to wedge pieces too forcefully where they don't smoothly fit. Still my current philosophy is that if a picture is to be tossed out, a better picture should be submitted in its place. Much as we'd like to pretend we are all inhumanly objective academicians, I find us all too human. The license to toss other people's ideas to the trash heap without replacement is just too easy a stimulation of some of our baser animal instincts, like territoriality and dominance. (I've mentioned how politely my ideas were treated during a time period the List thought I was female). Okay, so...

There is the implication that Baldanders WAS a candidate. Why else the attention that B, F and O pay him? He throws The Claw in part due to jealousy that Severian is the "victor" and honored by the hierodules. WHY would he be a candidate though? My view is that he is a man who simply appeared on the shore of a lake one day. No history, no known parentage, much like Severian and his appearance with the Torturers. I don't think just anyone can go from human to Monster on Urth. ONly special people with special ancestry. Like Scylla. And Baldanders. And Severian? (he'd need a new name).

This is good food for thought. It makes conceptual sense in a "big picture" sort of way. But, against it I have found much evidence that there is alien Inire in Severian's ancestry. I wonder about exultants also (like Thecla within him) and how human they are. They were the most recent humans to arrive on Urth. They (like Jolenta, witch-sister?) are willing to submit themselves to de-humanizing processes like beautification, cloning for blood-sharing and beauty and, of course, eating dead people. So, I'm thinking... So, the Hierogrammates wanted permission from a true human to Flood the planet Urth and extinguish an entire race of people (who would mostly have been saved to other planets in the Ragnarok future according to Ash). Why? And why would a true human agree to this? If humanity was corrupted as I argue, by your logic, they would need a corrupted human to speak for it. (the half-breed Conciliator really is a recurring theme in human legend) Why do Hierogrammates want to Flood Urth? In part, to assure their own creation. What does a Flood have to do with that? Allowing humans to evolve into Hieros? Considering the aquatic nature/origin of Abaia, undines, and the hierodules...well...I dunno it is just suspicious. The Hieros treated the ancestors of Hierogrammates cruelly to create them.Yet from this cruelty comes the ultimate in angelic goodness and justice? I just don't know.. Well, as I dwell on it, I really appreciate the food for thought. Talking with other people (in pleasant fashion) is really what gets my mind working the best. Thanks!

Thanks Lee. I don't think I implied, or certainly didn't mean to, that they needed a Human's (severian's) permission to flood earth. Not at all. They need to find a Man who represents the epitome of Urth, the qualities of Man which have been largely destroyed by the atrophied commonwealth and yes the influence of monsters. In my view of this all, again, there is this chain of being. The Hierogrammates were raised onto the step vacated by Man, and if the Hierogrammates are to climb the chain of being themselves, they must put someone on their rung...in this case...Man! They can't do this until Man has reached a certain state, as represented by the Epitome of Urth, Severian. I think the testing of Severian is moral and metaphysical in nature, not genetic or part of some diabolical horizontal schema. It is a vertical movement, that upward spiral you picture (and I picture too, by the way). Severian passes the test. We don't know what his role will be on Ushas. Already in his conversation with one of the Ushians on the beach, we can see Severian bringing one god into the picture (gotta go get my copy at some point to talk intelligently about that though). And as for things working out well for the Megatherians after the flood...it seemed to me that the battle was always for humanity, not territory. They may have survived (or maybe not), but their hopes of enslaving humanity have been if not destroyed, at least set back several thousands of years. And in the mean time, there is a fresh humanity ready to be born and grow up to the Green Man's future. I certainly don't claim to have it all worked out, but I can see a purpose in seeing Sev as the epitome of Human Kind, and the next link in the chain of the Hierogrammates plan to place Man on the next run of the ladder of being, but I can't at all see the purpose of a diabolical scheme. I've seen lots of arguments for evidence that the Hierogrammates have a more diabolical scheme at heart, but never can I recall hearing what that plan was. Just to have fun wiping humans off the urth? Why would they need Sev for that? What are the counter theories to Sev being a Man who has Passed The Test? What is your current thinking on the flood, and why it was sev?

My problem with Severian as the Epitome of Man is the Trial itself, where Zak/ a part of Tzadkiel stands in for him pretty much carrying a cross. Sev doesn't really seem to go on trial AT yesod, it seems like just a formality. I need to refresh my memory of why it seems to be Tzadkiel instead of Severian who actually represents humanity. --- On Thu, 12/30/10, Jordon Flato <jordonflatourth at gmail.com> wrote: From: Jordon Flato <jordonflatourth at gmail.com> Subject: Re: (urth) interview questions To: "The Urth Mailing List" <urth at lists.urth.net> Date: Thursday, December 30, 2010, 11:35 AM Thanks Lee. I don't think I implied, or certainly didn't mean to, that they needed a Human's (severian's) permission to flood earth. ?Not at all. ?They need to find a Man who represents the epitome of Urth, the qualities of Man which have been largely destroyed by the atrophied commonwealth and yes the influence of monsters. ?In my view of this all, again, there is this chain of being. ?The Hierogrammates were raised onto the step vacated by Man, and if the Hierogrammates are to climb the chain of being themselves, they must put someone on their rung...in this case...Man! ?They can't do this until Man has reached a certain state, as represented by the Epitome of Urth, Severian. ?I think the testing of Severian is moral and metaphysical in nature, not genetic or part of some diabolical horizontal schema. ?It is a vertical movement, that upward spiral you picture (and I picture too, by the way). ?Severian passes the test. We don't know what his role will be on Ushas. ?Already in his conversation with one of the Ushians on the beach, we can see Severian bringing one god into the picture (gotta go get my copy at some point to talk intelligently about that though). And as for things working out well for the Megatherians after the flood...it seemed to me that the battle was always for humanity, not territory. ?They may have survived (or maybe not), but their hopes of enslaving humanity have been if not destroyed, at least set back several thousands of years. ?And in the mean time, there is a fresh humanity ready to be born and grow up to the Green Man's future. I certainly don't claim to have it all worked out, but I can see a purpose in seeing Sev as the epitome of Human Kind, and the next link in the chain of the Hierogrammates plan to place Man on the next run of the ladder of being, but I can't at all see the purpose of a diabolical scheme. “I've seen lots of arguments for evidence that the Hierogrammates have a more diabolical scheme at heart, but never can I recall hearing what that plan was. ?Just to have fun wiping humans off the urth” “Why would they need Sev for that” “What are the counter theories to Sev being a Man who has Passed The Test” What is your current thinking on the flood, and why it was sev? On Thu, Dec 30, 2010 at 11:05 AM, Lee Berman <severiansola at hotmail.com> wrote: Jordon, (and Witz) excellent post! You cut quite to the heart of things, imho. Please keep in mind (and I admit this often) I am playing a role here. A counter- balance role that I find necessary. From what I could see, the sting (and fear) of criticism was turning this List from a lively interchange of ideas to a moribund place destined to become a frickn' cemetery. If the stultifying "skeptics" contributions had instead been a string of theories based on gorgonzola cheese and oil derricks over the past 6 years I assure you I'd be the one jumping in as text police trying to keep the ideas closer to the book and the author's intentions. (in fact I do fill that role on some other message boards). I truly do appreciate all efforts to keep me from trying to wedge pieces too forcefully where they don't smoothly fit. Still my current philosophy is that if a picture is to be tossed out, a better picture should be submitted in its place. Much as we'd like to pretend we are all inhumanly objective academicians, I find us all too human. The license to toss other people's ideas to the trash heap without replacement is just too easy a stimulation of some of our baser animal instincts, like territoriality and dominance. (I've mentioned how politely my ideas were treated during a time period the List thought I was female). Okay, so...

There is the implication that Baldanders WAS a candidate. Why else the attention that B, F and O pay him? He throws The Claw in part due to jealousy that Severian is the "victor" and honored by the hierodules. WHY would he be a candidate though? My view is that he is a man who simply appeared on the shore of a lake one day. No history, no known parentage, much like Severian and his appearance with the Torturers. I don't think just anyone can go from human to Monster on Urth. ONly special people with special ancestry. Like Scylla. And Baldanders. And Severian? (he'd need a new name).

This is good food for thought. It makes conceptual sense in a "big picture" sort of way. But, against it I have found much evidence that there is alien Inire in Severian's ancestry. I wonder about exultants also (like Thecla within him) and how human they are. They were the most recent humans to arrive on Urth. They (like Jolenta, witch-sister?) are willing to submit themselves to de-humanizing processes like beautification, cloning for blood-sharing and beauty and, of course, eating dead people. So, I'm thinking... So, the Hierogrammates wanted permission from a true human to Flood the planet Urth and extinguish an entire race of people (who would mostly have been saved to other planets in the Ragnarok future according to Ash). Why? And why would a true human agree to this? If humanity was corrupted as I argue, by your logic, they would need a corrupted human to speak for it. (the half-breed Conciliator really is a recurring theme in human legend) Why do Hierogrammates want to Flood Urth? In part, to assure their own creation. What does a Flood have to do with that? Allowing humans to evolve into Hieros? Considering the aquatic nature/origin of Abaia, undines, and the hierodules...well...I dunno it is just suspicious. The Hieros treated the ancestors of Hierogrammates cruelly to create them.Yet from this cruelty comes the ultimate in angelic goodness and justice? I just don't know.. Well, as I dwell on it, I really appreciate the food for thought. Talking with other people (in pleasant fashion) is really what gets my mind working the best. Thanks! -----Inline Attachment Follows-----

Well, I don't think that is really a Trial per say. More of a Drama. A Passion, if you will. ;) The trial has been Severian's journey. I think some of the 'checking in' by the Hiero's that people see as manipulation (probably rightfully so in many cases) is also those watching Sev (The Green man tells him there are many looking him up and down the corridors of time). Doesn't Tzadkiel even say that the Trial was pretty much meaningless in that regard, that Severian had already 'passed' at that point?

yeah, but why have Tzadkiel enact a passion there?? Hmm. --- On Thu, 12/30/10, Jordon Flato <jordonflatourth at gmail.com> wrote: Well, I don't think that is really a Trial per say. “More of a Drama. ?A Passion, if you will. ?;) ?The trial has been Severian's journey. ?I think some of the 'checking in' by the Hiero's that people see as manipulation (probably rightfully so in many cases) is also those watching Sev (The Green man tells him there are many looking him up and down the corridors of time). ?Doesn't Tzadkiel even say that the Trial was pretty much meaningless in that regard, that Severian had already 'passed' at that point”

First, thanks to all who helped me get the main plot of SilkHorn and his eye in perspective. I am less familiar with Long/Short Sun and I admit that my 1-2 readings of them have been biased by a laser focus on elements which relate to BotNS, which will probably always be my main lupine interest.

My thoughts exactly. Hm..The same every which way you turn, hm...Yes, the Trial was a sham. We are never told how Severian actually passes his test. Maybe by accepting responsibility as Epitome of Urth, taking the title forcibly from big, heroic looking Zak. Maybe it was because eidolons of people he had harmed during his life defended him. Maybe by his actions on the journey on the Ship fighting against jibers and working as a comrade with the various versions of Zak. There is a whiff of truth but none of it really, really makes sense. Severian is essentially tricked into drowning Urth. He doesn't know he'll be doing that as New Sun. He feels terrible about it later. He thought he was saving Urth instead he kills everyone he ever knew. Even the new humanity is composed of his enemies during the test. This is like a classic trick of The Devil, where no good deed goes unpunished and you end up creating your own worst nightmare. But Wolfe tells that tale in a way where we are not even sure anything is wrong. Why are the Hierogrammates essentially Nazis, committing genocide to further their own cause and create a purified race? Why are the demons on Urth actually pushing for the future which would save humanity, if not on Urth then on another planet, as Ash tells us. Surely Erebus and Abaia are bad. Look at Ascia.....Why is Ash such a cool guy and the Green Man has a laugh worse than an alzabo. Why, after all the serious advice does tinker bell Tzadkiel laugh at Severian as he leaves.... etc. Nothing is quite right. Thus my crisis of faith. But.. It isn't really a crisis. I think this endless labyrinth of not knowing which superhuman group to believe in is EXACTLY where Wolfe eventually wants the thoughtful reader to land. It is a maze with no exit. Everywhere you turn you encounter the same characters or similar characters and you are never on certain footing. Angels have a demonic side and demons might actually not be so bad...Similar to the ending of Short Sun/Whorl. We've got colonization of a new planet. A new hope! Except it is a flooded planet with monsters who eat people in the sea, vampires increasing in population. Little hope for a good future on Green. How about the Whorl? Godlings don't seem too promising as perhaps the electronic gods are incarnating and growing in size and power.. I think this is what Wolfe wants us to realize is the inevitable result of not being a Christian. Without a pure and unequivocal path to salvation, what does a human being have? Nothing. False gods on all sides. And just when you think you know who the good guys are and who the bad guys are, you find out the "truth" and realize you don't know anything, that you are contending with powers greater than yourself who can trick you with effortless ease (be it Dionysus, your nation or a political party, humanitarianism, Buddha, or whatever it is you worship). The only way out of the labyrinth is, of course, Jesus Christ who (for me) is so blatantly conspicuous in his absence in the Sun series.

Roy, I don't want you to leave the list over this stuff, but I do want to hear your opinion on something. Do you or do you not agree that it is likely that Horn winds up in Babbie through the mechanism of the Big Tree at the end of OBW? You don't have to accept green is urth, but do you accept there's something fishy about the vegetation, and that a lot of narrative changes are explained by Horn leaving the body of Silk at that point (paraphrasing end of OBW: I should have said this nice thing, and that nice thing, and I caught the ball and won the game), and the way Babbie, later looking like a human and getting enraged when Horn's child is attacked, points at himself and says "huh huh huh" and that the narrator MISINTERPRETS this. Don't you think this explains why in IGJ the stories about Horn on green are in 3rd person? Don't you think this explains the shift in tone from cynical Horn to positive Silk? Don't you think this overcomes the objection that Babbie has tusks and that Silk?misinterprets what babbie wants when he says huh huh huh because he misreads the situation? does this not fulfill the prophecy of "a beast with three horns" even though babbie has tusks? The mechanism is the big fishy tree. Don't you think the trees are doing weird stuff? If we can't agree on this stuff, with all your intimate knowledge of the text, what can we ever agree on? I just want you to know I'm not murdering the text, but trying to explain things using the text, I just don't trust my narrators in every conclusion they come to. Please let's talk about what we agree on and disagree on and see if we can come to any fruitful topics for further discussion there, as it isn't my intention to shut down discussion. I posted here because I love Wolfe and wanted to talk about his work with fellow fans, not to make you feel like you have to leave. At this point I feel like maybe Severian's bringing of the New Sun may not have been the most positive thing for the world. Creepy. Marc

For the record, I'm pretty fully on board the idea that Horn goes into Babbie. It makes a lot of sense.

I'd swear I've been through all this before. I'm sure I have, and you obviously remember what I said then about dream-travel Babbie, because you repeated some of it a few days ago and called it asinine, so there is no point in repeating it. That said, there is something weird going on at the end of OBW that seems somehow to involve Babbie, though Babbie wasn't anywhere near Gaon, then or ever. That Babbie wasn't even there does not constitute an obstacle to your theory however, given the example of dying Horn's spirit on Green being sent into Silk's body on the distant LSW. But to answer your question, I can't say that the Horn in Silkhorn somehow was removed to Babbie. I'll reconstruct the scene, as I read it. Silkhorn was threatened by a score of inhumi. He prayed on the boat, I assume to the Outsider, and tried to sleep. He came to himself, as if from a dream, and thought he was calling Babbie by name, and knew instantly that the inhumi were gone. Then someone on the shore called again for Babbie, yet he somehow understood (or thought he did) that the someone who called intended himself, Silkhorn, when he called for Babbie. There is no mention of the voice on shore having called before, so maybe the first calling had not issued from himself. The voice from shore is masculine and urgent. He packed up his stuff, waded ashore and ran of into the forest. Daylight must have come, because he had light to write by and the leisure. He drew the three-whorls symbol. He wrote again as darkness approached the next night (because two days since he last ate, with Evensong) and spent the night in a hollow place among the roots of a huge tree, after writing about the previous night when he encountered a masculine being sitting in the darkness under the trees. He couldn't see that being but laid his head on its knee and was comforted. Many days later he wrote about the two children he found and stayed with for a while. They told him of being helped by Vanished People. He asked them about Vanished Gods. They said there was one in the forest and he told them about "him", evidently meaning the being upon whose knee he had laid his head. So, no, I don't think the big tree he slept under had anything to do with it. Trees don't talk and the voice from shore was apparently the voice of a god, a god that Silkhorn took to be a Vanished God. Later revelations in the series (the end of IGJ) suggest that the Outsider (by whatever name the Neighbors used) had supplanted their old gods. When Silkhorn asked the Neighbors if the Mother on Blue was one of their gods, he was told, "Once, she was." (383) He had already asked what god they had worshipped at the altar that Oreb found near Blanko and was told "An unknown god". Then he mentioned the altar to an unknown god Sinew had once found near Lizard, but they refused to answer questions except to indicate that the Mother was no longer worshipped by them. "An unknown god", twice in two pages. The full context of that chat with the Neighbors suggests that the unknown god in question was the god Silkhorn knew as the Outsider. Whether or not the Outsider was also the Vanished God who comforted Silkhorn under the trees in the forest near the Nadi can be debated. Silkhorn couldn't see that Vanished God in the darkness under the trees, just as he had known that he was not permitted to turn around to look at the Outsider, the god he knew (or thought he knew) was standing behind him after he sacrificed at that altar near Blanko. -Roy

Fair enough, Roy, just wondering if we agreed on anything that was not explicit in the text. I won't go over it again with you, but it explains a lot of the narrative shifts for me and the tree is there at the time he says goodbye and Babbie kind of enters the picture somehow, and I feel it actually fulfills the "riding a beast with three horns" prophecy better than him just stating he rode it on green, ?but I respect that it doesn't work for you. I just want to show that I'm not absolutely murdering the text with that particular interpretation. And?I interpreted the sacrifice near Blanko, if I am remembering correctly, where he feels watched, as the Trees and not the Outsider (except possibly the Outsider acting through the trees) being their creepy Vanished God selves and watching him, but he can't turn around. Maybe I am misremembering scenes, though, but one of his eucharistic re-enactions leaves that Just wondering if we agreed on anything. Happy New Year! Marc --- On Sat, 1/1/11, Roy C. Lackey <rclackey at stic.net> wrote: Whether or not the Outsider was also the Vanished God who comforted Silkhorn under the trees in the forest near the Nadi can be debated. Silkhorn couldn't see that Vanished God in the darkness under the trees, just as he had known that he was not permitted to turn around to look at the Outsider, the god he knew (or thought he knew) was standing behind him after he sacrificed at that altar near Blanko. -Roy

I think it is wrong to think of Aunt Jeannine as an unreliable narrator in this instance. The full quote is: "Veil. who wants a dramatic explanation for the cruelty and irrationality he sees around him, has hung fifty pounds of theory on nothing." Essentially, this is all basically true, except that "nothing" is an exaggeration. Veil's Hypothesis, in its strong form, is obviously incorrect. There has been no wholesale replacement of humans by the native Annese; this is plain from such diverse indications as eye colour, tool use, and the stories of Marsch's interviewees. The world of Saint Croix is indeed cruel and irrational, and there is no reason to doubt that Jeannine has at least wondered whether her motivation in coming up with this theory was to explain it. The subject of man's inhumanity recurs in Wolfe; I consider it a major theme of the Short Sun trilogy. Wikipedia defines 'unreliable narrator' thus: "An unreliable narrator is a narrator, whether in literature, film, or theatre, whose credibility has been seriously compromised." Jeannine does not fit this definition. Although she hides her identity, there is no credibility issue - in fact one could say it makes her more credible as a judge of Veil's motivationsa than the third party she pretends to be. Of course, Veil's Hypothesis is not wholly false; we do have one incident of an abo replacing a human, after they had been travelling alone together for a long period. And clearly the shapechanging aboriginal Annese have entered human society to some extent - but equally clearly they have not killed and replaced the human colonists en masse. Indeed we may assume they are outcasts for the most part - VRT thought to escape this fate, but failed due to an unlucky encounter with the Saint Croix police. As for the bit about calling Marsch an abo, that is certainly intriguing. Wolfe himself has said in an interview that "the specific interrelations that you see [in 5HoC] were developed as I went along.". We know Wolfe wrote 5HoC first - does anyone know whether he revised it before publication in the light of the other works? If so, of course there is no mystery in the narrator's calling Marsch an abo; the various bits of evidence that Marsch is a fraud could have been inserted at any time. Here is something else that Wolfe said in that interview < http://www.depauw.edu/sfs/interviews/wolfe46interview.htm > M: All this "showing" in "V.R.T." is made intriguingly ambiguous by the confusion about who "Marsch" really is. Wolfe: In the end, of course, it's important that the reader not be confused about this, although part of the fun is supposed to be figuring out what's happened. I leave a number of clues as to who the narrator actually is. For example, both V.R.T. and the narrator are shown to be very poor shots, whereas Marsch is a very good shot, and there's other hints like that. If you hire a shape changer as a guide, there's a definite possibility that he's going to change into your shape at some point. Which is what happens. The first sentence is the important one: "It's important that the reader not be confused about this." Wolfe does NOT write stories in order to create confusion in the reader for the furtherance of some higher mystical purpose. Of course, every author inadvertently introduces minor errors and inconsistencies, and there may be cases where ambiguity arises because readers have failed to follow the author's clues, or, conversely, have thought of possibilities that the author faild to consider. The idea that Wolfe purposely includes contradictions is of course attractive to those who themselves like to hang fifty - or five thousand - pounds of theory on nothing, and are discommoded when others point out that their hypotheses are vastly at odds with those portions of the text they choose to ignore. ----- Original Message -----

...oops forgot to mention in response to Gerry's question- I read 5HoC, the novella years before I read the novel. I'm almost sure the part about scaring Dr. Marsch away by accusing him of being an abo was in the original story.

What we have is prima facie evidence that a known abo, VRT, was so much worse at handwriting than everyone else that he was beaten for it by his teachers.If, as you argue, Veil's Hypothesis was true, then everyone would have had the same bad handwriting.

The Occam's Razor principle demands that the simplest answer which accounts for all the evidence must be the correct one. Its absence (in understanding fiction) does not demand we pick the most outrageous, unsupported answer, of the kind you suggest above. Occam's Razor is a principle useful in science and detective work to counter the human imagination's tendency to find an infinite number of false patterns in naturally occurring phenomena. When I use the term I mean to imply Isaac Newton's definition: ""We are to admit no more causes of natural things than such as are both true and sufficient to explain their appearances." My point is that fiction is not like science. It is like religion. There is a Creator. Our study and our goal is not to make sense out of some riotous chaos. We are trying to understand the intelligent purpose of the work of a single, human intelligence.

We can agree on this, at least.

I suppose, but Geen Wolfe and I agree on something: there are rules to GOOD story-telling. From the Nick Gevers interview:

This is what I am suggesting. Aunt Jeannine and Aubrey Veil are "arguing" over whether Veil's hypothesis about the replacement of all humanity in the system is true. Veil didn't suggest SOME people had been replaced. Even David and Number Five debate that abos are all dead. That's the gun that Wolfe placed on the wall in Act I. It can't be partially fired as a satisfying conclusion to this carefully crafted story.

That would only be true if it were impossible for abos to improve their tool-using skills with time. If Veil's hypothesis were true, abos have learned to do all sorts of complex things, including flying spaceships from St. Anne to Ste. Croix and back. Anyway, can we really trust any of the stories of VRT? He is a being compelled by evolution to disguise his true identity at all costs. A false story about his childhood seems perfectly in line with this. VRT is a "half-abo". What does this mean? That abos can mimic humans down to their chromosomes and allow interbreeding? Perhaps. But it might mean something more sinister. Perhaps he is an abo who has not been in human form for very long and has not developed tool-use very well yet. He seems to get better even within the timeframe of the story. There is mention of an unexplained device of cruel hooks and clamps which always puzzled me in this story. In Long and Short of It, Borski suggests an interesting solution. At one point, Marsch comments that his young companion is uncircumcised (suggesting that Marsch is). So, the device might be an an example of the extreme lengths VRT is willing to take to perfect his imitation of Dr. Marsch. (anyone have a better explanation for this device?)

From: Lee Berman <severiansola at hotmail.com> [Principle of parsimony in fiction]

But of course the human imagination can find false patterns in human-created phenomena too, and if we care about avoiding them, parsimony will help.

Okay. When I use "parsimony" I mean that we don't have to look for elaborate or poorly supported explanations when we have simple or well-supported ones.

For instance, maybe principles like the Gricean maxims apply--though not exactly like.

And yet, as I said, he wrote "Under Hill", where the gun specifically isn't fired. I wonder whether he was thinking about the Chekhov quotation. In any case, I disagree with you and him. He's justifying his decision to have Silkhorn meet Severian, one of his few decisions that to my taste were totally lame.

There's no accounting for taste. A conclusion that SOME people had been replaced would satisfy me just fine. Jerry Friedman

You'll have to help me out with these. I am unfamiliar.

It wouldn't be totally lame if Green = Urth, heh. In a sense I think there is some sort of connection which makes the Urth-Whorl-Short Sun connections of greater importance than they appear on the surface. My own pet peeve for lameness is making Pas/Typhon's double heads such open knowledge on the Whorl when it was so secret on Urth. But even there I think I understand the thematic reasons for making it so.

This I agree with. That conclusion doesn't suit me and I manipulate my interpretation of the story accordingly. My only plea would be that more people admit their own prejudices in interpretation of the stories and avoid wrapping one's self in a cloak of certitude based on "evidence", each piece of which is subject to individual interpretation.

--- On Mon, 1/3/11, Jerry Friedman <jerry_friedman at yahoo.com> wrote: From: Jerry Friedman <jerry_friedman at yahoo.com> Subject: Re: (urth) interview questions To: "The Urth Mailing List" <urth at lists.urth.net> Date: Monday, January 3, 2011, 11:44 AM From: Lee Berman <severiansola at hotmail.com> [Principle of parsimony in fiction]

But of course the human imagination can find false patterns in human-created phenomena too, and if we care about avoiding them, parsimony will help.

Okay. When I use "parsimony" I mean that we don't have to look for elaborate or poorly supported explanations when we have simple or well-supported ones.

For instance, maybe principles like the Gricean maxims apply--though not exactly like.

And yet, as I said, he wrote "Under Hill", where the gun specifically isn't fired. I wonder whether he was thinking about the Chekhov quotation. ---He certainly was, but in that story the paciforcer (if that's what you mean) does not appear until the end, where it is more like a prize that is rejected. Chesterton would have had the gun, and the gunshot, but would have changed everything else: the gunshot would come after the murder or something. But this is like the dog that didn't bark, which is another exception that proves the rule.

There's no accounting for taste. — A conclusion that SOME people had been replaced would satisfy me just fine. ---Me too. The limitation of the gun metaphor is that a gun is binary; it can only be fired (or misfired) though it can miss. An equally useful alternative might be "if there is an apple in Act I it must be at least partially or nearly eaten or at least offered to be eaten by Act III."? To me, this is just another kind of parsimony. If Captain Nemo says in Chapter 1 that Martians built the Pyramids, then when we find a mummy deep inside a pyramid, it should be a Martian. Of course, one can play with the reader's expectations, but what I mean is that the rule runs both ways: a gunshot in Act III should be explained by the gun in Act I. If that gun was melted down in Act II, then there's another gun that's been there all along. (Perhaps someone called the police.) Come to think of it, the whole idea of a macguffin is that it may well remain unfired and uneaten; it should only not be totally forgotten.

If you had written just that one statement and stopped, our disagreement would be at an end. Unfortunately the rest of your post is peppered with the likes of self-promoted certainty of correctness such as:

Sigh, yes, Gerry. I am obviously worthless when it comes to Wolfe. I guess I'd better stick to Zelazny. Or perhaps that is too advanced and I need to stick to old Star Trek episodes on TV.

Even if they could, it wouldn’t solve the problem. Why does VRT start off so much worse than the other supposedly abo kids? Why does he remain so?

I don’t understand. How is VRT disguising his identity as an abo by telling a story about how he can’t perform a basic human skill and has to fake it? Not to mention all the other times he tacitly admits to being Annese in his writings.

With all due apologies to Robert Borski, I think even no explanation is better than “it’s a circumciser”. Here’s what the device looks like: “I imagine it in the open belly of a great dray horse, pushing away the liver, thrusting down the small intestine, and cramping the spleen to the spine while it gnaws at a diseased pancreas.” A great. Dray. Horse. Any one of those organs is going to be as big, or far bigger, than any human penis this side of mythology, and yet this device is big enough to grapple all four of them at once. It’s not a circumciser.

Actually, a pancreas is a surprisingly small organ, sort of a membranous strip on the small intestine. But, I quibble. Tony, this objection would seem to be unassailable. Except.... ...just before the description of the device, we have an inexplicable statement of "Dollo's Law" which relates to...what else? Animals and the size of their organs. Its like Wolfe anticipated Tony's objection some 40 years previous and obtusely, perversely, cast aspersion on Tony's aspersion of Borski. I myself will not argue that this IS a circumcizer but I can't rule it out. There is a lot of confusion in the text when it comes to animals and their size. I think this is based on the "fact" that Ste. Anne natives are more extreme in their shape shifting than we will admit. They are larger than adults, smaller than children, look like haystacks or trees etc. Might be cats or worms etc. Nothing is certain here, not the purpose (or lack of purpose) of a strange device, anyway. This whole discussion reminds me of an earlier section of VRT. Marsch shoots a "huge brute- not described in the Field Guide--similar to the carabao [a dray bovine] of Asian Earth". Why does this creature have double pupils, like a dolphin or other fish? Why does Marsh say the carcass of this huge beast must be around 15 pounds? Why was VRT almost in tears over the death of this animal? I think my own interpretation of the hooked device was something like an expression of hatred and wish of torture for Dr. Marsh and his killing of the abo/carabao cousin of VRT or whatever. But if the size of animal organs is called into question I don't think we can rule out a circumcizer. Obviously my main point is that if an intelligent person who is familiar with WOlfe has an idea, we should never be so quick to entirely rule it out. We end up missing a lot. That is if we are disposed to grasp the full range of ambiguity Wolfe throws at us. For those who despise ambiguity...hey.

.> ..just before the description of the device, we have an inexplicable statement of "Dollo's Law"

It's not at all inexplicable. He thinks of Dollo's Law in the context of his handwriting, specifically his thumb, which he cannot use; he must hold the pen between his fingers with his thumb unused. He is in the same situation a human would be if humans evolved to no longer need thumbs, and the thumb, or the neural networks controlling it, withered away. Then if they once again found a need for the functions served by thumbs, the vestigial thumb or nerves would not regrow, but some new adaptation would arise instead to serve those purposes. Just so must VRT find a way to write without his thumb. The abos' copy of the human opposable thumb is imperfect in function, even if the form is correct.

Marsch's careful observations of VRT's penis, whether motivated by anthropology or some less pure interest, did not mention any enormous size such that an instrument of this nature would be required for circumcision.

Probably like Marsch suggests, it's semi-aquatic.

Because Wolfe's editor was sleeping on the job. He also says that the mules couldn't be expected to carry the carcass. Fifteen hundred pounds seems a bit much, but perhaps something like that was intended.

He wasn't. He was in tears about the meat. He didn't want the carcass taken along and wasted. He wanted the excess meat left hung in the trees for other abos.

Why not rule it out quickly, if it's just plain wrong? If ridiculous ideas are left unchallenged they will more than likely spawn a stream of ever more ridiculous ideas. It's not like there's a shortage. If ideas are actually good, they will survive challenges. - Gerry Quinn

You're familiar with the Chekhov quotation, just not with its authorship. "From this period comes an observation of Chekhov's which has become known as "Chekhov's gun", noted by Ilia Gurliand from a conversation: 'If in Act I you have a pistol hanging on the wall, then it must fire in the last act.'" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anton_Chekhov Did you mean you weren't familiar with "Under Hill" either? It's in Innocents Aboard, and it's not my favorite. If you haven't read it and want to, it's at http://books.google.com/books?id=5Qkl_NxvC4gC&pg=PA68#v=onepage&q&f=false David Stockhoff is right to point out that the weapon doesn't appear till late in the story, so it's not like "Act I". ...

I don't think we have to have prejudices on every point. Any resolution of Veil's Hypothesis would suit me equally well, so I can base my interpretation on my understanding of the evidence. (On the other hand, if anyone here reads Language Log, they know I don't always work that way.) Jerry Friedman

Apologies for all the spurious '?'s in my last post. It seems to be something to do with cutting and pasting from another word app, if people want to avoid the same problem. Anyway, the version on urth.net is uncorrupted.

As Gerry says, the reference to Dollo's Law isn't inexplicable, it's VRT explaining why he can't use a pen properly. Regardless of which, I don't see what point you're making. Dollo's Law is not going to give a dray horse tiny little organs, and if it did it would no longer be a dray horse.

My point is that only Marsch could be aware of Dollo's Law, unless the imitation was 99.999% perfect, including the neural connections for Marsch's thumb. My point is that a dray horse and a carabao are both 1 ton creatures. Only an abo/shape and size-shifter could make the mistake of thinking a carcass would weigh 15 lbs. (and perhaps that a disguised circumcizer would be the right size to retract the organs of a 15 pound horse). What I'm really saying is that even when we come to the realization that Dr. Marsch may have been replaced by an abo, we don't really know. The evidence is contradictory. Before the Wolfe interview quote there was a significant camp who argued that there was no conclusive evidence that Dr. Marsch was replaced (Tony were you among them?). I was pleased that in a recent post Gerry, amidst the rants of "simple and obvious facts" and "correct interpretation" there was an admission of: "Actually if it were 100% false or 100% true it would violate the rules of 5HoC, in which just about nothing is completely false or completely true." So, based on the evidence there are a range of conclusions, from "nobody is replaced", to "one person is replaced" to "some people are replaced" to "all people are replaced". Tony you recognize that there is evidence both that Shadow Children are degenerated humans and predatory psychic alients in a recent post. Same principle, I think. Is there one "best" conclusion?

I do, especially in evaluating fiction. We are analyzing the words of another human being through the filter of our own brain which has been shaped by unique genetic factors, upbringing, culture, nationality, unique personal experience, etc. Nobody has exactly the same brain, therefore we all have prejudices. Choosing a "best" conclusion to a Wolfe puzzle requires using your unique brain and thus, by definition, is partially a product of predjudice. Wolfe has set a trap for us all. We are all human and we all want to think "hah! Wolfe has set out all this false evidence for those dummies with other theories. Secretly he is writing to those readers with the perception to recognize the truth. LIKE ME!" That's why he won't answer questions. Look what happened with his revelations regarding Dr. Marsch and Urth/Green.

It is Dr Marsch, a human, who writes that the carcass is 15 pounds. There is no reason to think VRT imagines a dray horse has tiny little organs.

No, I was in the camp that pointed out that none of the other theories were very good.

Well, no. There is evidence to support two different theories about the Shadow Children (and even there, I think the evidence for one side is much stronger than the other). There is evidence to contradict the theory that 'all people are replaced', as I've shown in several posts now.

Gerry says, in regard to a 15 pound carcass: "Because Wolfe's editor was sleeping on the job." Once upon a time there was a line in wizardknight, that was something like "Garsceg is (someone else)......" something really, really straightforward but kind of strange in implication. I pointed it out, because those are the sort of things I look for, and someone actually wrote to Hartwell to say it was a misprint, and it was at that point I decided, boy, it really doesn't pay to read closely for implication if surprising statements and their implications are just going to wind up being typos, and people will actually consult the editor to prove it. The problem is Wolfe does like that accumulation of small details that seem unrelated to point to something, and its very hard to say what's an error and what is a clue (no one can deny there are puzzle like elements that are solvable in his fiction, from what he himself has said of Peace and 5hoC, and this is throughout his entire work). But misprints and bad editorial mistakes are something else altogether. ?For example, in castleview there is one point where a girl is in danger and the other girl is safe, and suddenly we are at the girl who is safe's funeral. If someone where to say that were an editorial mistake on the names or something I would be devastated, because it says something important about what has been elided from the text.

From: Lee Berman <severiansola at hotmail.com> ...

Well, if you want to use the harsh word "prejudice" for that, you can, but don't expect everyone to understand you. For me, "prejudice" suggests making one's mind up or coming close to it in advance, which I don't think is necessary. Also, the context of my comment was that you'd said that a certain interpretation didn't suit you, and I was pointing that we don't always have to have that kind of prejudice.

Not necessarily in a way that keeps us from seeing the right answer. As far as I know, whatever we bring to our interpretations, everyone agrees that Number Five's last name is Wolfe and that Dorcas is Severian's grandmother (at least after those solutions are pointed out).

That capitalized exclamation came as a relief--I was afraid you were serious. Jerry Friedman

Answered already - of course the abo Marsch has studied anthropology in order to pose as an anthropologist.

It's an obvious typo - it should have been "fifteen hundred". Unless the mules shrunk at the same time he shot the carabao so that fifteen pounds was a big load for them.

<Sigh> I knew you'd leap on that phrase. Let me clarify: it is myths and hypotheses that are never completely true or false in 5HoC - not the (fictive) reality. There IS, in my opinion, a pretty definitive and consistent account of the nature and identity of the Annese aborigines, the Shadow Children, and the current mostly human population. Wolfe has left plenty of clues which, analysed correctly, make it clear. I must thank you for inadvertently pointing me to one clue I had overlooked, i.e. the "planetary face" of the Sainte Croix humans. I had not before noticed that, like Marsch (VRT), the "gypsies and criminal tribes" of Sainte Croix do not share this planetary face. We have found the Sainte Croix abos! (I had already deduced that they were outlaws and vagabonds for the most part - this is a great confirmation.)

Yes. - Gerry Quinn

Lee Berman

I honestly don't understand what you're saying here or why you're saying it. I think we have crossed wire. All I am saying is: 'with reference to theories in which Dr Marsch is not replaced by an abo, I was on the side that said those theories weren't very good.'

No, I don't.

I think it more likely that the Shadow Children are indigenous aliens, and not human. If they're human, you have to explain their telepathy; you have to explain the Old Wise One's remark that "before men came out of the sky... we were mostly long, and lived in holes between the roots of trees". You have to explain why we should believe his claim that his people are the real humans, when he claims in the same breath to be tall and strong and other patently crackheaded things, and you have to explain why we should instead disregard his later reversal of that claim. And while there are explanations for all those things, I don't think I've come across any that were particularly persuasive.

Of course, of course! Quite a bit of knowledge to be packed into a short amount of time, eh? Where did he learn it all? Studies with Dr. Veil, perhaps?

Obviously, obviously! And why not? There is no SIZE shifting here. Only shape. Abos are human sized and can shift into human shape and that's it. Nothing else. No trees. No worms. No Shadow Children. No cats. Nothing. One human changes to another human. That's all. And that's final.

Good one! Fictive reality. Yep, silly me. We can always tell what is real, what is dream, what is myth and what is hypothesis in a Wolfe story. Clear as the nose on an abo's face! ;- )

Yep, yep, inadvertent. No credit for the inferiors, eh wot? ;- ). But the "planetary look" Marsch (MARSCH!) notes is of a clone. A guy cloned so many times the extras had to be sold off as slaves. (note the hunched shoulders and pointed chin of the slave that serves the document reviewing official).

Gerry Quinn's. I get that. But...Tony Ellis is almost as sure his conclusion is the best. And it is the opposite of Gerry Quinn's. Which "best" are we lessers supposed to believe in? Jerry Friedman, I would generally accept a replacement of the word "predjudice" with "bias" if you like. But sometimes true pre-judgement is the correct assessment. No matter how ambiguous a text may be, some simply cannot accept the possibility of ambiguity.

As a proponent of the theory that the Shadow Children are human, I'll set out the major reasons and/or answers I see to the foregoing objections. Telepathy is the hard one. How do they differ from ordinary humankind? The first differemce is the drug they take. The second is that they have put away tools (perhaps as a consequence of discovering the drug). I suggest it is a combination of these two; they have returned to the state of "long ago, before a fool struck fire" and rediscovered a lost human capacity for telepathy. This power may be amplified by the presence of the native Annese ("the first heard the songs of the second and sent them out again, greater than before"). The Old Wise One's comments are quite easily understood, however. You have to remember the Old Wise One is not a Shadow Child. "We were mostly long" When he says this the Old Wise One is at this time composed from the collective unconscious of Sandwalker and the last Shadow Child ("now I am half a man...". He tells of two different origins, and both are true, though he is confused as to which is which. This one is Sandwalker's. The other comments are not in the same breath but much earlier, when the Shadow Child consciousnesses dominate the Old Wise One. He is speaking of how the Shadow Children see themselves when he says they are tall, and strong, and gods. He's not lying or talking nonsense, just speaking a bit metaphorically. And there is no reversal of his claim, because when he says "we were mostly long" he is speaking of Sandwalker's people. I don't believe there is any problem with the Old Wise One. Listen to him and he's perfectly clear. The only problem is swallowing that the human discoverers developed telepathic powers after putting away tools (perhaps with the aid of a drug). Set against that, what about the problems if the Shadow Children are not human? Either they are another group of Annese, or they are from somewhere else altogether. In either case, we must assume there were original human discoverers - they have disappeared and a second group of aliens has popped up thinking they are them. That is horribly inelegant. Why did the humans disappear? Why do the Shadow Children think they are the humans who landed? There are no apparent clues to any of these questions. To avoid the problem of humans becoming telepathic, a complex history and a new race have to be adduced without any real evidence. Telepathic humans are a standard SF trope, like FTL. You might say they are established areas of SF science! We don't have to rule this out, when ruling it out does such violence to what is otherwise a pretty clear story. - Gerry Quinn

Jesus wept.

Well yes, in part! I seem to recall he speaks of many conversations with her. He also had access even on Sainte Anne to any texts Marsch brought with him, and to Marsch, and he has been over a year in Saint Croix with access to the university library. There's no reason he shouldn't know as much anthropology as, say, an engineer who writes SF.

Yes it IS totally obvious, because in the next breath he talks about the mules having difficulty carrying it, and notes that they don;t appreciate the weight of the much pared-down carcass.. if you want to justify the other stuff, do so by all means, but not from this which is a perfectly plain and obvious typo.

We can not necessarily solve all puzzles, but we can solve many and perhaps most. Some theories are better an others, and some theories are objectively bilge.

But the clone presumably was of the stock of the original colonists, thus sharing the planetary look, just as the clone of a Friesian cow will look like other Friesian cows.

Actually no - it differs, I believe, only in that he believes in a second set of aliens who have killed and replaced the original human discoverers of Sainte Anne, and think they are them. I believe this is an unnecessary twist, and that it is simpler to believe that the humans, after abandoning their tools, developed telepathy. Apart from the exact origin of the Shadow Children, I don't think the theories differ.

Stop being so precious - you have been taking every opportunity to snipe at me in your condescending fashion over the last several weeks, and now you try to put words in my mouth to make believe I am insulting you. I've pointed out things I think are wrong with your theories - sorry if that offends.

Dan'l Danehy-Oakes: > ... what is otherwise a pretty clear story.

Oh, man, thanks Dan'l! I truly laughed out loud at that post. Thank you! Actually I have always thought 5HoC bore a resemblance to a classic Gerald Kersh pulpy SF/Horror short story called Men Without Bones. Here is the story: http://www.munseys.com/diskthree/menwithout.pdf (Ch. 1) and a review: http://edsfproject.blogspot.com/2005/11/men-without-bones-by-gerald-kersh.html Anyone else ever read it?

As a former anthropologist I can testify that Gene Wolfe's knowledge of the subject is pretty good. His unflattering portrayal of Dr. Marsch is also pretty good. I am "former" in part because of a prevailing attitude of superiority that prevails in much of academia. It was tiresome to be around people who knew they were smarter and understood the world not only better than the general population but also better than doctors, psychologists, sociologists, etc. Anyway, I wasn't being entirely facetious. It is a bit ridiculous but the text allows for VRT to have become educated in Anthropology. Enough to fool Dr. Veil, though?

Only plain and obvious to those who cannot imagine the difficulty one might have in assessing weight if one were as big as a tree and small as a worm at different times of your life. 15 lbs is a LOT to a worm. It might be a typo. But it might not be. I think the problem is your certainty of correctness in direct opposition to an ambiguous text.

And who is the objective judge of such things? Why....Gerry Quinn! How can you not recognize the absurdity of this stance?

IIRC, the Gene Wolfe family was from earth and Mr. Million was scanned (to death) there.

So aside from the basic premises, you and Tony have identical theories. Great.

I am not offended. But you admit choosing to snipe at me and others; finding only fault and never virtue in the ideas of others. You have to expect a few slings and arrows if you are going to cast yourself in the role of villain. It makes good theater and that's what this list needs, apparently. It has been rather lively lately, eh?

Not to weigh in to much here, but while Gerry certainly snipes at theories, from my view Lee, you mostly take A LOT of personal swipes ar Gerry... Anyway, that is said in the spirit of friendship

As a former anthropologist I can testify that Gene Wolfe's knowledge of the subject is pretty good. His unflattering portrayal of Dr. Marsch is also pretty good. I am "former" in part because of a prevailing attitude of superiority that prevails in much of academia. It was tiresome to be around people who knew they were smarter and understood the world not only better than the general population but also better than doctors, psychologists, sociologists, etc. Anyway, I wasn't being entirely facetious. It is a bit ridiculous but the text allows for VRT to have become educated in Anthropology. Enough to fool Dr. Veil, though?

Only plain and obvious to those who cannot imagine the difficulty one might have in assessing weight if one were as big as a tree and small as a worm at different times of your life. 15 lbs is a LOT to a worm. It might be a typo. But it might not be. I think the problem is your certainty of correctness in direct opposition to an ambiguous text.

And who is the objective judge of such things? Why....Gerry Quinn! How can you not recognize the absurdity of this stance?

IIRC, the Gene Wolfe family was from earth and Mr. Million was scanned (to death) there.

So aside from the basic premises, you and Tony have identical theories. Great.

I am not offended. But you admit choosing to snipe at me and others; finding only fault and never virtue in the ideas of others. You have to expect a few slings and arrows if you are going to cast yourself in the role of villain. It makes good theater and that's what this list needs, apparently. It has been rather lively lately, eh?

So there is a native telepathic race and a human race that has rediscovered telepathy? I find that messy.

Exactly. This is how they see themselves. And since how they see themselves is blatantly at odds with reality, why should we put any stock in the fact that they also see themselves as human?

If he was speaking of Sandwalker's people he wouldn't be reversing his claim, but what makes you so sure he is? Here's the Old Wise One again: Shadow Child: "Since first we came here-" "Since first they came here," the Old Wise One corrected him gently. "Now I am half a man, and know that we were always here listening to thought that did not come; listening without thought of our own to be men." Since he is addressing a Shadow Child, there is no room for confusion over who is meant by 'they' and 'we' here. This is what the OWO thinks when he is at equilibrium: 50/50 Shadow Child and Sandwalker. Should we believe him? Since he is no longer making patently untrue claims about being tall and strong, I think we should.

They humans didn't disappear. They are Sandwalker and his people. The Shadow Children think they are the humans because, as we are told on several different occasions, the arriving humans profoundly 'impressed' the native shapechangers. A telepathic blank canvas, the shapechangers wanted to be these exciting, sentient people, much as the inhumi do.

I suppose the unknown answer to that question is the same as "What happened to Dr. Marsch?" Does VRT kill him, as many think? Or is there a possessing spirit in VRT that takes over Dr. Marsch and maybe it is VRT's body that lays lifeless somewhere in the back of the beyond. Or maybe something else. Dunno.

This makes it seem like abos are fully humans. I really think Gerry meant what happened to their bodies. But I can't be sure. Anyway, as you suggest....

I get the impression Gerry thinks the shapeshifters of Ste. Anne can ONLY take the shape of human beings. That is the parsimonious view I guess. None of this Shadow Child/worm/ cat/haystack/tree crap. Human form only.

No worries JOrdon. I DO do that. You are a good guy in this list. Me...not so much. Since I am postive with the people who are positive toward me, I may not qualify as villan. But I am not good. Anti-hero is probably the best label I could hope for. Actually, I admire Gerry for not being strictly a snipe attacker. He stands toe to toe and fights his battles out, rather than hit and run. If you must be a relentlessly negative poster, I think that is the better way to do it.

----- Original Message -----

Perhaps. But that, I think, is the only messy thing about it. Making Sandwalker's people human involves much messiness. And it doesn't quite solve the telepathy problem either. Note that not only does Sandwalker connect to his twin in dreams, which could perhaps be ignored - he also dreams about the killing of one of his tribesmen. Maybe Sandwalker is an anomaly. Maybe the Shadow Children make him telepathic. But you haven't really eradicated the notion of telepathic humans, even if you have lessened their power.

Exactly. This is how they see themselves. And since how they see themselves is blatantly at odds with reality, why should we put any stock in the fact that they also see themselves as human? A few days ago I had to point out to James that Sandwalker's 'tree' was not an actual tree. Cannot it be accepted that characters in Wolfe can use metaphor? Let's look at what the OWO actually says: "We've changed too much. Do you think we look like you, Sandwalker?" [Sandwalker politely points out their deficiencies.] "True". [..] "It is thought", the OWO said, "that makes things so. We do not conceive of ourselves as you describe us, and so we are not actually so. Still, it;s sobering to hear how another thinks of us." "In any event, we once looked just as you do now." For me this makes it clear they are no crackheads with a psychotically irrational perspective. They know what they are, even if they do not always choose to describe themselve in humiliating terms. We must put stock in what they say, or there is no story! Nearly all the origin information we have comes via the OWO. I don't think these exaggerations - which I find easily explicable - affect the reliability of the statements. They are part of the story - they are degenerated humans with an elevated idea of themselves, but they are the only ones who know about their history, about starcrossers, stuff like that.

He can be refering to the half of himself that is Sandwalker. This isn't too terribly odd a construction. How would he have said what he was saying otherwise without a long inelegant rignarole about who was who? He's saying "Don't call us 'we', I'm half abo now."

Okay, you have a LOT of problems if Sandwalker and his people are human - at least if you assume that they became the 'abos' (they were far more numerous than the Shadow Children). First, how did they forget everything about their origin? Earth, starcrossers, clothes... you name it, they forgot it. How and why? Second, why can't they use tools? Why have they got a strange eye color? How did VRT replace Marsch? Third, why did the Shadow Children copy humans so badly? Or are you saying the Shadow Children became the abos? But then where did the humans, who outnumbered them, disappear to? Why does VRT look like a normal boy, apart from his eyes - the Shadow Children don't seem to look like that. Why were the abos not easy to tell apart from humans? Who was the abo shaman named Cinderwalker? The way I see it, if we assume the Shadow Children were human, and somehow developed telepathy, everything else falls comfortably into place. I don't interpret the words of the OWO as contradicting this. I don't believe any other theory can fit the bones of the story nearly so well. - Gerry Quinn

It seems like the one could lead to the other, conserving one improbability.

This is closer to my (and I think James') interpretation. Except it is more accurately rendered as, "some of the creatures which became Shadow Children later became abos". Shadow Children are an imperfect copy of humans. Abos are a closer copy. Civilized people in the city may be even closer copies. The original "form" is..well, shadows, in my view. Maybe worms in James'. But I like shadows. Hence the weird little guys are "descendents of shadows". Aren't names supposed to be important?

That is the central mystery that we can NEVER know. It is ironic because we spend a good part of this novel being told the mystery is about where the abos have gone. In finding them, we end up losing ourselves.

"How" seems an irrelevant question. We don't know "how" a human brain or even computer (most of us) erases memory. "Why" IS a good question. Forgetting is an essential part of sucessful imitation. As Aunt Jeannine teaches, the only original part of an "abo" (Shadow) that cannot be lost is the imitative ability. (James thinks she is wrong about this).

These both are part of an imperfect imitation which is corrected later

Again this is part of the central mystery. If we knew the answer it would ruin the story. In losing Dr. Marsch we have lost ourselves (even as readers, vacariously losing our humanity is a horrifying feeling) Third, why did the Shadow Children copy humans so badly? Each imitative effort got progressively better. Shadow Children->abos->regular folk. Each one better. Only Dr. Veil knows the truth and she is in denial. As are we readers, at least upon first or second reading.

I think you're right, the Shadow Children enable the aboriginal 'dreaming' of this world. The native telepathic race are described as receiving the thought of another and sending it out again 'greater, greater, greater' than before. But that doesn't require any innate telepathic ability on the part of those humans whose thoughts are amplified.

I feel your pain, believe me :-) But even if the Old Wise One was speaking metaphorically, I don't see how it helps you. The Shadow Children aren't tall and strong metaphorically any more than they are physically. "We do no conceive of ourselves as you describe us, and so we are not actually so" are not the words of someone with a reliable grip on reality. And they are crackheads. We get a long lecture about the herb they eat, and how it makes them feel like God. Here's what one of them says to Sandwalker when he's chewing the leaf: "With my smallest finger, little native animal, I will break your bones until the ends burst through your skin." Sound familiar?

I find it an excruciatingly awkward construction. And why would he need to 'correct' the Shadow Child at all, if the Shadow Children did come here from somewhere else?

The same way they do in all those Star Trek episodes. It's a classic SF plot device.

Dollo's Law. They haven't used tools for thousands of years, so the ability has atrophied. Remember, Dollo's Law is cited in terms of the loss of a previously existing ability.

I wish I knew. I have a feeling that we're all missing something here.

By imitating his voice and looking older, according to VRT. He specifically says that's all he did. But if your question is really 'why do the abos have a minor ability to alter their appearance?', I think this comes back to the idea of the Shadow Children as telepathic enablers of the abos. There's an intriguingly cryptic line in VRT where he says: "the question is not, as I once thought, how much the thoughts of the Shadow Children influence reality, but how much our own do."

Why does their ability have to be perfect? Regardless of which, the Shadow Children are described as 'sickly' and the leaf they are addicted to as 'poisonous', so I think maybe the one has degenerated the other over the centuries. It may be, of course, that the abos and the Shadow Children are actually the same race, and that all their differences are down to the leaf. I've often speculated in that direction. But that theory has its own problems.

Ugh, some atrocious typos in that last post. Sorry, written in haste.

Since there aren't any (that I recall) Abo or Shadow Child ruins, does this imply an earthly orgin to these guys? Maybe something like David's idea...like, Q. Where did Homo habilus disappear to?" A. to Ste. Anne.

I don't see the problems. Humans are complex creatures. Imitators of them, especially of their vices, might be able to accomplish only a portion of their goal, leading to the appearance of different races of imitators when there is only one. Shadow Children only pick up drug addiction. Abos pick up personal violence. City types acquire corrupt bureaucracy, slavery and other institutionalized cruelties. (not to mention cloning as a vain attempt to acquire power and immortality).

Lee Berman wrote (05-01-2011 18:56):

Come to think of it, the idea that we're dealing with 5 or 6 imitator subspecies is interesting.

I'm interested to see people taking "'A Story', by John V. Marsch" as a source of factual-in-the-fiction information. I took the title to be a strong indication that it's maximally unreliable and that to the extent we get information from it, it's information about what Marsch believes or wants to believe or especially wants his fictitious readers (who are they?) to believe. Or just what he thinks would be cool. Of course, this led me to the wrong conclusion (that there were never any abos or Shadow Children), and when I learned I was wrong, it led me to think puzzling over "'A Story'" would be too hard, so maybe that's why people aren't doing it. Jerry Friedman ________________________________

I think you're right, the Shadow Children enable the aboriginal 'dreaming' of this world. The native telepathic race are described as receiving the thought of another and sending it out again 'greater, greater, greater' than before. But that doesn't require any innate telepathic ability on the part of those humans whose thoughts are amplified.

I feel your pain, believe me :-) But even if the Old Wise One was speaking metaphorically, I don't see how it helps you. The Shadow Children aren't tall and strong metaphorically any more than they are physically. "We do no conceive of ourselves as you describe us, and so we are not actually so" are not the words of someone with a reliable grip on reality. And they are crackheads. We get a long lecture about the herb they eat, and how it makes them feel like God. Here's what one of them says to Sandwalker when he's chewing the leaf: "With my smallest finger, little native animal, I will break your bones until the ends burst through your skin." Sound familiar?

I find it an excruciatingly awkward construction. And why would he need to 'correct' the Shadow Child at all, if the Shadow Children did come here from somewhere else?

The same way they do in all those Star Trek episodes. It's a classic SF plot device.

Dollo's Law. They haven't used tools for thousands of years, so the ability has atrophied. Remember, Dollo's Law is cited in terms of the loss of a previously existing ability.

I wish I knew. I have a feeling that we're all missing something here.

By imitating his voice and looking older, according to VRT. He specifically says that's all he did. But if your question is really 'why do the abos have a minor ability to alter their appearance?', I think this comes back to the idea of the Shadow Children as telepathic enablers of the abos. There's an intriguingly cryptic line in VRT where he says: "the question is not, as I once thought, how much the thoughts of the Shadow Children influence reality, but how much our own do."

Why does their ability have to be perfect? Regardless of which, the Shadow Children are described as 'sickly' and the leaf they are addicted to as 'poisonous', so I think maybe the one has degenerated the other over the centuries. It may be, of course, that the abos and the Shadow Children are actually the same race, and that all their differences are down to the leaf. I've often speculated in that direction. But that theory has its own problems.

Well, the first question to ask when dealing with an unreliable narrator is, "what are his motives in telling this story?" -- and I have no idea of any motives for Marsch, or "Marsch"/VRT, to write "A Story." Some starting thoughts... Q: Are we sure it was even written by Marsch or VRT? A: We must call a halt to the Hall of Mirrors at some point. Q: But when was it written? Before or after Marsch was replaced by VRT? A: "Before" makes very little sense. The real Marsch would have no knowledge of Abo/Shadow Children culture that would allow him to write it. Q: Yeah, but, maybe he just made shit up. That's what Wolfe effectively did, after all. A: True, but again, I think we must call a halt to the Hall of Mirrors. Wolfe has some reason for putting "A Story" in the middle of 5HoC, and so he wants us to find reason in it.

----- Original Message -----

I must disagree - he is expressing a somewhat self-serving philosophy, but it doesn't mean he doesn't know the difference between how they see themselves and how they actually are.

He's rappin'. But this happens when Sandwalker meets them, and it's shortly after that that the first passage above involving the OWO comes, explaining the discrepancy. Also, if the Shadow Children really and truly believed they were physically giants, they wouldn't have been clambering on the shoulders of the Marshmen later, and trying to poke out their eyes. When it comes to an actual fight, they have no intention of trying to crush people like Sandwalker with their little fingers. They know the score even if they can't bring themselves to say it. It's like Aunt Jeannine criticising her abo theory in the third person - we shouldn't assume she is out of her head or lying about everything; we should take into account her motivations and we will understand what she is saying and the truth of it.

He is correcting the "we" of the Shadow Child, because it no longer applies to him, the OWO - so the "we" is false. Of course "they" is imperfect also - but I wouldn't care to put too much import on it. I think his words are understandable as simply disagreeing with the "we". Why would the OWO suddenly reverse his story now anyway - even if you think this minor grammatical slip constitutes such a reversal?

I don't think it would be typical of Wolfe, and even if he did use it, would he really put it in without any clue? It would be so easy to have some Earthly artefacts that nobody recognised as anything other than some sort of sacred tribal heirlooms, and Wolfe could easily show us the nature of those heirlooms at a time of his choosing. But there's nothing of the kind as far as i can see. Meanwhile there's another people who say they are from Earth - they don't have artefacts either, it must be admitted, but they say they threw them away, and they do at least have memories; they know where Earth is and where Earth people are, that space is a vacuum and that sound is air vibrations, etc. If these are the aliens, this isn't imitation - it's a complete culture transplant! All human culture has been wiped from the humans and deposited in the aliens. Who then took to drugs and have nearly died out.

But it hasn't been thousands of years - there's excellent evidence that it's only about a hundred. The trees in the Eye tell us that. Also we know that the twin planets were discovered when planets more distant from Earth had been colonised for decades (not centuries, or millenia). Furthermore, Wolfe may be over-egging the cake here, but the photograph of Number Five's great great grandmother appears to be in sepia! Dollo's law cannot plausibly apply here. Humans could not permanently lose the ability to use tools over such a short period.

If they are the aliens, there's no mystery about it.

But all the evidence suggests that the Shadow Children - at least those of the second novella, I agree it's hard to understand that particukar comment - are out of the picture now, a century and a half after colonisation (I presume they died out). And anyway, if the Annese enable the original human discoverers (now the abos) to change shape, how come this ability does not extend to the later colonising humans?

I think that's actually a somewhat defensible theory, in that it is in many respects almost the same as the 'Shadow Children are the humans" theory, and thus very hard to disprove. But it does indeed have considerable issues, and it seems far simpler to accept that the Shadow Children are the humans (as we are repeatedly told). - Gerry Quinn

I have always thought it should have been called A Story, by "John V. Marsch". But perhaps that would have been giving the game away too easily. The problem is as you say, it doesn't work if we take it as maximally unreliable, because it is our only source of information for so much; we have no means of testing the reliability of the narrator with regard to the different elements. Not giving it credit would render the full book basically meaningless. We also have Word of God on the issue: "I decided to present the Sandwalker story as a legend or story that Marsch had uncovered, rather than as straight reportage, because I wanted to keep all three stories set in roughly the same time frame-the "present" of the opening novella. Since the period in which the Sandwalker scene was-in terms of the "present" found in the rest of the book-taking place in the distant past of the planet, it made more sense to say, "Here's a legend that has survived from that period" rather than simply jumping into the past and presenting it directly." < http://www.depauw.edu/sfs/interviews/wolfe46interview.htm > If I am interpreting that correctly, there's nothing unreliable there personal to VRT/Marsch, and really no indication of anything unreliable except in terms of characters presented within it, as would be the case if it were presented directly, which is an option Wolfe avoided only for stylistic reasons. - Gerry Quinn ----- Original Message ----- From: Jerry Friedman

A: Well, Tolkien had no knowledge of hobbit culture. But in any case, Wolfe has called the halt, and you're right. He said in his interview with Lawrence Person, ""'A Story,' by John V. Marsch," yes, which is not actually written by John V. Marsch, but by the shadowchild who has replacedJohn V. Marsch." http://home.roadrunner.com/~lperson1/wolfe.html (Too many layers of quotation marks!)

True, but that reason may not to provide "factual" information. I hate to keep bringing Nabokov into this (I'm lying), but in Pale Firethe main narrator, Kinbote, takes advantage of his commentary on a long poem to say a great deal about his homeland of Zembla, which probably doesn't exist in his world. He's not doing this as background to the novel. It's parodic fun in itself, and Nabokov says, "I think it is a perfectly straightforward novel. The clearest revelation of personality is to be found in the creative work in which a given individual indulges. Here the poet is revealed by his poetry; the commentator by his commentary." http://listserv.ucsb.edu/lsv-cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0803&L=nabokv-l&P=9442 I think Nabokov was archly understating the complexity of his novel, but I can believe the most important purpose of the material on Zembla is to reveal the character of the commentator. And I could believe the main purposes of "'A Story'" are to be interesting in itself and to reveal the character of the replacement Marsch. Jerry Friedman

I disagree: as soon as he puts the story in the mouth (or pen) of VRT/M, we must ask why VRT/M is telling the story, and to whom. It doesn't look like a formal anthropological paper, or even an anthropological presentation of a legend, so what is it and why is it and who is it for? Wolfe is too careful a writer (imo) to simply make such a "stylistic" decision and not consider its "meaning." (Insert standard lecture about the dubious distinction between style and content.)

Agreed: but what kind of information does he provide, and why? ("Pale Fire" comments deleted: I tried to read the book once and simply couldn't penetrate it)

That is a good answer to why Wolfe put it there. But why did "Marsch" write it?

My only comment here is that Wolfe is talking about twenty years after writing 5HoC, and has forgotten the name of the novella; I think he has also forgotten which group of pre-colonisation inhabitants was called the Shadow Children. I think making the abos the Shadow Children is untenable for a lot of reasons. - Gerry Quinn ----- Original Message ----- From: Jerry Friedman A: Well, Tolkien had no knowledge of hobbit culture. But in any case, Wolfe has called the halt, and you're right. He said in his interview with Lawrence Person, ""'A Story,' by John V. Marsch," yes, which is not actually written by John V. Marsch, but by the shadowchild who has replaced John V. Marsch." http://home.roadrunner.com/~lperson1/wolfe.html

Sounds right. Perhaps we could add that, as for the stories of Halvard, Foila and Loyal to the Group of 17, the story also reveals life in the environment of the story teller.

At the lazaret we had the excuse of trying to win the hand of Foila for the storytelling. Here I don't think we'll get as clear a texual meaning. Maybe VRT was doing his best to play anthropologist, pretending to repeat a story which is, in fact, his own story. Moreover, perhaps we should consider that this was one of WOlfe's earlier efforts. Perhaps the story contest of BotNS was invented to address just such a weakness in 5HoC. Hm..now I forget..what was the premise which generated the stories told in IGJ?

This explanation strikes me as an economical one. Also, remember that we become that which we pretend to be.

Wolfe explaind in the interview I quoted that he was trying to make all three novellas contemporaneous, at least on the surface. If he is going to delve into the history (prehistory?) of the Annese, who else could tell it?

Same old thing - a storytelling contest. I consider the structure of 5HoC infinitely more elegant. Storytelling contests remind me of that Wolfe tic "First explain how you know that I know that..." of which 5HoC is also mercifully free. - Gerry Quinn

It's only about a hundred years since the French arrived. But their arrival is the last event in 'VRT', when the starcrosser splashes down, and Sandwalker and the Shadow Children are already there when it happens. So clearly human beings - whoever you think they are - were already on St Anne. How long have they been there? "We came here either recently or long, long ago," the Old Wise One says. But if it's recently there are all sorts of problems, not least the fact that no one knew this star system existed until the French 'discovered' it. There's no helpful reference in VRT to an earlier expedition, or a lost spaceship. In any case, later the OWO says that his race have remained undisturbed here "for the longest time." And even if the Shadow Children are human, they still need time to degenerate into runty, round-eared pygmies. Then there is Dollo's Law. VRT cites it as an explanation for why he cannot hold a pen properly. But Dollo's Law requires an organ to "degenerate through evolution" - not something that happens over night. Whether you believe him or not, he is saying 'my ancestors haven't used tools for millennia'. There are other allusions to this. Marsch understands the Annese to be a race so similar to mankind "that they might almost have been the descendants of an earlier wave of colonisation," and goes on to muse about the odd similarity of the flora and fauna to terrestrial types. His speculation echoes precisely what Number 5 implausibly says in the first novella, that "it is distinctly possible that the aborigines of St Anne were descendants of some earlier wave of human expansion." A million-to-one coincidence? I don't think so. When I made this point on this list some years ago, some people practically had kittens. I don't entirely blame them, but there it is: Wolfe certainly seems to want us to think down these lines. ...As for the rest of your points, my rebuttals would mostly be variations on what I've already said. The thing we can't seem to get past is whether or not the Old Wise One is fantasising when he speaks of being human. We read it differently and there I think the matter has to rest. Lee asked my reasons for preferring one theory and I've given them, probably in more detail than anybody wanted :-) The next time I read 5HoC (overdue) I will make a sincere attempt to see the Shadow Children as humans, and see if that solves any of the other mysteries for me.

An earthly origin, or perhaps that humanity on both Earth and St Anne is the result of some earlier galactic expansion. I find the idea pretty far-fetched to say the least - but also hard to dismiss, for reasons I go into in my response to Gerry.

Should be: the last event in 'A Story'. Sorry.

Tony Ellis wrote (06-01-2011 10:21):

Wolfe wouldn't put the French and Vernor Vinge in a timeframe much different from ours, so if someone came there millennia earlier, it wasn't someone we know from History. The folks from Atlantis, maybe? Or Gondwanaland, but both names are modern. Heck.

That's the heart of the conundrum, for me. When possible, I try to take Wolfean phenomena as literary rather than literal. But that principle is of little use here. Is Wolfe using those names for the same reason aliens on Star Trek speak English? Or are we to understand that they indicate a recent provenance, whether the abos/SC are human or not? But Wolfe didn't need to use them. He could have found another way of expressing a cultural memory of Earth, like describing glaciers and mastodons and caves or something. I can only speculate that we are to understand that an cultural memory can be created, so that it is not that old.

David, do you mean it would be more accurate to say VRT was doing his best to BE an anthropologist? If so, I certainly understand your drift in the greater theme of things. I'd still consider the issue of perspective. VRT is genetically disposed to erase his memories of being an abo (and perhaps earlier a Shadow Child and earlier a Shadow) to perfect his imitation and BE an anthropogist. Only we, as omniscient (hah!) readers can realize that he is playing the role of someone else. (I find characterizing the original form as a "shadow" useful. Shadows are dark, imitative and indeterminate in size, shape and number).

Yeah, but was there a purpose for the contest? Just passing time or winning some inconsequential thing? Well, doesn't matter. I generally agree with you on the elegance of 5HoC. But what about the contrivance of reading the Brown Book? More elegant than a story contest?

I think we can assume those names are translated from the (likely mental) language of the Shadow Kids.

We are made to understand that forgetting origins is part of the perfection process of imitation. I also find the equation of Shadow+Human = Shadow Child to be a better intuitive conclusion than Weed+Human = Shadow Child; both by naming convention and biological process.

Sticking with my "shadow" metaphor, I think we are meant to ask whether shadows are only to be found on Ste. Anne (and in fiction). Perhaps Earth and reality have their version (not to mention Urth and Green). If so what is the connection between these shadowy entitities? (Apologies for getting metaphysical, but I've suggested to David that "shadows" may be considered by WOlfe as a necessary by-product of creation. "Let there be Light" plus "Let there be Objects" requires the corollary "Let there be Shadows". A hammer blow creates both a dent and a bump. Did God need to create a Lucifer to get a Jesus?)

The elephant in the room for me still remains: Veil's Hypothesis. Gerry has used some rather colorful adjectives to describe his opinion of its veracity and those who might consider its veracity. I'm wondering, Gerry, has the ongoing discussion opened things up any for you? Borski devoted a chapter of Long and Short of It to this issue, with the premise that Veil's Hypothesis must be considered as a possible conclusion. Some of his evidence involves the appearance of lingering shapeshifting in characters we would expect to rule out from being abos. I haven't seen Borski state it explicitly but I suspect he tends to agree with my assessment of anti-Occam as a guiding principle when it comes to understanding Wolfe. Somewhere in the text of 5HoC is the explication of a certain engineering priniciple or process; something about finding the heat distribution in irregular objects by a series of closer and closer approximations, iirc. For me this is second only to Veil's Hypothesis as a key to explaining what is really going on in these two planets. I think it is a mistake to get stuck on a single example of replacement, green eyes, tool use issues etc. and assume that's all there is. Surely the human body, brain and psyche are irregular objects. I detect a subtext which implies that the imitation process is not a single event, but ongoing, with progressively closer approximations of perfect imitation. This subtext is subtle and vague. By contrast, Veil's Hypothesis is so jarring a hammerblow that it leaves us stunned and mostly unable to detect the other fine-grained hints without multiple readings. (GRW you devious bastard!) That is one of the purposes of "A Story". In Shadow Children we are shown a very poor approximation of humanity. They can't be shown in the main text of the story because they would ruin the earthian, frenchy-colonial ambience Wolfe has established for St. Croix. But we NEED to see them to see the earlier stages of imitation/approximation which have been almost perfected in the main text characters we see. This idea resonates with a certain recurring principle in Wolfe's work. Lamarckian evolution. Wolfe may even have mentioned this term in an interview but I'm not sure. Back when 5HoC was written, the Central Dogma of Biology was the overwhelmingly domininant perspective. I can guess Wolfe is pleased with research in the past 25 years suggesing the occasional reversal of Central Dogma and the environment feeding back to the organism and enacting permanent genetic changes within it, during the lifetime of the organism.

Ah..MAYBE NOW I get what Tony is getting at. Maybe. If there was a long ago crash of a human starship on Ste. Anne, those humans (or maybe single human?) were imitated by Shadows. After a long period with no further source material, those imitated humans degenerated into Shadow Children (shrinking and losing their thumbs, becoming more shadow-like again I guess). Then when new waves of humans arrived, that's why Dollo's Law gets invoked. They have to re-establish the lost digit and its neural connections. It is difficult but not impossible to re-establish because Dollo's Law is more imperative on Darwinian evolution than Lamarckian. Sort of a blending of theories. Shadow Children USED to be close imitations of humans but degenerated back to half-Shadows after a long while. I think I can hang with that.

What about the lack of artifacts of the stat-travelers, and the integration of primates into Earth's fossil record? The author intentionally draws our attention to both issues, if not to dismiss ancient astronauts then what for?

That sounds more reasonable to me, too; it parallels the acquisition of "hidden" astronomical knowledge by the Dogon people of Mali. After some early contacts, references to binary stars and planetary rings in the context of Neolithic technology take on the same presumed antique provenance. "How could they know without instruments?" was posed as early as 1949, and the 1966 popular book INTELLIGENT LIFE IN THE UNIVERSE by Shklovski and Sagan put the ancient ET meme in the pool available to Wolfe when he was writing "5HoC" et al.

I'm enjoying the on-going discussion of Cerberus (sorry, 5HoC) having recently reread it, but could somebody please post a link to the original "interview" that prompted these questions? I realise I could probably find it by looking back through the archives but that might be a slow process. Thanks Dave M-B -----Original Message----- From: urth-bounces at lists.urth.net [mailto:urth-bounces at lists.urth.net] On Behalf Of Lee Berman Sent: 06 January 2011 14:10 To: urth at lists.urth.net Subject: (urth) interview questions The elephant in the room for me still remains: Veil's Hypothesis. Gerry has used some rather colorful adjectives to describe his opinion of its veracity and those who might consider its veracity. I'm wondering, Gerry, has the ongoing discussion opened things up any for you? Borski devoted a chapter of Long and Short of It to this issue, with the premise that Veil's Hypothesis must be considered as a possible conclusion. Some of his evidence involves the appearance of lingering shapeshifting in characters we would expect to rule out from being abos. I haven't seen Borski state it explicitly but I suspect he tends to agree with my assessment of anti-Occam as a guiding principle when it comes to understanding Wolfe. Somewhere in the text of 5HoC is the explication of a certain engineering priniciple or process; something about finding the heat distribution in irregular objects by a series of closer and closer approximations, iirc. For me this is second only to Veil's Hypothesis as a key to explaining what is really going on in these two planets. I think it is a mistake to get stuck on a single example of replacement, green eyes, tool use issues etc. and assume that's all there is. Surely the human body, brain and psyche are irregular objects. I detect a subtext which implies that the imitation process is not a single event, but ongoing, with progressively closer approximations of perfect imitation. This subtext is subtle and vague. By contrast, Veil's Hypothesis is so jarring a hammerblow that it leaves us stunned and mostly unable to detect the other fine-grained hints without multiple readings. (GRW you devious bastard!) That is one of the purposes of "A Story". In Shadow Children we are shown a very poor approximation of humanity. They can't be shown in the main text of the story because they would ruin the earthian, frenchy-colonial ambience Wolfe has established for St. Croix. But we NEED to see them to see the earlier stages of imitation/approximation which have been almost perfected in the main text characters we see. This idea resonates with a certain recurring principle in Wolfe's work. Lamarckian evolution. Wolfe may even have mentioned this term in an interview but I'm not sure. Back when 5HoC was written, the Central Dogma of Biology was the overwhelmingly domininant perspective. I can guess Wolfe is pleased with research in the past 25 years suggesing the occasional reversal of Central Dogma and the environment feeding back to the organism and enacting permanent genetic changes within it, during the lifetime of the organism.

I think the picture is of the original's great great grandmother, or at least that's what I always thought.

Dave Muir-Bacon wrote (06-01-2011 16:18):

Good luck trying to make sense of threading and subject lines on this list. It must be said: in what regards the proper technical usage of mailing lists, this community are but shadow children.

There's a list of links to various Wolfe interviews on the wiki: http://www.wolfewiki.com/pmwiki/pmwiki.php?n=WolfeWiki.Interviews if that's any help, best, Mo # ~ # ~ # WolfeWiki -- a wiki about Gene Wolfe http://www.wolfewiki.com/pmwiki/

How about you edumacate us childrens on the best practices? This is the first and only mailing list I've used. ~witz

Thanks Mo. -----Original Message----- From: urth-bounces at lists.urth.net [mailto:urth-bounces at lists.urth.net] On Behalf Of Mo Holkar Sent: 06 January 2011 17:32 To: The Urth Mailing List Subject: Re: (urth) interview questions

There's a list of links to various Wolfe interviews on the wiki: http://www.wolfewiki.com/pmwiki/pmwiki.php?n=WolfeWiki.Interviews if that's any help, best, Mo # ~ # ~ # WolfeWiki -- a wiki about Gene Wolfe http://www.wolfewiki.com/pmwiki/

I think even the childrens may understand these: http://www.html-faq.com/etiquette/?toppost http://www.netmeister.org/news/learn2quote.html http://www.reedmedia.net/misc/mail/using-mailing-list.html Son of Witz wrote (06-01-2011 17:34):

Like I said, a century or so. There are two very strong pieces of evidence for this. First, the Eye observatory, a ring of 402 trees marking the days of the Saint Anne year. When Marsch visits this, he finds most of the trees have been cut down by the early colonists. He counts the rings on four, getting an average of (I think) 127 years. So the Eye was planted about a century before the French landings. Wolfe isn't telling us this for nothing - he's setting a time for the beginning of the pre-French Annese culture. We don't know who planted the trees - the Marshmen use them now so probably are the most likely candidate - but we do know how long ago it happened. Second, we are told the twin planets were discovered by the French when planets more distant from Earth had been colonised for decades. In other words the wave of human expansion had missed these planets (the reason being the psychic shield erected by the Shadow Children) even though starcrossers frequently passed through that region of space. But it didn't miss it by centuries or by millenia - only by decades. This is compatible with the figure of a century given by the observatory trees. The events of the first and third novellas are set about 150 years after the arrival of the French. (Maitre's house is about 140 years old, and there are other bits and pieces of evidence that fit such a figure.) Here's an approximate history as I see it, using Earth dates. Note that I may have extrapolated a smidgin beyond the evidence of the text here and there in the interest of adding colour ;-) "A Timeline" by Gerry Quinn: 2280: The starcrosser Poinctesme blasts off from the Southern Ocean near Johannesberg, with a crew/cargo of African would-be colonists. 2300: Poinctesme discovers twin habitable planets circling an as-yet unexamined pink sun. They decide to land on one of the two. During the landing the shielding fails and the hull is breached. Nevertheless after splashdown many of them get safely ashore on inflatable boats before the starcrosser sinks. 2310: Knowing no ship from Earth will pass by for decades at least, the colonists make the best of their situation. The land is a little sparse, but habitable. The wildlife is Earthlike for the most part, although very strange creatures sometimes appear in the campand are driven away with what weaponry they have (a half-dozen laser pistols and a shoulder mounted plasma cannon) - but not before they have eaten several colonists. There are rumours that the exotic creatures sometimes take on human shape. Lacking tools, easily accessible ores, and a sufficient population base, the human settlers have adopted a lifestyle that is paleolithic or worse, and concentrate on making babies and keeping the alien creatures at bay. 2320: The alien creatures are clearly humanoid, now. The children of the expedition speak to them sometimes, while the remnants of shipboard authority try to drive them away with the last few charges of their weapons. Practically no technology is availabe now apart from crude nets for fishing. Inland there would be wood for fire but game is scarce, so they stay on the coast. 2330: The children of the expedition are growing strange. They eat strange native plants and chant together; they draw ghosts from the darkness.. Forgot Earth, they say to their elders, forget your foolish toys. Eat with us of the flower of wisdom and free your mind. This is the Eden we lost when we struck fire, when we walked first from the African savannahs of our birth. They are sickly but terrifying. Even their Annese friends shun them now. To the north, some of the humanoid Annese are evolving a culture worshipping terrible gods that come from the stars. They have planted trees to make a gigantic circular temple. 2350: The last of the original colonists have died; in their place remain the Shadow Children. Poisoned by the plant they eat, their bodies have become stunted and their numbers slowly dwindle. They have erected a psychic shield that hides the planets from the starcrossers that sometimes pass by now towards nearby worlds that are being settled. Meanwhile the humanoid Annese flourish and strain the carrying capacity of the land. They have divided into several tribes who sometimes cannibalise each other and the Shadow Children. 2400: The events of the second novella. A fleet of French starcrossers en route to the frontier of human colonisation are stunned to see two habitable planets pop up on their instruments orbiting a pink star which was thought to have none. They land and find a flayed corpse, apparently human. Then another naked human with shining green eyes appears, along with a stunted humanoid creature. They raise their pistols and the stunted creature hesitates then flees. The human ignores it and points to himself. "I am the Sand Walker. Or perhaps I am the East Wind". he says in English. "Who are you?". 2410-30: French colonists pour into the new planets, much to the displeasure of the Canadian Confederacy, who have settled most planets in this region of space. Among the early colonists is Maitre Loup, who builds a house on Sainte Croix on the proceeds of his businesses supplying the baser needs of colonists.. Some say he acts on the instructions of his robotic servant. On Saint Anne, rumours abound of mysterious aborigines that look like humans but can change shape. The colonists are mostly suspicious of them and drive them away. A scientific team is set up to study them. Other colonists take a more stringent line with alien interlopers. 2460-80: War between the French and Canadians. The Canadians win. Sainte Anne and Sainte Croix are placed under independent jurisdictions, and colonists from Canada start to come in. Records of "Groupe d'?tude des Autochtones" are destroyed in the war. 2550-2560: Events of first and third novellas. - Gerry Quinn

Almost. :-) I'm suggesting humans came to St Anne long ago, were imitated by the indigenous shapechangers, and these imitations became Shadow Children... but that the humans became the abos, gradually losing not their thumbs but the brain/muscle functions of tool-users. Jeff Wilson:

I think you answer your own question in your exchange with Lee. At the time Wolfe was writing, there was all sorts of crackpot 'evidence' that we had long-ago contact with the stars. A firm favourite was the bas-relief supposedly showing a Mayan astronaut. I have no idea how seriously Wolfe takes this nonsense, but I know he loves it. In Castle of the Otter, he muses that the myth of the Talos of Crete reads uncannily like an encounter with a security robot. In The Lost Pilgrim, a time-traveller from a science-fiction future discovers that the monsters of Greek myth were real.

Thanks for the learnin, Teach. So, we should quote only what is relevant, and shouldn't "top-post" especially without deleting the long articles that trail it. Ok. That all makes sense. I like that you top posted your reply though. It would be even better then, if I could have my replies with the < character insted of the colored pipes? Does anyone know how to do that on the iOS or Android? Not sure if it is an iOption, though I know how to do it on a desktop mail program.

Interestingly the thread has morphed from one interview question about Blue/Green/Urth to a different interview about 5HoC. A lot of focus has been placed on the WOlfe quote that "Marsch has been replaced by a Shadow Child". In the Larry McCaffrey interview wolfe phrases it as, "If you hire a shape changer as a guide, there's a definite possibility that he's going to change into your shape at some point. Which is what happens." Such things are disurbing enough to the theories of some that they must claim explanations as "Wolfe mispoke" and "obvious typo". This quote, also from the McCaffrey interview suggests the time period between the Sandwalker and Marsch episodes is a very great one; a mythological timespan rather than historical:

I find the quote below from the same interview to be of great general value to all Wolfe readings with regard to the idea of logical "evidence", the value/purpose of lupine dreams and text stories and even the impact of Wolfean autobiography in his work (Pringles is a subsidiary of Procter & Gamble):

Son of Witz wrote (06-01-2011 18:56):

Don't worry. The coloured pipes are just for display - they are > characters in the source, the iDevice just shows them as pipes. Of course these aren't hard and set rules, but I do think they simplify our life if they are mostly adhered to. I suppose this sounds conceited to the people who've been writing here for decades, but it's not. I welcome the Benewiczian cooperation.

Son of Witz wrote (06-01-2011 18:56):

Incidentally, I'm aware that it may be difficult not to toppost using an iThing. At least you're able to reply selectively - select the text you want to quote, hit reply, and it will only quote the selection in the reply. But more important than bottomposting, imo, are proper attributions, so one knows who wrote what and in which sequence. I think interleaved replying - which is incompatible with topposting - helps keep focus and avoiding repetition. It also kind of ensures that you read what you're replying to.

It's not conceited, or too oedantic, in my opinion. If we all followed it the list would be much easier to read. I didn't realize about the iDevice pipe-switch. How "magical."

2011/1/6 Ant?nio Pedro Marques <entonio at gmail.com>:

Indeed, interleaved replying is the defining motif of email/Usenet communications. It has the unique feature that you can interrupt someone without being rude. Some years ago I coined a word for this style of semi-collaborative writing: Coinscription.

[ I got caught up in my little story and failed to respond to the rest of your post about timelines.]

Given the planetary colonisation wars between Earth nations and the absence of direct communication with Earth, a lost spaceship is no stretch. A hundred years is a long time by some measures; it's certainly long enough to start taking a poison drug that stunts your growth (and perhaps has epigenetic effects).

He doesn't cite it as a cause. He mentions it. I believe he is making an analogy rather than an explanation.

I think this is better thought of in terms of a literary game than a million-to-one coincidence of thought between Marsch and Number Five. Either way, it's implausible, in my opinion. (And he does give a tentative explanation for the wildlife in terms of parallel evolution.)

Maybe my 'timeline' will make the idea more plausible to you.

I think it was basically passing the time at dinner table. Apparently it was traditional in the household. I do prefer the Brown Book. Wolfe has himself said that the stories in CotA are padding, to a degree. - Gerry Quinn

Dan'l Danehy-Oakes wrote (06-01-2011 19:20):

If only! I work at a software company and you'd be appalled at the amount of people for whom interleaved replying is utterly alien.

:D It would also be nice if people started new threads when they wish to discuss new subjects. I don't mean keep changing the subject line to reflect content; I mean that, even if reading something about snails made you think of lettuce and you wish to start a thorough discussion on lettuce that has nothing to do with snails, please don't do it on the snail thread. The snails like lettuce but only if there's snails around.

Of course, the subject of when to change the Subject: is a complicated one -- some people want to follow a discussion "wherever it leads," and changing the Subject: may annoy them. On the other hand, those who want to discuss snails but not lettuce will be duly grateful for this change. What really annoys me is that some folks' software seems to start a new thread every time they post on an existing thread. I'm not sure why this happens, but it really messes up the threading on my mail reader.

Colourful? You haven't seen colourful yet! I remain comfortable with my conclusion regarding the nature and current status of the abos.

Amazon showed me that chapter of Borski's book. Borski certainly has a talent for coming up with ingenious hypotheses; the fact is though that those he comes up with here ultimately collapse, as he himself concedes. Disgruntled, he tries to assert that there is no correct hypothesis, which has the convenient effect of boosting the relative value of incorrect ones. I can well believe he agrees with you.

I take it as a metaphor for the stasis of Maitres clone family after multiple iterations. (Other iterative processes that terminate in a fixed state would have worked too.)

I don't believe the 'relaxation' analogy has wider import than the clones. Veil's Hypothesis is, of course, central to all interpretations; the detective story, if you will, is finding out how and to what extent it is true. As we are told almost from the start, of course, its complete truth would be silly. But unless the shapeshifting abos are a complete mirage, there must be some element of truth in it... The readers of a book live on a higher plane than the characters within it; thus the observations and hypotheses of the readers regarding events with a book are of greater strength than the hypotheses of the characters.

That is a perfectly plausible part of a theory of successive states of imitation. But how well does this theory fit other 'fictive facts'? I have presented a 'timeline' for my theory - what does the timeline of yours look like? A valid conclusion should fit all the evidence with the minimum of stretching. - Gerry Quinn

Yes, exactly. --- On Thu, 1/6/11, Lee Berman <severiansola at hotmail.com> wrote:

David, do you mean it would be more accurate to say VRT was doing his best to BE an anthropologist? If so, I certainly understand your drift in the greater theme of things. I'd still consider the issue of perspective. VRT is genetically disposed to erase his memories of being an abo (and perhaps earlier a Shadow Child and earlier a Shadow) to perfect his imitation and BE an anthropogist. Only we, as omniscient (hah!) readers can realize that he is playing the role of someone else. (I find characterizing the original form as a "shadow" useful. Shadows are dark, imitative and indeterminate in size, shape and number).

That would make more sense timewise (though sepia is still a stretch!) Still, it could have been an even more distant ancestor. ----- Original Message ----- From: aaron To: The Urth Mailing List Sent: Thursday, January 06, 2011 4:54 PM Subject: Re: (urth) interview questions I think the picture is of the original's great great grandmother, or at least that's what I always thought.

----- Original Message -----

Reading on the website may help in going back over a thread. I try to interleaf-post or bottom-post as here, but often the post formats play havoc with my ability to quote and reply correctly. Some of them don't even seem to be editable! - Gerry Quinn

Gerry Quinn wrote (06-01-2011 20:01):

To answer Dave's question, the interview was Gene Wolfe's and in relation to Long Sun / Short Sun. The list discussed how some interviewers sometimes try to force author's to answer their personal minute queries about a story and how disrespectful that may come across. It came up while discussing the identity of Blue, Green, Urth and whatnot. Then tFHoC was given as another example of how author's indications about their stories should be parsed.

This blue bar I have when quoting you won't let me write under it, otherwise I most assuredly would. I feel doomed forever to be a top poster, in bad taste. But in regards to the paragraph far far below, I do believe there are correct explanations and solutions to a puzzle that are created by the author. I don't think we can say with certainty who Severa is, but I'm sure Wolfe wanted close readers to figure out Weer is ghostly. “Some solutions can explain dream like statements and other asides that cannot otherwise be accounted for. Why do the neighbors get mad when someone walks toward a tree with an ax?” I can tell you in a way that makes sense, so I think it is correct, and that mechanism explains some other mysterious comments in the text, like Horn saying goodbye, so consistent re-inforcement leads me to believe it is correct. There are blatantly incorrect inferences that can be made, but these will generally have little to no strength textually. Let's take the two worst cases, most likely to enrage the masses, one my idea that Latro is Pleistorus. How can I explain his human life, then? Pleistorus is missing, and?Latro exhibits extremely?demigodlike powers. Is he possessed by the God? Does Aries show up in the text? Maybe. It explains some comments by the Sphinx in his little memory palace, but does it even make sense for the entire book? I don't know yet, but I had a whole bunch of reasons for thinking it plausible the last time i read it. The second case, against the obvious facts that Green and Urth are separate I have a lot of vague comments in the text that are otherwise inexplicable: the ignorance of the narrators "I don't understand ... no one does.", Krait's statement that paradoxes explain everything, the claim of the narrator to ignore his words when thinking about setting, the fact that he thought about Green and wound up on Urth, and other textual?juxtapositions between the city on Green and Nessus. If I became obsessed with Pas being Auk because both names had three letters, one the same, — u?one letter from s, and only two letters between K and P, 1,2,3, then I am clearly losing my mind, because there is nothing in the text to even suggest that except a pattern I created out of nothing. One tactic Borski employs frequently that I think is a huge wasted effort is the embedded names, because its one too many god for Wolfe to serve in his creative process. He has to chose a saints name for its implication, write his own story and keep it good, and embed everybody's name for cryptic and hidden relationships? Extremely unlikely in the process of creation that is not crippled in Caballah, and one that could work against his naming scheme. It might be possible for one or two characters, but to do it for every character would be the biggest waste of Wolfe's time imaginable. So yeah, I think there are right and wrong answers SOMETIMES. But 5hoc is one of those times when its hard to come down as saying, no, humans on the planet way back in the day are absurd before the French colonization, because there is an underlying current of previous colonization running through the book that is not sufficiently and categorically disproven except by some vague "common sense" that it would be impossible to textually prove. So I think that is a mystery that is intentionally and categorically indeterminable, but that more specific things can be gleaned from the text. --- On Thu, 1/6/11, Gerry Quinn <gerryq at indigo.ie> wrote: Amazon showed me that chapter of Borski's book. Borski certainly has a talent for coming up with ingenious hypotheses; the fact is though that those he comes up with here ultimately collapse, as he himself concedes. Disgruntled, he tries to assert that there is no correct hypothesis, which has the convenient effect of boosting the relative value of incorrect ones. I can well believe he agrees with you.

If only interleaving were so easy. I try to do it but Webmail makes it difficult and Thunderbird isn't much better. I sometimes resort to dashes, and I hope that is effective. Of course, I top-post because I am using email, and top-posting is best for email, where I don't need to read my own question before I read the response. It's also plainly the best format for this forum, because no one needs to read a poster's original question 6 times while reading the 6 answers posted in response. Naturally many people disagree---this is after all the Internet. --- On Thu, 1/6/11, Dan'l Danehy-Oakes <danldo at gmail.com> wrote: From: Dan'l Danehy-Oakes <danldo at gmail.com> Subject: Re: (urth) Threadtiquette To: "The Urth Mailing List" <urth at lists.urth.net> Date: Thursday, January 6, 2011, 2:20 PM 2011/1/6 Ant?nio Pedro Marques <entonio at gmail.com>:

Indeed, interleaved replying is the defining motif of email/Usenet communications. It has the unique feature that you can interrupt someone without being rude. Some years ago I coined a word for this style of semi-collaborative writing: Coinscription.

Gerry Quinn: Colourful? You haven't seen colourful yet! I fear what you mean by that.

Yes. I hope it is understood that my responses to your posts are not really designed to dislodge you from your comfort zone but just to present ideas to anyone who is not quite so comfortable.

Borksi concedes his theories are collapsed? LMAO. Sheesh, that's as believable as Gerry Quinn admitting someone else had a better theory than he does. I'd have to see it to believe it. I think what Borski does is suggest that Wolfe deliberately and repeatedly undercuts his own "correct" conclusions to set traps for those who cannot penetrate the intuitive requirements for which is the correct one. "Correct". Sheesh. I swear Gerry, you and Borski would make an argument for which is the correct favorite flavor of ice cream to prefer.

This doesn't make sense. The "Maitres" clone family are not approaching perfection. They are, as you say, in stasis. They wonder why they cannot achieve more power and higher status. The answer is that they are surrounded by other beings who are not in stasis, who are in fact, evolving. (Evolving more rapidly than we initially knew, given the Lamarckian nature of their changing). Speaking of stasis, what direction are you hoping for this List? Have there been any good new ideas in the last 5 years in here? In your opinion, I mean. ;- )

Why? I suspect part of the motivation for this statement is that it is just so darn fun to call other people's ideas "silly". (How many P&G engineers did Wolfe encounter who told him belief in God was silly? Quite a few I'll guess). But Gerry, you did promise more colourful language when it comes to derision....

Not always. Especially with an unreliable narrator. I assure you that Tzadkiel, with her chess queen-like omniscience, understands the mysteries of the universes better than we pawns ever could. (seems to me that another character has been compared to a chess queen...)

The arrogance is sometimes astounding. Please remember that the observations and hypotheses of characters come from the mind of the author. Yours do not. It is the author who decides whether reader or character knows more, not you.

Good work on the timeline Gerry! You deserve praise for it. Still I think it covers only the known colonization of the planets. It misses something important. As I've already suggested in another post, the text suggests that there was a much earlier crash on Ste. Anne. perhaps with a single human survivor (or even corpse?). This happened, as the McCaffrey-Wolfe quote suggests, in the distant past of the planet, not a couple hundred years previous to the Marsch events.

This is something I had not imagined. I wonder: if Gene Wolfe crashlanded on a planet of mind-imitators, what kind of civilization would result? Discuss. I think everyone would go around making jokes referring to Golden Age pulp, quoting Proust, and talking about gods as though they were real. Mentioning Gondwanaland and Mu in casual conversation would be nothing. --- On Thu, 1/6/11, Lee Berman <severiansola at hotmail.com> wrote: From: Lee Berman <severiansola at hotmail.com> Subject: (urth) interview questions To: urth at lists.urth.net Date: Thursday, January 6, 2011, 3:39 PM Good work on the timeline Gerry! You deserve praise for it. Still I think it covers only the known colonization of the planets. It misses something important. As I've already suggested in another post, the text suggests that there was a much earlier crash on Ste. Anne. perhaps with a single human survivor (or even corpse?). This happened, as the McCaffrey-Wolfe quote suggests, in the distant past of the planet, not a couple hundred years previous to the? Marsch events.

----- Original Message -----

In The Long and Short of It he spends ages trying to prove that Mme. Etienne is an abo (she isn't, though Casilla may be). Then he admits that it doesn't make sense for Veil's Hypothesis to be true (for then VRT's handwriting would be like everyone else). He asks, "then how are we to resolve the hypothesis? Answer: we're not." This is just another of the multifarious ways to claim there is no valid solution. when in fact all he has shown is that the solution he's just been proposing is wrong, nothing more.

They are approaching a constant state, exactly as repeated iterations of an equation modelling the temperatures at every point inside a heated object approach a constant state. It is irrelevant whether the state is desirable or not - the important point is that it is constant.

Because a perfect imitation would no longer be an imitation.

The characters are creatures of a sub-creation; they cannot see as clearly as we do. Also, what would be the point in characters having correct theories? If a book is good, these would be redundant as they would merely spoil the readers pleasure in arriving at the correct theory from the clues in the text. An exception can be made for the denouement of a detective story, in which the detective, at least in theory, confirms the hypotheses of the most astute readers. But imagine if an ordinary character proposed the correct answer earlier on - it would ruin the book! So good authors give their characters theories which are wrong, or incomplete.

*********** Gene Wolfe: "Since the period in which the Sandwalker scene was-in terms of the "present" found in the rest of the book-taking place in the distant past of the planet, it made more sense to say, "Here's a legend that has survived from that period" *********** But we KNOW when the Sandwalker scene occurs - it is at the period of the French landings, c. 150 years before the events of the first and third novellas. It is a little odd, certainly, to call this the distant past - but we must not leap on single words, either from Wolfe's interviews or his stories, but take all in context. - Gerry Quinn

One more comment. The very plausibility of an ancient origin rests on A Story's apparent disconnection from the "present." We can't tell how long ago it was, because there are no apparent solid references and there is a timeless feel to it. Discovering from tree ring dating that it was really only 300 hundred years ago (hey, that's pretty distant---1711, anyone?) does not erase that effect or the eery feeling of turning around and meeting yourself, so to speak, as an alien on another planet. The dislocation of realizing humans may be aliens on their own planet---in the sense that they are brothers to the hypothetical (but remembered) disappeared Shee---very easily transfers to the dislocation that surely would affect many human colonists on another planet where they KNOW they are the aliens. One informs our appreciation of the other. This dislocation seems to be a theme, as Dan'l notes (I think). These ideas keep coming up in Wolfe, but they don't need always to be treated as though they shared the same degree of literalness. The Neighbors may be a form of Star-Shee by analogy only, and the Annese may be another. And still the Shee themselves surely never existed. As humans, we make things up. --- On Thu, 1/6/11, Gerry Quinn <gerryq at indigo.ie> wrote: From: Gerry Quinn <gerryq at indigo.ie> Subject: Re: (urth) interview questions To: "The Urth Mailing List" <urth at lists.urth.net> Date: Thursday, January 6, 2011, 4:54 PM *********** Gene Wolfe: "Since the period in which the Sandwalker scene was-in terms of the "present" found in the rest of the book-taking place in the distant past of the planet, it made more sense to say, "Here's a legend that has survived from that period" *********** But we KNOW when the Sandwalker scene occurs - it is at the period of the French landings, c. 150 years before the events of the first and third novellas. It is a little odd, certainly, to call this the distant past - but we must not leap on single words, either from Wolfe's interviews or his stories, but take all in context. - Gerry Quinn

I'm doing it in Webmail right now. If Thunderbird is set up properly, it is not difficult and I do it as often as a dozen times a day with minimal effort.

This is only true when you never have more than one outstanding exchange per correspondent-subject, they are not shared outside of exclusive correspondent pairs, and exchanges are returned within the most reliable short term memory time-frame.

With the presence of idention characters, they don't have to, they can immiediately skip to the end of the indented text. However, the indented text (hopefully trimmed) remains in each reply because each has roughly the same chance of being the first one read in a sitting. And the singular "original question" is an inaccurate characterization of the majority of reply-able posts; most contain several elements of discussion of which various combinations may be distilled for addresss by prudent reply trimmers. Jeff

That may well be, but I have 2 settings on Thunderbird: Above and Below.

And I almost never use Thunderbird on this forum, since it stays at home. My Webmail is crap. Sorry!

I'd say it's true about half the time. No single model covers all cases.

I don't think you read Borski correctly. Think of him an a jewish-american version of Gerrry Quinn and you will understand him better, I think. Some people simply refuse to embrace ambiguity. Both of you ultimately assert that ambiguity is just an author's trick. Smart people know the "correct" answer all along. Check Borski's posts here from the past if you don't believe me. Then like now we have a guy who is always sure he is right. Regarding clones-

I'm not an engineering expert but I think relaxation is a measurement tool and not related to entropy and tendency for heat distribution to even out. Heat transfer is the example given but it could as well be the measurement of stress (tension, compression etc) on an irregular object. If you can't achieve perfection in measurement for an irregular object as you could for a mathematically regular object like a cube, you make an educated guess then measure actual results then refine your guess and keep doing that until your estimation produces acceptably accurate results. For abos it would be like, "first imitate the body and the gross behavior. Next acquire finer motor skills and more initimate personal knowledge. Next, add sexuality and social skills and the other difficult stuff. Keep refining until you approximate a human."

Your argument is with someone else. Even Aunt Jeannine chides Number Five on the semantic dishonesty of "perfect imitation".

I've already addressed this. The characters can see their own story more clearly than we can if the author so chooses. I gave the example of Tzadkiel who can see in n-dimensions. We cannont.

Unless you spill the beans right in the beginning so blatantly that you fool the unwary reader into ignoring the right answer. Which Wolfe has done here.

Hardly. The obvious proof is 5HoC which has not been ruined. And Aunt Jeannine/Aubrey Veil is hardly an "ordinary" character. She is the perfect synthesis of science and intuition, male cloned into female form. Only she has the necessary components to understand the truth about herself and everyone around her. You can hardly expect blundering, testosterone-laden males to figure out the truth by themselves. And they don't. They are too busy trying to kill each other, imprison each other or act out juvenile carnal fantasies.

How do you know this? Is there any French spoken in "A Story"? I don't think so. The astronauts at the end offer to shake hands not kisses on the cheek. I think you have piled a lot ofyour theory on unsubstantiated assumptions.

What is it that may well be?

Thanks--I don't think I'd read that interview. So "'A Story'" isn't maximally unreliable--V. R. T. didn't make it up out of whole cloth. However, it seems to me that the word "legend" does suggest unreliability. Wolfe probably thinks legends are more reliable than most of us do, but he can't take every detail in them all literally. And maybe V. R. T. has his own reasons for wanting to change the way his intended readers (we still don't know who they are) see his people. But we do agree on the difficulty that results from seeing it as unreliable. Jerry Friedman P. S. I thought your timeline was a great way to describe your analysis, but you put an extra "c" in "Poictesme".

Whereas it's okay to be sure you're right some of the time, as on Veil's Hypothesis?

The "relaxation" method Marsch describes is not about refinement by comparison with actual results. The goal is to find a temperature distribution that will be steady, given specified temperatures in certain places (boundary conditions). You start with a reasonable assumption for a temperature distribution and calculate how, with that assumption, the temperature would change in the next split second. Then you make a small change in that direction and get a new assumption. As you repeat this process, the calculated changes get smaller and smaller. Eventually you get close enough to the desired temperature distribution, the one where the changes are 0 and the heat flow is steady. (I learned this for electric-charge distributions, not temperature distributions, but the principle is the same.) In a sequence of clones, each one makes changes from his father's life that he's impelled to by his circumstances (boundary conditions) and his character--which for the Gene Wolfe clones includes their ambition for a different life. Marsch says it's observed that as in the relaxation method, these changes will get smaller and smaller as they approach the stable situation where the clone will pretty much repeat his father's life. I'm just giving the details of what Gerry said more briefly.

I'm not objecting to anyone's enjoyment of any thematic resemblance between this and what a Shadow child would have to do to replace a person, or what a reader has to do to understand a difficult book. But I think the resemblance is less close than you're suggesting. Jerry Friedman

groan What may well be? As for the Above and Below settings, it doesn't fix the cursor in place, does it? You can begin with the cursor either place and still direct it to the appropriate interstitial locations as needed.

Your headers indicate you are using Yahoo Mail Classic, right? If you go to Options | Mail Options and set Mode to "Compose Messages as Plain Text", you can skip to the bottom and reply beneath the lowest > fairly easily.

And indeed, you would not be expected to observe the same model in your private correspondence as in your intercourse with an open mailing list, any more than you would need to remain dressed to community standards in your own bedroom.

groan What may well be? As for the Above and Below settings, it doesn't fix the cursor in place, does it? You can begin with the cursor either place and still direct it to the appropriate interstitial locations as needed.

Your headers indicate you are using Yahoo Mail Classic, right? If you go to Options | Mail Options and set Mode to "Compose Messages as Plain Text", you can skip to the bottom and reply beneath the lowest > fairly easily.

And indeed, you would not be expected to observe the same model in your private correspondence as in your intercourse with an open mailing list, any more than you would need to remain dressed to community standards in your own bedroom. -- Jeff Wilson - jwilson at io.com Computational Intelligence Laboratory - Texas A&M Texarkana < http://www.tamut.edu/CIL >

Sorry, it's bad threadiquette to experiment with options and accidentally click Send. Jerry Friedman

Thanks for the tip. I'll try it some time.

You might be right if there were any meaningful distinction there. At any rate, I am certainly not going to change settings for a single set of recipients.

I realize this is ironic, but this last post is the perfect example of something Antonio could have asked Dave offline, no need to ask this question to the list. A lot of the clutter is from posts like this. ...ryan

Actually, I am much more firmly in Jane Delawney's camp. I don't think there can be a true establishment of "correctness" when it comes to fiction. By its nature, fiction, especially ambiguous fiction such as Wolfe's, impels us to use our own inherent biases and prejudices to fill in the gaps and holes in our own way. (Heck the same process occurs in perception of non-fiction, like news of the world. Political opposites will see the same news event and interpret it in opposite fashion- e.g. a heavy snowfall is seen as both proof and disproof of global warming). The relaxation engineering priniciple being discussed is a good example. My own education in engineering is limited to biological applications and my own experience in dealing with it in regard to irregular objects involved successive attempts at perfection in measurement. I am willing to defer to those who understand engineering better than I do and accept that reference as pertaining to the lack of progress toward perfection in cloning rather than a succession toward perfection in imitation. My own education prejudiced me toward what seems to be an errant interpretation. And that's why I'm here. I recognize I have more to learn from all the others here than to teach them. My ideas about Wolfe's work evolve on a daily basis.

That word also serves neatly to describe the Vodalarian method of recruitment, Mo # ~ # ~ # WolfeWiki -- a wiki about Gene Wolfe http://www.wolfewiki.com/pmwiki/

Those who use TB may be interested in an add-on caled Quote Colors.

Ryan Dunn wrote (07-01-2011 05:59):

How come? David said something which nobody understood, though apparently pertaining to the discussion (and the reason nobody understood it seems to be, precisely, the missing context, unless there was no context at all and he was being facetious).

You may argue that the whole thread is off-topic, but it came about naturally and it has relevance to how matters are conducted within the list.

I should emphasize that 'threadtiquette' is just a set of guidelines which may* help improve communication on the list. It's not moral judgement. (*) Corollary: whenever following them promises to achive nothing or be detrimental, they can or should be ignored. Also, I don't think isolated incidents, as opposed to wilful repeated behaviour, need any kind of apology.

Antonio Obviously my comment referred to the text I retained from the previous message, which was below my comment. Did "nobody" really get this, or is this just an opinion? Everyone's suggestions are potentially helpful and always welcome (I'm using Quote Colors right now, why not?), but I already use Thunderbird in exactly the way I want to. When I want to interleave, I interleave; otherwise, I top-post and will continue to do so. I also severely edit posts I am responding to so I can focus on specific ideas. But for some strange reason, I don't respond well to being lectured in a passive-aggressive manner, so that's just how it's going to be. I don't intend to address this off-topic topic again, except offline. I'll see if I can get Yahoo mail to work better, because I do hate it and I don't blame others for finding the results hard to read.

David Stockhoff wrote (07-01-2011 13:25):

Of course nobody got it. You said something 'might well be' but that you had only 2 options in TB. As of yet no one knows what part of the text below may well be; weren't it for the TB comment, you might be referring to the whole (i.e. had you said 'That may well be, but I know what I'm doing'), but since the TB comment was there, that interpretation is out. Nor was there any TB-specific thing there which it might likely refer to. We're still waiting to know what it was. At least, those who'd like to know what you were talking about; those who don't care obviously aren't waiting for anything, and may have gotten it the first time: 'David said blah blah blah'.

That's very good.

Not a few people here apparently don't respond well to not a few things and tend to read attacks into pretty much everything. That's certainly a problem, but not one that anyone but themselves can solve. I still don't understand why you find my question prima facie offensive - I see you may have construed it as sarcasting lecturing, but that would have been a cheap shot. The fact remains that I still don't know what is it that may well be; I now tend to think it was something like '[All] that [you say below] may well be', but for the reasons explained that didn't sound like a possible interpretation. It's dawned on me that you may have felt singled out by my original comments on how the list isn't properly used, but, believe it or not, I wasn't thinking of you. Ceterum censeo that a discussion over the list's functioning is not off-topic.

Once more with a dramatic sigh.

I still don't know how you know what others think. But I don't need to know. It's OK.

I actually didn't find your question offensive---merely not worth figuring out. No offense meant. And yes, that IS what I meant. (whew!)

I appreciate that. Actually. I did not feel singled out, but I don't respond well to seeing others browbeaten either, and I thought things were heading in that direction. I just want to be clear that I top-post because I want to, and so further suggestions about that do not need to be directed to me. I was also satirically suggesting that instead everyone should do what I want, but no one laughed, so let's forget it. Are we good?

Of course, in 5HoC, Wolfe has Marsch refer to the paleolithic pygmies known as the 'Good People' who, he says, are known to have survived in Ireland and Scandinavia until the end of the Eighteenth Century. It's a theme he has used a lot. Here, Marsch is trying to explain the absence of abo fossils. By my reading it is a wrong hypothesis. Those who think the human/humanoid abos have lived on Sainte Anne for millenia could use it as support against the fossil argument. If the humanoid abos are new, no explanation is needed for the absence of fossils. ----- Original Message ----- From: DAVID STOCKHOFF These ideas keep coming up in Wolfe, but they don't need always to be treated as though they shared the same degree of literalness. The Neighbors may be a form of Star-Shee by analogy only, and the Annese may be another. And still the Shee themselves surely never existed. As humans, we make things up.

I think it's a great book not only because it can generate this amount (and high level) of debate about what it "means", but that we can probably never truly understand it fully, and giving the reader that feeling of not really knowing exactly what's "true" is certainly a worthwhile function of fiction. Dave M-B From: urth-bounces at lists.urth.net [mailto:urth-bounces at lists.urth.net] On Behalf Of Gerry Quinn Sent: 07 January 2011 16:32 To: The Urth Mailing List Subject: Re: (urth) interview questions Of course, in 5HoC, Wolfe has Marsch refer to the paleolithic pygmies known as the 'Good People' who, he says, are known to have survived in Ireland and Scandinavia until the end of the Eighteenth Century. It's a theme he has used a lot. Here, Marsch is trying to explain the absence of abo fossils. By my reading it is a wrong hypothesis. Those who think the human/humanoid abos have lived on Sainte Anne for millenia could use it as support against the fossil argument. If the humanoid abos are new, no explanation is needed for the absence of fossils. ----- Original Message ----- From: DAVID STOCKHOFF <mailto:dstockhoff at verizon.net> These ideas keep coming up in Wolfe, but they don't need always to be treated as though they shared the same degree of literalness. The Neighbors may be a form of Star-Shee by analogy only, and the Annese may be another. And still the Shee themselves surely never existed. As humans, we make things up. Disclaimer: The contents of this E-mail plus any attachment is intended for the use of the addressee only and is confidential, proprietary and may be privileged. It will not be binding upon Trace Group or any group company (Trace). Opinions, conclusions, contractual obligations and other information in this message in so far as they relate to the official business of Trace must be specifically confirmed in writing by Trace. If you are not the intended recipient you must not copy this message or attachment, use or disclose the contents to any other person, but are requested to telephone or E-mail the sender and delete the message and any attachment from your system. Trace takes all reasonable precautions to ensure that no virus or defect is transmitted via this e mail, however Trace accepts no responsibility for any virus or defect that might arise from opening this E-mail or attachments.

Or an extra 'n' to be precise. But thanks! Actually there are probably a few more details that could be changed, but overall I think it provides a pretty coherent picture of the history of Sainte Anne according to this interpretation. ----- Original Message ----- From: Jerry Friedman P. S. I thought your timeline was a great way to describe your analysis, but you put an extra "c" in "Poictesme".

They are successive attempts at simulation, not measurement.

It does not pertain to lack of progress towards perfection. It pertains to 'progress' towards a static solution. (In truth, it is not a terribly helpful analogy IMO, and lends itself to misinterpretation.) - Gerry Quinn .

Since you are Irish, I bow to your knowledge of your native land. But I'd love to see a link or two. I eat that stuff up, true or not.

I am not sure exactly what hypothesis you mean, but surely abos would have to have been on St Anne quite a ways back to produce fossils. Human time on Earth is measured in hundreds if not tens of chiliads, and as I understand it we have more fossils of human precursors than actual humans (as opposed to bones). Old wave or new, an Earth origin for primate-evolved abos (post-Gondwanaland, as someone noted) would explain the absence of fossils; it need not be a new origin. Geologically speaking, fossilization may not take long, but there are other factors. A longer record means more fossils might be present, but they may only be exposed if they are old enough for mountains to shift and expose them. Younger fossils might still be deeply buried. Is there a hominid paleontologist in the house?

The idea that all the characters are native Annese who think they are human is quite untenable. Therefore Veil's Hypothesis is wrong.

This gets silly. For a start, we know the apparent discoverers, that is to say the discoverers in known history, were French. We know the names of Eastwind and Sandwalker persisted (albeit slightly corrupted) in colonist lore, and other events too such as the finding of Lastvoice's corpse. Even the language difference is noted. And, for the record, their hand gesture is described as showing that they were carrying no weapons, not an invation to shake hands.

Gerry, if you re-read the section I think you will realize it says the spacemen extended their hands in a greeting even they did not know (but Wolfe tells us) originated as a sign of being unarmed. That is the origin of a handshake. Wolfe explains that Sandwalker doesn't understand even the origin of the gesture because he doesn't know what a weapon is. Are you willing to correct yourself on this?

This is your opinion. There are intelligent, lupine-familiar people, including me, who DO find it tenable, even after hearing your objections and evidence that it is not. By persisting in your dismissal you are implying that your opinion must be superior to mine and that either that you are a far more intelligent person or simply the rational, sane person in this debate. So which is it? Are you implying that you are a superman or that I am a stupid and/or insane individual. Or can you, at long last, admit that matters of opinion may differ amonng intellgent, rational people.

This is a forced and false dichotomy. It is possible for Gerry to believe you are wrong without believing you are stupid.

Unfortunately I don't have access to all the anthropological texts available to Dr. Marsch, especially those with a publication date later than the beginning of the twenty first century. I suspect it is in those more modern texts that this information is documented.

I said fossils, but the words Marsch used were "[the native Annese] who have left almost no physical traces (as far as anyone knows) and some highly embroidered legends." Of course past humans have left an amplitude of physical traces on Earth. [Naturally mummified corpses occur too, though of course these are not petrified like true fossils.] - Gerry Quinn

Just really quickly, I think Wolfe does this in Long Sun, especially with regards to Crane's lame physical cause to Silk's original enlightenment, which seems like such a dumb idea until you realize he could have been programmed for such an information hemorrhage. I didn't even think about a physical cause for it until years after I originally pondered it because Crane's explanation was so purposefully unconvincing. --- On Thu, 1/6/11, Lee Berman <severiansola at hotmail.com> wrote: Unless you spill the beans right in the beginning so blatantly that you fool the unwary reader into ignoring the right answer. Which Wolfe has done here.

Why bother to justify your decision to flout the established standards of e-mail behavior to me? I'm not like Serial Mom, hunting down people who wear white after Labor Day. Sin boldly! However, people who care about this sort of thing may be consoled by the thought that our work down at the Laboratory may one day lead to e-mail clients that reform the calumnies of scruffy correspndence, providing for them an integral Mr Million to whisk away the HTML to the lintel with the discarded reed pipes, and set top posting to right before presenting it to their byteworn eyes.

No, because insisting on top posting as you please on a mailing list is qualitatively like insisting on talking over other people as you please in a common meeting area. The disruption of communication is less extreme, but no less gratuitous after it has been explained.

Which would be counterintuitive, because you'd think evidence for them would decrease with time. Passages like that made me feel that I was reading about a parallel universe in which 19th-century scientific fads have been proven true. Almost steampunky.

Ah. The word makes a difference. If the most permanent thing the Annese leave behind is groves of trees, then they could be millions of years old. Unless someone has done a fossil survey, there is no way to know.

But we build.

FWIW, my 02/100 worth is that readability/comprehensibility is the most important issue. I consider everyone here authors, of a sort, and thus artists. I'd prefer a bit of artistic license be granted promoting the free-flow of ideas over the enforcment of standard forms which might, at times, hinder that free-flow. (either way, I praise whatver higher powers that be that I no longer have to plow through 40 copied paragraphs of responses to get to the actual words of the post author, which used to be true here.)

And so I shall! Why, that was an almost poetic response.

I disagree. When you tell someone else they are wrong it means you either think they are: 1. ignorant- i.e. they do not have access to the full range of information necessary or 2. stupid- i.e. they do not have sufficient brain power to use the information correctly Perhaps you are suggesting Gerry doesn't mean to label others globally, just on a certain point of contention. I can accept this. But the fact remains calling someone else "wrong" is a designation of inferiority, even if only in limited scale. As most people using normal social discourse understand, there are ways of disagreeing with other people which still show a full measure of respect for their knowledge and intelligence.

So then bottom-posting is qualitatively like whispering in a common meeting area? This seems equally problematic. In fact, that is exactly what I don't like about bottom-posting.

No; it's more like waiting your turn to speak. What it acutally is, though, is respecting your audience, by helping them to see the context in which you are writing. Contrariwise, wholesale top-posting is telling your audients that you do not care whether they can glerk the context of your statements.

But that's spantastically wrong. Reasoning is a complex process with many more inputs than just the data and more mechanisms than just intelligence. There is no reason to suppose that calling you wrong is automatically an attack on your data or your intelligence.

Lee said:

Lee, does that mean that people have to agree with you or you feel personally insulted? There's always the option of just ignoring people who disagree with you. I apologize if I pop in here to sound all school marmish, but I think it might help if we just stuck to the topics. Lately, there's been a lot of talking about peoples' motivations for disagreeing. Couldn't we just drop all that? If you disagree with someone, do it and give your reasons. And if your theories find disagreement, either post a rebuttal or accept it or ignore it. Just don't belabor the issue, and don't get insulting by assuming their intentions. Some people are just going to disagree with you. But so what? Why do you need their approval to believe your own ideas? Personally, I find it better to respond with silence if you think someone is treating you like an ass. Otherwise, you just end up in snark-fests. I'd also second Witz' point that not every theory needs to be defended. Post all you want, but expect resistance. Don't treat every skeptical response as if it's a challenge that needs to be met. Otherwise, we end up with a lot of repetition, hair-splitting, and speculation that gets very far away from a discussion of the the words that Wolfe actually wrote. And now I have done what I continually find useless when others do it: talk about manners on the internet. I live for futility. Think I'm gonna go read some Barry Malzberg to be with my own kind...

"Waiting your turn to speak" seems like a fairly outmoded metaphor to deploy in the context of an email forum. You may as well say it's like holding a peace pipe. I think this whole debate is a version of the toilet paper debate, i.e., whether to place the roll so that it unrolls over or under. Another example might be whether to open a boiled egg at the wide end or the small end. And we all know how that turned out. Once again: Please top-post, everyone. Not only do I hate scrolling down through text I have already read to see people's new remarks, but it is what civilized people do.

Apologies for the weird spacing in my last email...writing from a friend's netbook on a weird custom browser that I don't understand. I'm sure I will have offended someone's threadiquette! heh...

... You're wrong. Proof 1: I don't think you're ignorant or stupid. QED. Proof 2: I've said I was wrong (not just on trifles such as my former views on the Annese), and I don't think I'm ignorant or stupid. QED. To err is human. The Pope who said that was fallible himself, but he was right that time. We all have insufficient brain power, and there's no need to call it stupidity--even Newton and Einstein made mistakes. And we're not responsible for knowing everything or remembering everything that might be relevant, so there's no need to call a failure to do so ignorance. I trust that when someone here comes up with a new idea, you can enjoy it and even admire them without feeling stupid because your brain had insufficient power to come up with it.

People's ideas of respectful social discourse differ. For instance, some people--I'm not speaking for anyone on this list--feel it's respectful to assume others can participate in a forthright discussion of what ideas are right and wrong instead of assuming others need to be handled with kid gloves. Jerry Friedman

Marc, I should have brought this up earlier when you first raised this theory, but I have a couple of worries about it. I'm fine with the general idea - surely the Outsider works through natural as well as supernatural causes. But can it be squared with Wolfe's statement that Silk's enlightenment was purely miraculous? And if it's right, how does Pike fit into the story? Silk's enlightenment was meant to be an answer to his prayer. Is that still possible if it was preprogrammed?

No one is trying to enforce anything. We've discussed some best practices, and practices seem to be getting better. Nice work everyone. It's nothing personal. If we all put more dilligence into formatting, the ideas will actually flow much better. ~witz

Well, it's open to debate just what that means - I assume the enlightenment itself may be considered miraculous in not having been the work of anyone and giving Silk correct information that he could get nowhere else. That doesn't mean it didn't manifest itself physically as an haemorrage. As to it being preprogrammed, I find it a little hard to credit, but not incoherent.

Erm... Nice Quote Colors indeed is (esp. if the time to customise it one takes), but Quote Collapse I meant.

I think I would prefer all top posting too. It seems the only real problem is the mixing. So often the quoted convesation is way out of wack after a few of these happen in one thread. Then it is impossible to make sense of. I suppose the right thing to do would be to follow the convention set in the existing thread, or edit out all that trailing stuff. Ten one can easily figure out if it is top down or bottom up.

BASTARD! How dare you mis space. Good post inthe last. I hate the meta discussion, but sometimes a bit is the only way to get past the friction.

Lee, You couldn't be more wrong here. And I don't think you are inferior for having the view. But really, it's not about a superiority ranking. Me and Flato raise questions with each other over lunch, follow a line of reasoning as to some possibility, then often can't think up an objection. Then after lunch, one of us surely emails the other and points out the obvious thing we overlooked. Neither feels insulted. We feel grateful we don't have it wrongbecause we forgot some simple detail. Take my recent Out-on-a-limb suggestion that the Contessa could have gone back in time and had a tryst with Typhon and have the twins Severian and Ouen, to mesh with Fish And Frog. This was based off someone elses idea, but it seemed possible to me for a week or two. Then Jordon reminded me of the simple fact that Ouen knows Dorcas is his mother, so therefore the Contessa/Catherine couldn't be Ouen's mother. I'm not insulted, I feel like I've been done a favor. Same with Roys assertion about the gravity if Green was Lune. Duh! i didn't think of gravity at all when I entertained the idea. So quickly falsifiable, but I didn't think of that detail. I'm not stupid. They're not better. It's a huge confusing morass to try and keep in your head. ~witz

I was going to, but I looked it up just to be sure - and lo and behold, unless there are multiple editions with different text, nowhere does it say what you say above! "When he came close to them, they extended their hands, open, and smiled; but he did not understand that open hands meant (or had meant once) that they held no weapons. His people had never known weapons." It was Sandwalker who did not understand that the gesture meant they held no weapons. There is no indication at all that the spacemen did not understand this. To my mind, it seems apparent that they held both hands out empty rather than extending their right hands for a handshake. They would have expected a humanoid alien to understand about weapons; they would not expect him to understand the convention of a handshake. Had you been correct, I would have been perfectly happy to admit it. (Not that it would make any difference to the issue of whether they were French.) - Gerry Quinn

In the same sense that many members of most civilizations have made a practice of disrespecting the established customs of society into which they insert themselves, sure. Perhaps we could restrict messages that refer to our personal religious affiliations to certain days of the week as well?

Yes, that's reasonable. Top-poster!

Sure! From now on, no God-talk except on Sunday.

It would still not be a case of Crane giving the right answer, because Crane was essentially proposing a mini-stroke, not some sort of programmed haemoglobin-moderated memory access. - Gerry Quinn ----- Original Message ----- From: Marc Aramini To: The Urth Mailing List Sent: Friday, January 07, 2011 7:00 PM Subject: Re: (urth) interview questions Just really quickly, I think Wolfe does this in Long Sun, especially with regards to Crane's lame physical cause to Silk's original enlightenment, which seems like such a dumb idea until you realize he could have been programmed for such an information hemorrhage. I didn't even think about a physical cause for it until years after I originally pondered it because Crane's explanation was so purposefully unconvincing. --- On Thu, 1/6/11, Lee Berman <severiansola at hotmail.com> wrote: Unless you spill the beans right in the beginning so blatantly that you fool the unwary reader into ignoring the right answer. Which Wolfe has done here.

On 01/07/2011 02:50 PM, Lee Berman wrotef

Under which of these do you classify "arguing from a different set of axioms"? That's how I feel about US political discourse recently. Adam

Teaser. :)

Nice try, guys but...you are wrong. I know the definition of "priggish" and I know priggish behavior when I see it and so do you. Any attempt to justify it is silly and transparent and displays a failure of recognition of mild chain yanking ;- ).

I'm not sure the implication that no one on this list is thusly respectful was intended, but it's certainly no fun to contemplate.

Insightful comparison, Marc. Well, I think the idea is supported with what we see happen with Auk and Tartaros. I'll say this: I think Wolfe takes a different approach in the Sun Series in contrast to 5HoC. In Cerberus, we are presented with a range of possible conclusions. THe answer could be this or this or this. In the SUn series I think WOlfe works more in parallel. The answer is this and this and this. Together Enlightenment is a blood vessel bursting. And a designed signal from a false electronic god. And a trigger to start a pre-planned social revolution on a spaceship. And a message from the one true god. And a necessary component for a planetary colonization. Simultaneous truths all working in harmony though they might seem to be contradictory. (false AND true god at the same time? How can that be? heh) Perhaps we are fooled by the word "enlightenment". Is it possible we can only see God by shutting OFF a part of the brain?

Both I guess. Even the some of the simplest people on earth can arrive at the conclusion:"We'll just have to agree to disagree". Insistance on self-rightness under those conditions might be a function of stupidity or ignorance about the possibility of a "different set of axioms". Or it could be just plain old cussed stubborness.

Which nation's political discourse lacks ignorance, stupidity and plain old cussed Stubborness? ;- ).

I think viewing the whorl as a closed system created by Typhon for his own self-aggrandizement as demiurge is somewhat accurate, but there are several "divine" desires that are implicitly mentioned by various "in the know" figures. One is that Pas "wants an heir". The manner in which Silk is readily accepted and promoted within the closed system leads me to believe this is also a programmed response: it has been set up with the selected Chrasmological writings, a secular messianic drive that is similar to old testament Emmanuel prophecies as one with a powerful physical, legal presence, a guantlet Silk picks up without even trying. It was said he was included on the whorl because people were drawn to him, but the hints that Kypris is his mother and therefore Pas his probable father are scatterred in the dream of the text. The fact that he is a planted embryo, that Pas made the whorl with a specific goal in mind, that the machinery of power both religious and secular is placed within Silk's grasp so readily, leads me to beleve this is all part of the "Plan of Pas". In his enlightenment, a male and female figure whisper in his ears. It is this more than anything that leads me to believe Kypris and Pas are speaking to him, as well as further later assertions that don't make sense like, "some people believe Pas is the Outsider, they are wrong" which are ironic in light of Silk's experience. Typhon has placed Marcus Aurelius, scripture, whatever he wanted into the Chrasmological writings to pre-load his closed gnostic world that jives with his plan. Ironically, Silk stays behind in that closed system while others break free. Weird for someone who is enlightened. I hate to say something trite like "everything is purely miraculous", such that a physical cause to enlightenment would be the same as a miraculous one, but I think there is evidence that Pas has a plan, and that it involves and heir who will be called to the public eye at a very particular time, and that this enlightenment inside his brain triggers events which are immediately and "supernaturally" mirrored in society (Silk for Calde shows up RIGHT AWAY, and I think this, too, is part of Pas' plan, all the cogs and gears are in place for his true heir to assume secular power ... but the false divinity Pas used to start that process have actually created a real spiritual force in Silk ............... But Silk still kills himself when Hyacinth is lost, something I DID NOT want to accept until very recently. The Silk we know is Horn's creation, and the Silk that returns to Blue is also Horn's creation, I am almost certain now in a more literal sense, he is a strengthened reboot. What does that weakness say about his enlightenment?

Ahem. Pas is dead at that point.

I don't know if we can say for sure that Pas wants an heir as such. We are told that Typhon knocked many sprogs out of Echidna in the hopes of getting an unblemished male heir. But Typhon was mortal in a way that Pas is not. If Pas is not murdered, or if he can resurrect after being murdered, there is no reason he cannot rule the Whorl so long as Mainframe retains functionality One reasonably plausible idea, though, is that he wanted a son of his to rule the planet(s) that the Whorl is sent to colonise - this could indeed be Silk's role. If Silk is the progeny of Pas and Kypris, he would be a suitable candidate for this role. This could also be a reason for Echidna to be up in arms about the colonisation plans! She does not want Kypris's bastard to rule a planet. In BotLS, of course, he never reached this planet, due to his love for the unworthy Hyacinth. (Perhaps her power over him stems from some resemblance to his mother.) When he does get there (BotSS) he displays leadership skills and strategies reminiscent of Typhon, repeatedly joining with the underdog in military conflicts and winning. He doesn't seem to have the true Typhon spirit in him, and he retreats to the Whorl at the end, so I dunno... His merging with Pas at the end of BotLS seems a bit questionable if indeed he is the son of Pas and Kypris ("Silk, wouldn't you like to be Pas. We'd be together then..."), but I guess the ways of gods are not for us mortals to question... - Gerry Quinn ----- Original Message ----- From: Marc Aramini I think viewing the whorl as a closed system created by Typhon for his own self-aggrandizement as demiurge is somewhat accurate, but there are several "divine" desires that are implicitly mentioned by various "in the know" figures. One is that Pas "wants an heir". The manner in which Silk is readily accepted and promoted within the closed system leads me to believe this is also a programmed response: it has been set up with the selected Chrasmological writings, a secular messianic drive that is similar to old testament Emmanuel prophecies as one with a powerful physical, legal presence, a guantlet Silk picks up without even trying. It was said he was included on the whorl because people were drawn to him, but the hints that Kypris is his mother and therefore Pas his probable father are scatterred in the dream of the text. The fact that he is a planted embryo, that Pas made the whorl with a specific goal in mind, that the machinery of power both religious and secular is placed within Silk's grasp so readily, leads me to beleve this is all part of the "Plan of Pas". In his enlightenment, a male and female figure whisper in his ears. It is this more than anything that leads me to believe Kypris and Pas are speaking to him, as well as further later assertions that don't make sense like, "some people believe Pas is the Outsider, they are wrong" which are ironic in light of Silk's experience. Typhon has placed Marcus Aurelius, scripture, whatever he wanted into the Chrasmological writings to pre-load his closed gnostic world that jives with his plan. Ironically, Silk stays behind in that closed system while others break free. Weird for someone who is enlightened. I hate to say something trite like "everything is purely miraculous", such that a physical cause to enlightenment would be the same as a miraculous one, but I think there is evidence that Pas has a plan, and that it involves and heir who will be called to the public eye at a very particular time, and that this enlightenment inside his brain triggers events which are immediately and "supernaturally" mirrored in society (Silk for Calde shows up RIGHT AWAY, and I think this, too, is part of Pas' plan, all the cogs and gears are in place for his true heir to assume secular power ... but the false divinity Pas used to start that process have actually created a real spiritual force in Silk ............... But Silk still kills himself when Hyacinth is lost, something I DID NOT want to accept until very recently. The Silk we know is Horn's creation, and the Silk that returns to Blue is also Horn's creation, I am almost certain now in a more literal sense, he is a strengthened reboot. What does that weakness say about his enlightenment?

prerecorded.

I didn't find the passage but I wonder if there is only one voice here, from one male/female figure. In other words, The Outsider, who is the God of Wine, like Dionysus, the hermaproditic, gnostic, Green Man, pagan Great God Pan, etc. Severian is supposed to be an aspect of The Outsider and he is surely male/female in certain ways.

Has it yet been considered and rejected that it was not the Outsider or a Vanished God who came upon Silkhorn and was comforted by him, but Babbie, who then became part of him? The evidence is as follows: ---Babbie liked to put his head in Horn's lap ---The being comforts him, not the reverse. That's something Silk would do---comfort someone while he himself is dying or hopeless ---Babbie clearly was becoming more than a hus when he was abandoned and was on his way up some evolutionary ladder ---Silkhorn was plainly dying or hopeless when he wrote the passage just before (I think under the tree) Silkhorn then writes what Babbie experienced, having survived, as though there had been a shared moment. Babbie is of course gone since he was never physically there. He doesn't seem to recall his own experience of meeting Babbie. I don't argue that the tree, the Outsider, or a God was NOT involved---in fact I'd have to guess that by this time Babbie had become a Vanished God himself and somehow traveled to Gaon. That, or he was possessed by another god who passed into Silkhorn. Either way---just that the passage Roy describes reads to me more like Babbie discovering Silkhorn than like Silkhorn discovering a god under a tree. I can't be the first to say this. I can't explain Silkhorn's dreamlike confusion of himself with Babbie except to suggest (a) Horn's resurrection in the pit made him somehow part Babbie, (b) Babbie is calling him by projecting his own name, or (c) someone else is telling him that Babbie is near. That is, someone is calling someone but the confusion is merely situational/linguistic. Whichever it is, Wolfe is being very careful here and it's an important moment. As a caveat, I admit that I've just read OBW for only the third time and don't recall whether Babbie appears in IGJ or RTTW at all. Also, I note that the narrative seems to follow this pattern: OBWHORN----------IGJHORN----------RTTWHORN?----------OBWSILKHORN----------IGJSILKHORN----------RTTWSILKHORN Short Sun is literally a novel meant to be read twice, since Silkhorn is narrating Horn's tale as well as his own. Maybe it would be useful to abbreviate these as OBWS, IGJH, and so on.

I went back a bit further and saw that Marc has actually done a good bit of work on this general problem. If I understand correctly, his idea is that Horn left Horn and perhaps went into Babbie. That leaves only Silk (with a touch of Neighbor?). This makes a lot more sense than Babbie going into him, and explains why OBWSilk briefly relates being Babbie but otherwise forgets Babbie. He never knew him anyway. It also explains (sort of) why the narrator (Horn at that point) is plainly about to die and then gets up and walks away. Marc, have you ever drawn a timeline of narrator/narrative through the SS books? Not down to the paragraph level, of course, but chapter by chapter might be possible.

I attempted a brief timeline of Short Sun during my reread. This is from my notes. OBW-flashback-Horn sent to Pajarocou. Voyage across Blue. Horn boards lander. IGJ-flashback-events on Green. Horn dies and is transported to the Whorl inside Silk. RTTW-flashback-SilkHorn in the Whorl. Encounters Pig. Leaves Whorl and returns to Blue. Becomes Rajan of Gaon. OBW-frame story- Rajan begins writing his book during war with Han. Escapes with Evensong. IGJ-frame story- Rajan finds himself in Blanko and becomes involved with thier war as Incanto. Incanto begins astral travels to Green and Red Sun Whorl. Incanto flees Blanko with Hide and Jahlee. RTTW-frame story- Incanto and the others head toward New Viron and are captured by Dorp. Arrives home. The wedding. HornSilk leaves for the Whorl and departs.

No dia 15/11/2011, ?s 23:38, David Stockhoff <dstockhoff at verizon.net> escreveu:

As I pointed out the other day, people only look different in dream travel if there is a mismatch between their body and their spirit(s). Thus Oreb+Scylla is a fat bird, but after Scylla leaves Oreb becomes normal. The other characters who are different are the inhumi, the Rajan and Babbie. The Rajan looks more like Horn, which means he still has some Horn in him. Babbie looks more human, which means he has a part of a human in him - I guess Horn too (but the hus Babbie is there as well). I'm not sure, but isn't there a reference to the dream Rajan at one point looking less like Horn? (That would indicate Horn was less active at that time.)

Let's take this on. The scene occurs after the Rajan has returned from the Whorl with Silk's body. After Horn's body was destroyed on Green. Krait is dead. Sinew is on Green. He has one eye, which he donated to Pig. The Rajan was transported from the Whorl with the Gaonese, and given the title Rajan. Now he has fled Gaon with Evensong, his wife. The inhumi (including Juganu and Jahlee) are hunting him because he knows their Secret. He has not yet arrived at Blanco. Nor led a revolution in the Dutch town. He does not yet have a staff. He has not yet met Fava. The Rajan and Evensong are hiding in the boat that is constructed with a "little hut of plaited straw". They are hiding in the little hut part. Now, I want remind you that I now firmly believe that the Mucor that stood over Silk in "Lake of the Long Sun"--the Mucor he sees the night he sees both an astral Oreb and "Pike's Ghost" is actually the Mucor that Horn visited in OBW and asked to psychically go to the Whorl and find out where Silk is. This Mucor stood over Silk that night because she had met the Rajan in Time-traveling in the dream-travel and he took her with him to Silk's room at that very night. It is the Rajan who tells her to tell Horn not try to come to "where he is". The reason this is important (I think) is because it is Mucor who sends Babbie with Horn. The question of why she did that has always concerned me. I still don't quite know the answer. But one other point is that a Hus is a psychic animal. The longer he is with Horn, the more like him he becomes. After a while he can even steer Horns boat. And, we are told, that the longer he is away from Horn, the more he will return to being a wild animal. Okay? These are pieces. Let's see if we can make them fit. The following is the relevant text: start text************************** I crawled out of the hut. Our little fire had sunk to a glow so faint that I would not have seen it if I had not known where to look. Oreb was gone, too, and I was afraid that the inhumi had killed him. After a time that seemed long to me, three or four hours I would guess, when I was practically asleep, too, I heard myself calling Babbie. Certain that I had been dreaming and had spoken aloud in a dream that I could no longer remember, I rubbed my eyes and rolled onto my hands and knees. The inhumi had gone. I had no idea how I knew that, but I knew it with as much certainty as I have ever known anything. I crawled out of the hut. Our little fire had sunk to a glow so faint that I would not have seen it if I had not known where to look. Oreb was gone, too, and I was afraid that the inhumi had killed him. Someone on shore called again for Babbie, and I understood that he meant me; it never so much as occurred to me then that I had sometimes been called "Silk" or "Horn." He who called me seemed quite near, and he called me with more urgency than Seawrack ever has. I searched the shadows under the closest trees for him without result. End text***************************** Now at this point, I first thought "Holy cats! Horn has somehow split his soul and sent half into Babbie. [I didn't yet know about his trip to the Whorl] The person calling is surely Horn. The rest of this tale will be told from Babbie's POV. " But no. That is not possible because the Narrator is still in human form. Note that Oreb is nowhere around at this time. start text************************ I had on my trousers, with Hyacinth's azoth in the waistband, and I got my tunic as well and the augur's black robe that Olivine had found in some forgotten closet for me; I left behind stockings, boots, sash, and the jeweled vest. For a moment I considered taking back my dagger and the sword that I am still too weak to use, but the voice from the forest was calling to me and there was no more time to waste upon inessentials. I waded ashore and set off through the forest at a trot. I have the pen case on which I am writing and this rambling account of my failure, with a few other possessions, because they were in the pockets of my robe. endtext********************************** That's how the Rajan abandoned Evensong. The next part is occurring not in the past but at the time of the writing. It is not clear how long it has been since he left Evensong on the boat. Note that Oreb has rejoined : start text************************** Oreb has been urging me to rise and walk, and in a moment I will. It may be that we are lost. I do not know. I have been trying to go northwest, that being the direction in which I think New Viron must lie, and I believe that I have succeeded pretty well. end text ********************************* More time passes and then we get to the text that Marc consider's key. start text****************************** Another halt, and this one must be for the night---a hollow among the roots of (what I will say is) just such a tree as we had on Green. It is what we call a very big tree here, in other words. I will write, I suppose, as long as the light lasts; I have three (no, four) more sheets of paper. The light will not last long, however, and I have no way to start a fire and nothing to cook if I did. The last time I ate was at about this time two days ago with Chota. I am not hungry, but am afraid I may become weaker. If the inhumi find me here and kill me here, then they find me here and kill me. That is all there is to it. Good-bye again, Nettle. I have always loved you. Good-bye, Sinew, my son. May the Outsider bless you, as I do. In the years to come, remember your father and forget our last quarrel. Good-bye, Hoof. Good-bye, Hide. Be good boys. Obey your mother until you are grown, and cherish her always. I found him in the forest, sitting in the dark under the trees. I could not see him. It was too dark to see anything. But I knelt beside him and laid my head upon his knee, and he comforted me. end text********************************* Okay. NOTICE. This is in fact the Rajan confabulating his identity with Babbie. BUT (I think this is important) THIS IS THE SECOND TIME THIS HAS HAPPENED. THe hus, remember, is a psychic creature. There is much Horn in the hus. Maybe some Silk in the hus too. But based on our experience, that does not seem to require a leeching of spirit from the "source". After this, the Rajan meets Brother and Sister and teaches them to fish. He leaves them. Then he has a dream in which "he", Pig, and Hound run into an abandoned house. Now it might be significant that the word "Hus" is Scandinavian for "house". But as the dream progresses, it is clear that the abandoned house is primarily Silk's body. This is a hint (propose) that there are three persons Silk's body now...Silk (his memories), the Neighbor, and whatever is left of Horn. Admittedly, I have reasons beyond this particular text to doubt Horn's spirit fled into Babbie as the Rajan sat beneath the big tree (yes, it was probably a Neighbor). But I don't want to discuss them here. There are still two other reasons I doubt it. 1) Arguing that Horn fled into Babbie explains what is happening when the Rajan sits under the tree. It doesn't explain what happened on the boat. 2) At the end of OBW, the Rajan relates much that only happens to Horn--not Silk. Why does the Rajan still have Horn's memories if his body is destroyed and his spirit has left? So, I doubt that the "Good-bye" text is a true farewell. But still it troubles me. J.

No dia 16/11/2011, ?s 02:31, James Wynn <crushtv at gmail.com> escreveu:

It's a farewell because he wrote it when he thought he'd be killed soon. It needn't trouble you. The proof that Horn hasn't left the Rajan is that the Rajan looks like Horn during some later dream travel. But by the same rule, Babbie has got a bit of human in him (and who else but Horn?). No matter how humanlike Oreb is, he still looks like himself in dream-travel, so Babbie would too, unless the hus have soul-shifting like the inhumi, which I don't think is warranted.

You might be right. But I don't really think you appreciate why it bothers me. Why doesn't the Rajan say good-bye to Seawrack, or Pig, or any of the other people he has met on his travels? Why only to Horn's family? I can think of two reasons, but I'm not inclined to pick them up unless I can comfortably dispose of Marc's substantial explanation: We are being signalled that (in some way) Horn is dying at this point in the story.

No dia 16/11/2011, ?s 02:49, James Wynn <crushtv at gmail.com> escreveu:

There's the pedestrian explanation that Horn's family are the ones he had set out to rejoin. The others were completely past at that point.

That's worse than pedestrian. It's not even trying. There's no evidence that he is in any hurry to get back to Lizard Island. Does it ever say he looks somewhat like Horn in while in dream-travel? It really tells us nothing that he merely doesn't look exactly like Silk. We already know that it isn't just Horn and Silk in there. J.

No dia 16/11/2011, ?s 03:48, James Wynn <crushtv at gmail.com> escreveu:

There's the cartloads of times he mentions Horn's family as the ones he hopes, or not, to see again. Not only that time.

Hide dwells on it.

Agreed. There must be sharing by imitation rather than by feeding.

Aside from the above, we know that the Rajan (Silkhorn) is wounded and lost. Horn, at least, despairs and prepares to die. He may only fear the inhumi, who never come. Babbie approaches in some form. Horn comforts him. Later the Rajan writes of that encounter from Babbie's perspective as though after a brief mind-meld. Now, he gets up and moves on. From this, what happened may be very simple: Babbie gave Horn hope. However the psychic mirroring/partnering works, it happened, and this was the result. We know Horn was part Neighbor and I agree with Marc that the bigger trees are more powerful than others. I think it participated or facilitated in whatever happened. The question is what noun to use for the event: resurrection? encouragement? Could the Tree have channeled Babbie, knowing it would please Horn? Note again what I said above: I can't explain Silkhorn's dreamlike confusion of himself with Babbie except to suggest (a) Horn's resurrection in the pit made him somehow part Babbie, (b) Babbie is calling him by projecting his own name, or (c) someone else is telling him that Babbie is near. That is, someone is calling someone but the confusion is merely situational/linguistic.

No dia 16/11/2011, ?s 04:43, David Stockhoff <dstockhoff at verizon.net> escreveu:

If a bit of Babbie went into the Rajan, it must have been during/after the episode under the tree, so that the Rajan would have babbie's memory of it.

It's a he calling so it shouldn't be Mucor.

From: James Wynn

This may seem a minor nit, but the Mucor who stands over Silk is described as “skeletally thin”. On Blue Horn notes that she is still thin, but not as thin as she was. Of course maybe she always appears skeletal in asomatous travel, but one might expect that her image would reflect her psychic state, as with dream travellers, and her state clearly improves somewhat. A bigger issue is that even if you believe the Rajan can travel in time, it’s surely a stretch that he can grab people who are psychically travelling in some other mode, and bring them back in time. Furthermore, how would Mucor get back to her own time? The Rajan doesn’t seem to be around, unless he is Pike. Mucor does nothing when she appears anyway. Surely the most economical explanation is that she is just hovering around Silk as usual? Wolfe might have put her there to set up the fact that she is watching him later on in Lake when he is lost in the tunnels. You could even argue that Silk might have dreamed her presence, but I think it’s more likely that she was there. Again, an argument of a kind you dislike: but if Wolfe wanted to write in these super-hidden explanations and leave subtle clues, he had a great opportunity to indicate that the Mucor Silk sees here is not so thin as usual. He didn’t take it. It’s not a complete killer like the gravity issue (if the difference in gravity between Blue, Green and the Whorl was great, Wolfe would have *had to mention it), but still you have to ask why, if Wolfe intended this to be a future Mucor, he didn’t take up the perfect clue option staring him in the face. Sometimes absence of evidence really is evidence of absence, IMO. - Gerry Quinn

It would be nice to know what "dying" means in this context. Do memories remain when a part of you dies? Can a ghost in you simply give up (no pun) and retire (yield control) without going anywhere? Can one ghost die and another stick around? Can Horn leave and Silk still tell his story? We can agree Horn's spirit is ebbing, but we don't know what that means physically. Maybe Horn simply fears another death like the one he experienced on Green and doesn't want to go on. Oreb and Babbie are clues to something. Horn seems to be dominant at that point, so it makes sense that he is the one to say goodbye---he controls the narrative. Oreb is nowhere around, so Silk is quiet, and Horn's Babbie was there (in astral form?) to keep him engaged. If Babbie and Horn shared pieces of each other by Babbie's psychic "magic," then Horn's confusion makes sense. Either Horn in Babbie was calling Babbie in Horn, to which Horn responded, or the two parts in Horn called one another. But I'd guess the voice was real. I don't think it was Mucor but the Tree calling both Babbie parts. Babbie came, and Horn ran into the trees. As for the Tree itself, whatever it is: If this is a death scene OR a miracle scene, EVERYTHING is significant. A big tree must mean something. In a tale of Faerie, it would signify a place where the Other Ones are attracted or hang about and have intercourse with humans. This is at least that.

Mine is a bit different. Horn begins his quest on Blue, dies in the pit (his blood is used to engender the new generation of nieghbors and neighbor Horn, a separate entity). The island is made up of giant herbs and the maw of the herb is the pit. Silk has killed himself on the whorl,and Horn goes into him, BUT IT IS ONLY HORN! Pig has Silver Silk inside him, and Horn gives up his eye to download Silver Silk back into the body. The main narration of OBW then is Hornsilk, but Horn leaves the body for the most part and flees into Babbie at the end of OBW under the tree. Then it is Silk in denial that he is Silk the rest of the time, but he doesn't admit until he actually reaches Horn's home. Babbie is then Horn: he says huh huh huh and gets mad when Horn's son is threatened because he is trying to tell them he is horn.

You guys are not mentioning the prophecy: I see you, Horn, riding a beast with 3 horns (2 tusks and one soul of Horn) I am very very confident the majority of Horn goes into Babbie when he says farewell, and it explains Babbie's huh huh huh and behavior when he see's Horn's son on Rttw, throwing down the guy who attacks him. And it explains the tone change in the end of OBW, and why at the end of that book it finally says, I CAUGHT THE BALL, I WON THE GAME - he is finally Silk again, though Silk in denial.

Up there after Horn "dies" in the pit, obviously something beyond the ordinary occurs to resurrect him, he goes to Green and then physically dies again to be cast into the suicidal Silk's body.

I think this is clearly the case, at some level. We only have a handful (9+) of Mainframe gods. When some of them track to embodied beings, it can't be ignored. When you have a monstrous Mother and she seems to have a mermaid/siren daughter, I find it necessary to track that with Echidna (myth- "mother of all monsters") and Thelxiepeia (myth- mermaid/siren) in Mainframe. Likewise this is true for Babbie (hus=pig) and Pig and goddes Phaea. The gender confusion should not distract us from the pattern. Wolfe does this gender confusion all the time, and with purpose. As humans, we have a built in bias toward the primacy of gender (what's the first thing spoken of a newborn baby?). Wolfe is right on the mark to make gender ambiguous for non-human characters and to play with our built in prejudices on the subject. Antonio suggested that the male caller couldn't be Mucor because of gender but I'm not so sure, based on this principle. Wolfe has been criticized for his treatment of female characters but I think he is somewhat misunderstood. He is not a materialist. A person's spirit may react differently when encased in a body which happens to have a penis vs. a vagina. But ultimately it is the spirit which matters most. I think the "card" theme found in Long Sun is worth mentioning here. Aside from the electronic meaning, I think the playing card analogy is also intended. Cards are always being dealt out, then reuinified into a deck, shuffled and dealt out again in different combinations. This is what happens with spirits also. And this process is what we are seeing in Long/Short Sun. (FWIW, from his interview quotes, I suspect this is how Wolfe sees God(s) also. "I think that the gods of paganism were real.". How can a Christian think this? There are a few ways this could be so, but one way is to use the cards analogy. Jahweh/Chaos/Brahma etc. are dealt out as various primeval gods, reshuffled and dealt again as Titans, Olympians, Roman gods, condensed and dealt out as Dionysian, gnostic gods, condensed and dealt out currently as the Trinity, etc. Apologies if this idea is offensive but, what the heck. I started a long running thread called Wolfe as Heretic once.)

Actually I think this format of argument is quite likable. Impersonal, unemotional and not dismissive or derisive. The focus is soley on what Gene Wolfe's intentions were, not the nefarious mechinations of other posters or the virtuous purpose of yourself.

That's actually a good point, because 20 years pass and the emaciated girl becomes a slightly more fleshed-out woman. But whichever time it is, Mucor is still thin. Horn only sees her as "not as thin as before" because he had seen her 20 years earlier. Makes more sense to me that when Horn sees a few extra pounds on physical Mucor, he's simply observing what he sees, and that's all it means. Silk sees her for only the second time on the night of Pike's Ghost (her appearances in between are possessions) as a projection, and she doesn't stick around long enough to speak. We're not even sure it's not part of a dream. Mucor is only described as "naked in the darkness and skeletally thin" before she vanishes. That's not enough to prove or disprove anything, especially since she's not physically present. We're looking at a "skeletally thin" person either way. Why would Silk notice if she's gained a few pounds? How could such a clue possibly be worked in, in a way that would make any sense at all in Lake LS? "She seemed slightly more attractive in my weird dream," Silk thought to himself, and shuddered. What about clothes? Is she always naked when she projects herself? Or is that only when she herself is naked and locked in her bedroom? Further arguments: ---Mucor's eating only becomes a topic in Calde LS when she tells him that she is thin because she doesn't like to eat. Perhaps Silk notices that Mucor is skinnier when he physically sees her next. But then she would be. Later in Calde LS, Silk meets her physically for only the second time, where she is an "emaciated young woman with a seared cheek." How odd it would be for Silk to note or even notice that Mucor is if anything slightly skinnier than when he last saw her body. Her condition is later discussed with Blood, who explains that he has to force feed her and that she tears her clothes off. We wouldn't be able to process a weight clue until after these discussions, unless Mucor were actually quite fat. ---There must be other ways to show a full-grown witch versus an abused girl in dire need of social services. For example, when they first meet she says "I'm saving myself for the man I'll marry." That's not adult Mucor. Another telling clue is that when Silk exorcises Mucor from Mamelta, he threatens her with closing her window, and then she goes. Older Mucor on Blue would not be subject to such a threat, so that had to be young Mucor. Later, in Calde LS, Mucor tells him the window doesn't matter any more, but this is clearly still the young Mucor. ---One clue might be the variable strength of her voice. Calde LS: "Mucor herself said, "They're arguing about you." Her voice sounded faint and far away;" But she is physically present in that scene, so this is only an indication that Mucor is elsewhere, not that she is in another time or on another planet.

Marc Aramini wrote (16-11-2011 15:07):

Objectively/textually, I've pointed out why Babbie in RW isn't just a hus (if he were, he'd look just like a hus while dream travelling), yet no one seems to be interested in agreeing or disputing that argument (of course one can debate it, but I'm positive there is no other convincing explanation). But what James is saying is that, besides that, a bit of Babbie went into the Rajan. Because no one here thinks that it was Babbie grabbing the quill with his hus hands to write that paragraph, right?

But does no one connect that phrase with the opening scene of the BLS?

I have no doubt Babbie is Horn. But does Horn have to vacate the Rajan for this to happen? I'll have to finish RTTW again to read the ending. If Silk is alone at the end, then Horn must leave at some point, and this is as good as any.

Gerry Quinn wrote: It's certainly worth bringing up, but it is hardly a deal breaker. The quote from OBW: ******************* The witch had been described to me as being very thin. She was, but not as thin as she had been in the Cald?'s Palace and on the lander afterward---not as thin as the truly skeletal young woman I recalled. She was said to be tall, too. The truth is that she is not, although her thinness and erect carriage, and her short, ragged skirt, combine to make her appear so. ******************** Everyone who describes her to Horn says shes is "very thin". Horn notes that she is not as thin as the "truly skeletal woman" she was before which implies that she is still skeletally thin. At the time Silk sees her in his room, he has only seen her once previously in a darkened room. I had previously said that I knew of no instance in which Mucor did not travel as a visible disembodied spirit. But I remembered that there is one time. On the gondola in "Exodus from the Long Sun". However, note how she leaves: *************** Mucor had begun to fade. For a second or two a ghostly image remained, like a green glimmer upon a pool **************** Now note how she does it in Silk's room: ******** she faded to mist and was gone. ************** Later in a few minutes "Pike's ghost" will fade in to a silvery mist, exactly the same way.

How does anyone get back during astral travel? They wake up.

A flying Oreb is there. Of course he's Pike.

This is the exposition that Mucor encountered the Rajan and not Silk. It is simply not true (as is implied by what Mucor reports to Horn) that Horn coming "to where [Silk] is" would place them in any danger. However, for Horn to come to where the Rajan is...that would be perilous.

Yeah. I really really hate this kind of argument. It's worse than lazy. It's an argument someone would only reasonably make if they had never read a Wolfe novel. When you can point to the clear, textual explanation of what is happening with the Horn-Babbie confabulation, or how the Rajan gains the power of dream-travel, or how the Rajan ended up in the grandmother's tale, or who is the barnacled man Horn encounters, or the nature of Seawrack, or what the shattered glass structure is that Horn and Seawrack encountered on the island, or why Silk decided that he and Sand were "brothers" in some sense based on the vague similarity of their names...then you will certainly have cause to argue "Well, if that's what Wolfe intended, then why didn't he just say so?" J.

I don't know what you are saying here Antonio. Babbie is not just a hus in Rttw because he's carrying Horn. Yes, that is the opening of BtLS where SILK catches the ball. He's Silk again, just Silk in denial.

Good points.

No, he might be capable of it but would not be motivated to do it.

Sure! Silk is back.

Did you mean "invisible"? There is another case, when she appears to Silk in the tunnels.

I meant appearing astrally without a mirror or by possessing a body. Do you have the page for her appearance in the tunnels?

Marc Aramini wrote (16-11-2011 15:29):

Isn't it clear? I'm pointing out an objective, textual way to determine who is who. It's one thing to posit that a part of Horn went into Babbie because that helps us make sense of the story, another to find mechanistic corroboration for it. It's one thing to notice Babbie springs to defend Hide, another to demosntrate why it can't be [just] Babbie. And along with that, a way to gauge how much of Horn is still present in the Rajan at various times later on. Does someone have the time to go through all the dream sequences to establish that? It might be useful to know, in order to understand his motivations. ('Objective' doesn't mean uber-cool. It means anyone can apply the same method and get the same result.) ('Textual' doesn't mean superior. It means we'll be taken wherever applying the method to the text takes us, not the other way round.)

I don't know about denial. He's not just Silk, at least not until the very end. And what with Seawrack joining them, it becomes murkier still. What have Silk and Seawrack got to do with one another? --------------------------------------------------------------- “You were their best player, Patera. It wouldn't have been fair to them if you hadn't played as well as you can. Horn glanced over his shoulder at Maytera Rose's open door. ?I have to go now. Thanks, Patera” ---------------------------------------------------------------

That might be the meaning of the prophecy. Or the prophecy might mean more (tusks, by strict definition, are not horns). But it doesn't mean that the Rajan has been suddenly purged of whatever "Hornyness" he had. Think of it like Scylla-in-Oreb. Scylla is being or has been wiped from the Mainframe, but she continues to live in Oreb because BEFORE SHE WAS WIPED she entered Oreb. Because Babbie is a psychic beast, Horn was absorbed into Babbie while Horn still lived. And he continues to be there. It doesn't require a "purging" of Horn from the Rajan...and, in fact, I argue that all that is left of Horn is the Neighbor-Horn's memory of his memories.

Silk has been back for some time. There are lots of times on the Whorl that he remembers things from Silk's life. But remember that at this point in the story WE DON'T KNOW THAT YET. We don't know that Horn has already "found" Silk. This the big final reveal of the volume. It is a cliff-hanger.

Ah, I see. I don;t have a page but it's He sat up cold and stiff, and crossed his arms to put his freezing fingers in his armpits. Mucor told him, "It's drier farther on. Meet me where the bios sleep." She was sitting cross-legged on the water, and like the water, transparent. He wanted to ask her to guide him to the surface; at the sound of his voice she vanished with the rest of his dream, leaving only a shimmer of greenish light like slime on the water.

From: Ant?nio Pedro Marques

Doesn’t everyone? Silk/Horn (he seems to be mostly Silk at this point) remembers the incident. He says he’s not ashamed of how he lived his “lives” (note plural). I suspect he’s having a moment of clarity about his identity confusion, though of course clarity about confusion can manifest as confusion, in contrast to the simplicity of denial. I wonder whether Typhon counts as one of his lives... - Gerry Quinn

Ah ha! See? That's the way she disappeared on the gondola. But it is different from the way she disappears on the night of Pike's ghost.

From: Lee Berman

It is hard to digest an observation like this coming from you, given your regular posts about the allegedly nefarious machinations or motivations of posters such as myself. - Gerry Quinn

From: James Wynn

I agree.

But does Mucor go to sleep when initiating her brand of out-of-body travel?

That statement is truly absurd, as I am making it, having read many. And I consider it a strong argument, because I respect Wolfe’s talents as a writer to much to believe he would make such elementary blunders (Mucor isn’t really a problem as it’s just one incident, but I think the gravity thing is a good example of something that can be totally ruled out by this argument.)

This is a completely different situation. In your examples we have Wolfe putting in obvious anomalies that need clearing up. In the examples I’m talking about, the anomalies are absent where, if a (generally unlikely) theory were valid, they would be expected to be present. - Gerry Quinn

I CAUGHT THE BALL, I WON THE GAME

I have a different interpretation. What I think is being forgotten is (IIRC) that Silk catches the ball and wins the game for the younger boys by intercepting a pass to Horn, who would have won the game for the older boys. Silk does not glory in his win, but considers it a teachable moment. It is youthful Horn who is chagrined and I tend to connect the exultant phrase above more with Horn. But here is the main thing: In that scene, Silk is a Father-figure. Horn is a Son-figure. At that moment, Silk is enlightened by The Outsider, so the Holy Spirit is there also. This is one reason why I find James' theory of Silk/Horn/Neighbor is so powerful. Matched with the first scene in the story (as it must be), this scene/phrase is one of consolidation/unification, rather than separation (imho).

I have tried to show that this is not the case at all. At least not in terms of Mucor's weight. whatever that means in an astral body. What reason did present-Mucor have to be there?

From: James Wynn

It’s not very different, surely? The main difference is that she is not said to be transparent in the first episode, but maybe that’s because it’s brighter in the tunnel. Besides, I don’t think she’s always transparent anyway; I don’t think it’s mentioned in other incidents. Here he speaks and she vanishes. In the first incident he blinks and she vanishes. No slime, but that’s probably just the reflection of the tunnel lights. - Gerry Quinn

Now your are being ornery. I already stated that it was the same on the gondolas (no tunnel lights). Transparency is NOT (I reiterate) NOT the only difference or even the significant difference. The main difference is how she leaves. *** a shimmer of greenish light like slime... **** a ghostly image remained, like a green glimmer upon a pool ****** I don't think its fair to act dense and to wear me down by making me repeat everything.

From: David Stockhoff

Hard to know, but I don’t see her appearance in the bedroom as so anomalous compared to her other manifestations, which are really rather various — her repertoire includes ghostlike appearances, mirror appearances and possessions.

She’s been tracking Silk since she met him, or at least since the exorcism. During the exorcism at least she noticed him as special, filled - presumably by the Outsider - when everyone else appeared hollow. [Poppy, who was possessed, reports this.] Devils are attracted to gods; perhaps they seek surcease from their pain. We are told they even enter Mainframe, though the gods delete them. Whatever of that, Mucor is attracted to Silk — perhaps she believes he will help her, or she wants to make love to him (as she proposes when possessing Mamelta). Very likely she does not know exactly what she wants; she is a very confused and damaged young girl. But she follows Silk, and protects and helps him, even if some of her appearances are alarming. - Gerry Quinn

I me too, although nothing I says seems to "stick". The point is that we are led step-by-step to the most likely conclusion: 1) Oreb is there and flies. Oreb at this point in the story cannot fly. Therefore this is "another" Oreb. Since there is no other night chough in the story and no evidence that Oreb has powers like Mucors, a temporal discrepancy is an obvious option, and fortunately... 2) The Rajan's presence in the grandmother's tale, combined with the screwy time-line in SS indicates that dream-travel can include Time-travel. 3) Later we see "Pike's ghost" but his demeanor and his manner of disappearance indicates that this in not a Gothic ghost. The Rajan's ability to Time-travel makes him simply, by far, the most likely candidate and explains the existence of the second Oreb. 4) At the same time we have Mucor there who disappears in a manner that is different from the way she does at other times when she is travelling astrally. Instead, she disappears as "Pike's ghosts" does. Proximity, time, and circumstance indicate that she and Pike's ghost are traveling together. 5) Now, the Rajan might well have collected the contemporaneous Mucor at Blood's house and traveled to Silk's with her, but how does that fit into the story anywhere else? However, we have an opening in the narrative regarding what happens during Mucor's mission from Blue to find Silk. We also have Silk's strange admonition about the danger of coming to where he is (there was no danger for Silk and Hyacinth as we eventually learn). Also, Mucor's uncharacteristic look of concern for Horn when she delivers the message. Tying this scene with the Pike's Ghost scene ultimately explains much.

The short answer would be "I have no idea".

From: James Wynn

<Sigh> She follows him around and helps him — you did notice that, I trust? I’ve endeavoured to explain her motivations, but regardless of her motivations her actions are pretty consistent. Since she’s clearly fascinated by and monitoring Silk, her appearance in his bedroom is absolutely no surprise. Maybe it might surprise readers when read, but that’s just because it’s her first appearance of that kind. We see her appear again a short time later in the tunnels. Perhaps the bedroom appearance is to avoid an appearance of devil ex machina when she suddenly appears to help him out in the tunnels. - Gerry Quinn

Why is she hanging out with her own "Oreb"?

The mechanism is the trees, linked over and over to the Neighbors, at the crux point where horn says good-bye at the end of OBW. Of course a part of him is still in Silk, but it is only a fragment, as left behind by any possession. This is why the "story of the man on Green" is in third person in IGJ, why there is NO listing of Horn as the protagonist in IGJ, why it is specifically OBW that is conflated with "Horn's book". Look at the listings at the beginning of each volume, Horn's changes if I remember correctly. The entire tone shift "I should have said how nice he smiled and how positive he was" in paraphrase at the end of OBW - it's very clear what has happened. Horn was a negative unlikeable guy. Silk positive. Silk had been reintroduced to his own body when Pig's eye was provided, but he could not really take over until Horn left and sacrificed himself. Unfortunately, Silk couldn't accept that sacrifice and tried to hold on to the residue of Horn for a long time after it was gone. The irony of OBW is where Horn says how much he loves nettle, then says, "Silk would never lie to himself like I have" ... but he DOES.

I think this viewpoint is an aspect of how Wolfe chose to tell the story and the fact that the reader does not realize during OBW all that has occurred before. Horn's relationship is quite close with Sinew based on how Sinew speaks him. But the narrator at that time is not merely Horn however one interprets his resurrection. The narrator addressing Horn's attitude to Sinew is viewing him as the one who rebelled on Green and killed Horn's body. To him, Sinew is a judas. How else is Horn portrayed as unlikeable? He was entrusted with the mission to find Silk. Marrow's conversation with him seemed affable. Mucor seems to respect him. At the end of OBW, the narrator is reconciled to Sinew in his own heart. Thus, what he says about Sinew has a change of tone as well.

"Objectively" apply your ideas of "textual" criticism to Wolfe's story "Seven American Nights". Use it to show how you can start without a "theory" to fill in the blanks left by the text and to reject false cues in the text. The problem with "objectivity" is that everyone with an opinion thinks they have it. But In order to be truly objective, you have to have no opinion yourself.

I disagree with that assessment: Horn is violent and seeks to beat the man who stole or did not watch his boat, he cheats on Nettle but claims he loves her at times, he is more a "might makes right when I can get away with it" kind of guy (and this is seen with the staff fighting in Rttw when Horn is dominant in Silk in the 3rd person sections) Silk is completely different: Horn says GOODBYE then the tone shifts immediately. That's how Silk's characer is shown: he rereads and says, I should have said this nice thing about that man, I should have said that nice thing about that other guy - Horn dwells on the negative, Silk does not. I am certain this is how Gene was showing character of the narrator here, read the last two chapters of OBW again and see that after Horn says good=bye, the Silk type talk starts.

From: James Wynn

Is she? Mucor, Pike and Oreb appear at roughly the same time and place, but no one of them is actually “with” any other. Silk wakes up and sees Oreb hop out the window. Then he sees Mucor by his bed. Mucor vanishes. He goes down and interrogates Oreb, who denies being there, although Silk doesn’t believe him. [Silk thinks Oreb was frightened by Mucor and jumped out the windows, dropping down to the kitchen window below. We aren’t told whether this is what happened or not, but it’s at least possible.] Silk hears noises upstairs again and goes up. This time he sees Pike’s ghost. He recognises “the aged augur” as Pike. No staves or missing eyes are mentioned. No bird is present. Pike is wearing a blue-trimmed calot hat — does the Rajan wear such a thing? I don’t know where Pike’s ghost comes from. But I am unconvinced that he is Silk from the future. Does Pike look like Silk? He should look like Blood, if anyone. - Gerry Quinn

Also at the beginning of IGJ he starts praying before food and telling people to go clean to their wedding bed - not horn like advice. Silk is clearly in control of the narrator, who is much more proselytizing and more of a do gooder than the narrator of OBW. (I like obw the best because I like that sinful bitter feel Horn's voice has)

I wrote the following last January but decided not to send it. I do so now, unchanged, because the subject has come up again. ------------------- Marc, you have repeated several times why you think the Horn in Silkhorn somehow was removed and sent into Babbie at the end of OBW, and why Babbie's manifestation in spirit travel makes you think Horn's spirit is in him; the tusks you call horns, being protective of Hoof, etc. We've argued that in the past, so I won't address that now. But there are other issues that must follow from that premise. First of all, Babbie's spirit-travel body looks generally like a man's body, but not quite. His hands aren't really hands; his hands have only two big fingers, suggestive of his normal cloven hooves (RTTW, 354). And he wears glasses (346). Yet the spirit-traveler's body is supposed to be a manifestation of how that person perceives himself to be at his core, in his heart, if you will. Horn never wore glasses. Babbie returned to Mucor weeks after the incident at the Nadi at the end of OBW. Mucor contacted Silkhorn and asked him if he "still wanted" Babbie (IGJ, 280). Silk himself had never so much as laid eyes on Babbie and knew of Babbie only by way of the Horn in Silkhorn. Babbie finally came to Silkhorn weeks later in Dorp. At the end of RTTW, after Remora's exorcism, Silk abandoned Babbie and eventually returned to the LSW. Babbie returned to the woods on Main (per Hoof) or to Mucor (per Vadsig, 345). Either way, why didn't he hang around New Viron to look after Horn's sons? What did Remora's exorcism accomplish, if not to knock the Horn out of Silkhorn? -Roy

Scylla in Oreb looks like a mix between a big fat crow and something more humanistic, but defintely not purely like the human. Animals possessed don't seem to look purely human. Why the violent reaction to Horn's son's physical distress? He reacts as a father should when his son is threatened in RttW

Anyway, I'm glad you posted, Roy. This thread had your name all over it :) (I guess that was my fault, though I didn't bump it)

Does anyone but Silk wear glasses in this story?

Just a big coincidence?

This is Silk's rationalization since...what else could it be? In literature, this is called irony. The reader is expected to arrive at meaning that the character cannot. But this is a Wolfe novel. The meaning is unavailable to the reader until after he has read all 7 volumes. Even before SS was published, readers recognized that the Oreb in the window was problem. This post demonstrates how unuseful your pose is toward Wolfe's works. It is one thing to say "I want to use only overt statements of fact in the books to resolve puzzles" (good luck to you). It is another thing to say, "I have not succeeded in resolving a puzzle using my method, therefore no puzzle exists".

Um...(as soothingly as possible) no. This is Pike's callotte that Silk wore in his robbery. The Rajan leaves it behind when he leaves. Why would you even ask such a question?

One very obvious conclusion is that Pike looks as Silk will look when he is old. Alternately, an obvious conclusion following from that is that Pike and Master Malrubius look strikingly similar.

James Wynn wrote (16-11-2011 18:21):

I find this all works better when a comment on what someone wrote indicates that the commenter actually read what he's commenting on.

Marc Aramini wrote (16-11-2011 18:26):

You do have in mind that the BNS only started being written in Gaon, was all written by the same hand (except for the chapters by Hide and the others) and that the events described were not simultaneous to the writing, namely that whatever happened in that island with Horn was written long afterwards, and nothing special happened to the writer between writing it and the chpater following it?

Gerry Quinn wrote (16-11-2011 18:29):

How dare you! You wanna take this outside?

Marc Aramini wrote (16-11-2011 18:50):

In support of this: - the inhumi look completely human because they have only one soul, and that is the human one they develop from their prey; - the Rajan looks a bit like Horn because there's still some Horn in him, but there is Silk also (and Pas?), so there's more than one soul; - Oreb looks strangely anthropoid because there's Scylla in him along with the real Oreb; - when Scylla leaves, Oreb, for all his specialness, looks just like Oreb; - Scylla looks quite strange, what with snakes for arms, which may suggest some serious problem with her, possibly related to hear dealings with the sea monster; - Babbie looks anthropoid because he's got some human soul alongside his own, but it's a good point that Horn wears no glasses, though maybe that can be explained. (NB Oreb+Scylla doesn't have snake wings)

I don't think so, at least not in SS. But Silkhorn does mention having his glasses in Gaon (OBW, 54). And, in regard to your earlier question, Mucor appeared sans body in the smoke above a campfire near Blanko (IGJ, 280). -Roy

From: James Wynn From: James Wynn

I’m just saying that there is no indication that they are together. Which is very odd, if your time travelling explanation has any validity. Where’s Pike at this time? Mucor is long gone when he appears. And when he appears he has no raven.

Sure. Silk may well be rationalising — I don’t dispute that. On the other hand, his detective work is good elsewhere, such as when he pins the killing of Orpine on Chenille, so I don’t arbitrarily discount the explanation either.

If you’re going to put words in my mouth, try to use words that approximate in some way to what I have said. I said Silk’s explanation for Oreb is at least possible. I did not say it was correct, nor that no puzzle exists.

So why is the Rajan (if it is he) wearing it? It seems a reasonable question. Mind you, at least it is something he actually does on this supposed time-travelling excursion, which otherwise seems largely unmotivated.

But Silk as the Rajan is not all that old. Also, he has only one eye. I don’t know what Master Malrubius has to do with the issue of whether Pike looks like an older Silk, but there doesn’t seem like there should be any biological reason for such a resemblance between Pike and Silk. - Gerry Quinn --------------------------------------------------------------------------------

no, no. The part I am talking about at the end of OBW IS SIMULTANEOUS TO THE ACTION of writing. Horn in Silk's body is running out of paper and says good-bye, sits under a tree, comes to finish out the ream that runs out before he begins writing again in IGJ. This is the "present" of OBW: the rajan of goan is writing and details his own adventures in addition to the past, then mysteriously most of IGJ switches to present tense, with the Horn sections told mostly 3rd person (because ... he isn't still mostly Horn)

Antonio, we are talking about different scenes. The one where Horn is in the pit is the past, the one where he is already in Silk's body and sits under a tree at the end of OBW is in the "present" of the text, Horn going into Babbie.

Something I've always wanted to know & ask; what are the "Godlings"? I remember reading in wonder about such huge beings wandering around the Whorl. I never saw an explanation or background for them other than WTF. --JANK

On the final astral trip of the books, when Cilinia's ghost is put to rest, the bird and the girl are separated. Oreb goes back to looking just like a bird, and the bit of Scylla in him manifests itself as a young girl (RTTW, 387-388). She sat on the floor with Severian and the others (389). She was over in the corner of the mausoleum looking at her coffin while the bird sat on Hoof's shoulder (391). And the girl stopped talking like Oreb (392). -Roy

Are you thinking Horn took a piece of Silk with him?

I feel the need to point out that this is largely a matter of degree---it's not necessarily an absolute matter. Clearly the Rajan keeps all of Horn's memories he needs. During the Horn parts, it is logical that SH writes negatively about Sinew, in a way that Silk never would. Silk begins to emerge first in the Rajan parts, also reasonably. And Silk clearly returns at the end of OBW, where Horn has retired if not disappeared. So, first, I don't see entirely incompatible points of view here. Second, though SH does seem to be majority Horn through most of OBW, then majority Silk at the end, is it necessary that this occur by subtraction? Can a personality simply go to sleep? Maybe Horn is just quietly listening to Seawrack in his headphones while Silk narrates IGJ. Lord knows that's all he wants.

We've already seen the night chough. Just because Silk had not seen the Rajan yet does not mean he is not there here. Oreb's presence says he must be. As is always the case, Oreb flitters with a wide latitude around Silk and Rajan. Do you mean that there is no indication that flying Oreb and Mucor are together other than that they ARE there in the room together? If they aren't there together it would be very odd for my theory indeed. As Andrew Mason pointed out some time ago, it would be peculiar if a Time-travelling Oreb/Pike and a "merely" astrally traveling Mucor happened to be there at the same time. Oreb's presence is the most emphatic clue that Mucor is Time-traveling as well. If I had no explanation for why Mucor was there at the same time an astral Oreb was there, would you be instead offering that has a strike against my explanation? The following is a rendition of the events stripped of any so-called extra-textual explanations: Oreb with his broken wing hopped up the stairs to Silk's room, up on a dresser or something, then hopped over the window sill. Suddenly Mucor appears for no reason we are given and leaves when Silk wakes up. Oreb jumps out of the window without regard to his damaged wing. He denies he was in Silk's room even after Silk promises he won't be punished for it. A few minutes later, Silk hears movement upstairs in Pike's room. He goes up to find the gothic ghost of Pike returning like Marley on Christmas eve. But instead of making a prophecy or requesting help, he's just there to try on his old clothes. He waves and disapperates into a mist just as Mucor did (but there is no connection). Who care's if this explanation is possible. WE know it is extremely improbable. Now that we've detailed it, let's agree to dispense with it and try to figure out what is actually going.

You aren't saying that puzzles exist either. It is possible to step out and say where you lean. Stick your neck out a little.

Why do he and Oreb go back to participate in the grandmother's tale? Because he knows he is supposed to. As for why he takes Mucor there--although Mucor is satisfied that she has found "Silk"-- the Rajan is more literal about requests and takes her to the "actual" Silk. When she sees him, she realizes that this is not the Silk Horn is seeking, so she leaves her astral traveling and returns to Horn.

Really? You can't think of a single biological reason that Pike might look like an older version of a bio-engineered embryo? Nothing occurs to you? Nothing? The Rajan is 20 years older than Silk but his body has been through it. He is lacking eye. His hair is white and long. And as has been been pointed out, in dream travel he doesn't look exactly like his body. When Silk sees him the resemblance is close enough that he draws a firm conclusion based on his current knowledge. WE know it is the Rajan because we know Oreb is there. We know it for the same reason we knew that the sorcerer in the grandmother's tale was the Rajan. Everything else follows from that. And by the same token we

Roy C. Lackey wrote (16-11-2011 20:30):

All correct. But why only in her last sentence end does the girl stop talking like Oreb? Is there any indication she had lost her snake arms too?

Unfortunately, no details about how she vanished, whether in mist or fading into a green slime. I would have liked Wolfe to have included that, but he didn't, so there it is.

Not to be difficult, but. In the theory that the apparition of Pike is actually an astrally-travelling Narrator, when, precisely, is he supposed to have done this?

Marc Aramini wrote (16-11-2011 20:13):

Yes, I know. That's whay I'm saying that wherever happened to Horn in the pit can't explain the change of tone in the narrative, because the narrative was written long afterwards, and no special thing happened to the narrator while he was taelling that part of it. First I thought you meant that he was writing about the pit at the same time he was lost in the forest, but that isn't the case - he was still in Gaon. Unless you're saying it wasn't at the pit that the tone changed. I don't know, I find it hard to decide just when the(?) change happens.

No. I don't agree with Marc's explanation that Horn's spirit fled wholesale into Babbie. I think it is certain that Babbie has some Silk in him at the time we see him wearing glasses. He surely has some Horn in him much of the time. He's a psychic creature. It might be that the confabulation of identities between the Rajan-Narrator and Babbie would not be possible if the Rajan were not a Neighbor. It is very reasonable that Horn's identity has been absorbed into Babbie the way Rose's was absorbed by her prosthetic hands. It might not have been possible though if it were not for the time that Neighbor-Horn and Babbie spent together. After Horn died on Green, Babbie might represent the most genuine presence of Horn in the whole rest of the story. Honestly, I think Horn's soul left when he died in the pit. His body and mind were lost on Green. All that is left of Horn (except what is in Babbie) is his mission that the Rajan is devoted to completing and what the Rajan remembers from his memories. And as I have said: If the Neighbors have perfect memories, that is enough.

Dan'l Danehy-Oakes wrote (16-11-2011 21:11):

In the countless years after the story has ended. As to why, it's because it's a fun trope. As to what actually did he do there other than appearing and vanishing, no one knows. As to the question of whether he resembles Pike, we conveniently have no description of Pike.

He could have done it at any time. It isn't reasonable that he recorded everything. There is also aaaaall that time after they left for the Whorl. And I think that is more likely. We know when Mucor did it. When the Rajan did it exactly is not really important. This is a Wolfe novel. There is no solid beginning, middle, or end. Remember how you got to the end of "Peace" and said "What the..." and then you thought about it and realized that a lot of your questions had already been answered? It's like that. Where did they go after the end of the story? We already know where they went because we met them in The Book of the Long Sun. Anyway, the presence of a "second" Oreb, means that the Rajan is there nearby. And we do meet an "old man" (which is how people refer to him) a short time later in Pike's room.

They are not explain (clearly) so we can't "know" what they are. But we can make some guesses. First, names are very important in all the Sun Series so we can be pretty sure that godlings are small versions of gods. Gods of the Mainframe I mean, in some way downloaded into large (and growing) human bodies. We aren't shown too much of the really big godling but his purpose seems to be to get people off The Whorl and onto the planet(s). In an interview, Wolfe was asked if Pig was a godling and he snapped an answer to the effect of, "of course, it should be obvious" It isn't obvious, of course. But Wolfe thinks we should not hestate to jump to such conclusions. A clue on how to read him. So we have to garner a lot of what we know about godlings from Pig. Pig's name and blindness would seem to reflect a combination (reshuffling of cards?) of two Mainframe gods, Phaea and Tartarus. We aren't given much to understand the origin or "birth" of godlings. But Baldanders from BotNS might be a good prototype to study. Gigantic, seabound, leviathan monsters like Abaia, The Mother and Great Scylla might be showing us what godlings will become. (there is a giant fish in Scylla's lake but generlly, The Whorl would not seem to have enough water to allow these gods to grow to their full size. The Scylla fish eating Mamelta might reflect some internal problems inherent in the family of Typhon/Pas.)

Of course, it is possible that the pseudogravity (centripetal force) of the Whorl is less than one gee, so that giants can grow bigger on land...

yeah Im gonna go ahead and agree with Lee on this one in particular his statement about Baldanders.

From: J Jankiewicz

As I understand it they are messengers from the gods/Mainframe. They are used to convey instructions to the Cargo, and sometimes to travel between the Poles (carrying hardware too heavy for Fliers? I don't know.) Pig appears to have carried some of Pas/Silk’s personality, which became trapped when he was blinded. I'll think about them some more when I've done a re-read! - Gerry Quinn

Were there any appearances of godlings hidden in Long Sun?

Yes, I'm saying its NOT at the pit the tone changes, its the last pages of OBW, read the final two chapters and Silk's personality emerges, after Horn says goodbye and sits under a tree.

From: Larry Miller

Maybe the fish that ate Mamelta. Other than that, I can’t think of any candidates. - Gerry Quinn

No dia 16/11/2011, ?s 21:34, Lee Berman <severiansola at hotmail.com> escreveu:

This reminds me of something that hadn't registered when I read the BSS but which has haunted me since I happened upon it while skimming. The part where Scylla mentions the kind of stuff she did in Typhon's time and says: "Eat sheep. Eat boy.". Now, I did know the typhons were wicked to no end, but anthropophagy?! And I don't think it sounds like the victim died of reasons unrelated.

From: James Wynn

Perhaps Silk is right about Oreb jumping down to the kitchen garden. Or perhaps there is some other explanation for what he saw (seemingly a bird, behind a curtain, flying out an open window). But one thing stands out here. Whatever they call him in Gaon, the Rajan is 43. When Pike died, he had a son who was over 50. - Gerry Quinn

Okay. He's a squinty-eyed forty-three year old with long white hair whose appearance is marginally affected by the way the thinks of himself. And who is Silk's mentor? Pike. IMO, what is established is that Pike's ghost was the Rajan. Believing the Wolfe the author intended that Oreb hopped into Silk's room, jumped out the window, and then steadfastly lied about it is simply not tenable. That's not a Wolfe story. That's not anybody's story. If you have an alternate explanation, I'm all ears. Andrew Mason has posed that maybe it was Quetzal. I can't imagine that would appeal to you since wouldn't Wolfe has followed that up with some comment about it? And, anyway, could Quetzal have been mistaken for a night chough? Still, if you have an better explanation of auctorial intent, I'm ready to consider it. Mine attempts to explain everything going on that night. J.

It's an interesting discourse between Scylla-Oreb and Hoof. But I don't think she's saying she ate children on Urth: start text********* She laughed some more and got me real mad. I said, “Nobody ought to own other people, and if they do they shouldn’t kill them unless they’ve done something terrible. Besides, you tried to kill your father. That’s why you’ve got to hide. You wanted to and if you had you’d be a murderer. I think you are anyway.” The bird whistled, and I thought she had gone away. We whistled back and forth, then it said, “We slaves. Pas own.” I said, “That’s the way Sinew used to talk.” ?Who?? I think it had surprised her. “Our other brother. He’s older than Hide and me. Father says he’s still alive on Green and has two sprats, but he used to talk like that a lot. Our real father would try to get him to help in the mill, and there would be big fights. Or he would start some kind of work and go away, so our father would have finish it, or Hide and me would.” “Like slave!” That had gotten to her. “Pas say. I do.” I said, “He was your father. He fed you and gave you a place to live, and clothes.” “I fed! Eat sheep. Eat boy.” end text************ She is not talking about her life on Urth. She is talking about her life in the Mainframe. She is saying that her siblings and her mother were like slaves with Pas. She is saying that Pas didn't feed her. She fed herself on sacrifices of animals and children. Although, it is true that Cilinia did conspire against her father with megatherian Scylla.

No dia 16/11/2011, ?s 18:07, Marc Aramini <marcaramini at yahoo.com> escreveu:

I was talking about a mechanism to interpret the text, not the mechanism for dream travel.

I think there is something in James's Neighbour theory, but I don't think the Rajan is a Neighbour.

No dia 16/11/2011, ?s 18:07, Marc Aramini <marcaramini at yahoo.com> escreveu:

In this whole Silk-took-over business, I think people forget it is Silk's body. It's not Silk's fault that Horn first fell on the pit and then got stranded in Green.

Heh. And I think you correctly refrain from calling it cannibalism. It has been a topic of debate, but I don't think the Typhons were human. They think of humans and sheep along the same lines. Domesticated animals for slaughter and consumption.

James, I don't quite understand this. How are computer programs fed by animal/ human sacrifices? If the sacrifices fulfil some electronic psychological need in the Typhons isn't it safe to conclude that they developed this need when they were flesh and blood bodies on Urth (and/or other planets in the empire). I lean to Antonio's interpretation. I lean to Antonio's interpretation. I lean to Antonio's interpretation that they were eating sheep and people before they were uploaded to Mainframe. They were apparently reprogrammed to request only animal sacrifices from Mainframe. Echidna was able to shuck that off and give Musk a nice roasting. The bones under Scylla's lake (and the fish eating Mamelta?) suggest Scylla also may have retained her psychological taste for human flesh. And of course if she possesses someone she can enjoy a nice human meal in visceral form. I think we see this continued on Blue. The Mother, who tracks nicely to Echidna, is using Seawrack to lure sailors to their deaths and eating them. After spending enough time with Horn, Seawrack decides eating sailors isn't right and decides to stick with fish. I conclude both Blue and Green are planets designed for the breeding of and feeding on humans. At least on Blue we have a fighting chance. I'm not sure about Typhon himself. He tells Severian he'll be sent tribute of women and young boys, but the implication seems sexual. The hidden painting of Pas supports this idea. My guess is that after Typhon had his fun, they were sacrificed and put on the barbecue (or tossed in the ocean?) for Echidna, Scylla and maybe others. I'd guess it was some aspect of the Outsider who reprogrammed Pas to allow animal sacrifices only on The Whorl.

I don't get the idea that Cilinia and Scylla are completely separate beings who must conspire together to cooperate. To me they seem aspects/copies of the same being. Like so many other god/monster mythical related characters in the Sun Series, there is a sense of being a plural entity which is a concept so foreign to us that we can't quite grasp it (just like the ambiguous gender issue). We only have one of each, but they can multiply their bodies and spirits in ways we just aren't. (once again an explanation for the complexity and confusion found regarding godsin our own earthly myths)

The problem there, I'm sure you will agree, then is what to do with the end of OBW. There must be enough left of Horn's mind in the Rajan to die.

That's impossible because Oreb does not lie. Wolfe is faithful to character above all else.

What exactly do you refer to? Humans were sacrificed on the Whorl. AFAIK it was the humans who stopped doing it.

David Stockhoff wrote (17-11-2011 04:05):

Lee misremembered it as did you, no need to get angry. Quetzal forbade human sacrifice in Viron in an attempt to prevent teophanies (ELS 124).

Lee Berman wrote (17-11-2011 03:41):

Thank you, Lee. Thank you, Lee. Thanks.

From: David Stockhoff

Oreb can certainly deceive, as he did when he played dead when he was due to be sacrificed. If he can do that, he can surely lie if he wants. I don’t think he is lying (for some reason “no hop” convinces me most). But I would accept it before I accepted a time-travelling Silk who snatches Mucor out of the ether and comes back looking exactly like an aged Pike, wearing Pike’s hat. If you want a wacky theory that’s less wacky than the above, consider that the technology to project ghosts is known to exist on the Whorl. Maybe some god sent a flier down to Silk’s window with a projection device. Mucor was just visiting, but as becomes clear later she’s hovering around Silk all the time anyway, so that’s no surprise. Or maybe Mucor found Silk by possessing a bird, then released it to appear in astral form while the bird flew away. What about Pike who comes along later? A ghost sent by the Outsider, perhaps, signalling that Silk (who was sent, or so he believes, to help Pike) is on the right track. Of course, none of these theories are terribly convincing. I personally find them more convincing than James’s theory, though, even if they do depend on separate series of events leading to denouments in Silk’s bedroom. By the way, wasn’t there some rumour that Wolfe said he threw a ghost into an SF story somewhere just to see what folks would make of it, or am I imagining that? If so, Pike seems a good candidate. - Gerry Quinn

Who's angry? Anyway, that's what I said.

Gerry Quinn wrote (17-11-2011 12:51):

Those are certainly different enough that one cannot be a guide to the other. And did he play dead or did he faint?

From: Gerry Quinn

Pigs should be associated with Phaea, but there’s no obvious connection here. Perhaps Wolfe was thinking of the phrase “a silk purse in a sow’s ear”. As is generally the case in Wolfe, names are atmospheric, and often tell us something in story context (e.g. the animal-vegetable-mineral naming scheme in Viron) but more abstruse references never tell us anything of significance that isn’t made clear in other ways. [Perhaps there are exception — I don’t know if this applies to the Soldier series, for example. But elsewhere Rhea Silvia and Suzanne Delage are perhaps the best examples of very clear and direct allusions, and in both cases they only tell us something we already know. Chasing vague allusions never leads anywhere important in Wolfe, unless it alerts you to where he has told you the same thing more plainly.] - Gerry Quinn

He doesn't want. That's the point of having consistent characters---Oreb only deceives to save his own life. I hope you see the difference. If you think he lied to Silk then you must explain what he was hiding that was such a threat to him that he feared death.

It's interesting that you go to greater lengths in making up straw-man theories with which to mock others' attempts at explanation than you are in creating explanations you can actually believe in yourself. If you want to think that was actually Pike's ghost, go right ahead. Just a coincidence that a ghost, an astral Oreb, and a demented teenager appear to Silk within minutes of one another. Not important at all---Wolfe is a notoriously sloppy author who constantly gets his plot threads mixed up. The real question is---where's dream-Severian? He must be hiding in the pantry!

Ditto.

Lee Berman wrote (17-11-2011 03:41):

Heh. My typing has been too sloppy lately but I don't even know how I managed to triplicate that sentence fragment. "Good fishing.. good fishing..., good fishing" on my mind?

Yes, no worries. David and I have a history of cordiality when we disagree. Also, I am least familiar with Long Sun in the Sun series and I don't mind a little help on it. Actually, the correction might strengthen my argument. It comes from a passage that confused Roy and was addressed in a thread called "The Oldest Altar". In the passage, Tartaros says:

There are animal bones in this oldest altar but human bones aren't mentioned. Perhaps it doesn't matter as Scylla's and Echidna's attitude seems to reflect that there isn't much difference. There has been some discussion recently about evidence suggesting that Tartaros tracks directly to The Outsider. If so, his preference for animal (and human?) sacrifice adds to the idea that The Outsider is not our Christian God but something more primitive and pagan. It may even refer to the divide between the God of the Old Testament and the God of the New Testament. The Old Testament God did desire sacrifices (even requesting a human one at one point). If I understand correctly, the New Testament God ended His need for that with the sacrifice of his son Jesus, The Lamb of God. (is there anything about animal sacrifice in Short Sun?) p.s. it seems clear to me that Quetzal is trying to suppress the gods because he hopes to steer the herd to Green while the gods want to corral their meat source on Blue.

From: David Stockhoff

Those aren’t straw-man theories. The Daleks of Saltimbanque Street was a joke theory. But Fr. Inire as the Botanic Gardens just took seriously Lee’s ideas about a battle between giant beings who bud off pieces of themselves, combined with Marc’s ideas about animated vegetables. If the result appears silly, that may not be entirely the fault of the working out. The theories above make some kind of sense. More sense, IMO, than a 43-year old one-eyed Silk travelling back in time with Mucor and looking exactly like a 70+ year old Pike. Who is never indicated to look anything like Silk, and whose son is Blood, who doesn’t appear to look like Silk either.

We know why Mucor is there, and her possession of a bird to find Silk is surely more reasonable than time travel! Or the bird could be Oreb, or Silk could have imagined a bird when the curtains blew near an open window on a windy night. I think something of this kind, combined with a separate visitation by Pike’s ghost, who seems to be clearly Pike’s ghost regardless of what magic or technology caused his appearance, is the best explanation so far, even if it’s not a terribly good one. But I’m prepared to wait. Perhaps some better ideas will turn up. I prefer to do without a theory than accept an impossible one.

With Orion? I’m not generally given to postulating dream-Severians and such. - Gerry Quinn

No dia 2011/11/17, ?s 13:51, "Gerry Quinn" <gerry at bindweed.com> escreveu:

I don't like the ghost is Rajan thing either, but it hinges on the crucial point, the bird (ie the ghost must be the Rajan for no reason other than the Rajan can produce an Oreb). There must be a reason for a bird there. In earlier times many went with Quetzal, but for some reason I don't like that 100% either.

There is. The obvious connection is what you say: pigs should be associated with Phaea. For me the implication is that the gods, like the cards which sometime represent them, are being shuffled and redealt in different combinations.

I think everyone would generally agree with this, except on your expectation that Wolfe is writing in ways in which everything is "Clear". If clearly written and understandable prose is what you prefer, I you can read Wolfe that way. But you will have to dismiss large portions of the text as gibberish. I find Wolfe to be a deliberately mysterious writer, prompting the reader to partial but not full understanding for some elements of his work. I think Wolfe has a purpose to this. It isn't just to confuse his readers. He leaves the focus fuzzy on subjects he considers human intelligence too feeble to fully grasp like the nature of god(s), the history of the universes, etc. We can take the Silent Silk and Silver Silk references. Gerry, you are absolutely right that to off-handedly associate those names with Silenus and Silvanus would be silly. What we would need to make that connection would be a reference to Faunus or Pan or Bacchus or Dionysus. In the Sun Series we get references to not one but to all four of these. Silk is a follower of The Outsider. Silenus and Silvanus are followers of Dionysus/Pan/Faunus. The connection really isn't so hard to make. We could go to the suggestion that Typhon and Echidna are siblings. Sure their names suggest it, but that by itself wouldn't be enough. We'd have to have more mythological support. And we have it. Greek mythological sibling marriages were not happy ones. Typhon and Echidna were a bit too primeval to have personalities but if you can't see the parallels between Chronos and Rhea's, and Zeus and Hera's marriages and families to the Mainframe gods you simply haven't read enough mythology. Gene Wolfe is a man who has widely read and been deeply steeped in mythological stories. If he didn't expect us to guess that Typhon and Echidna were siblings he would have given them different names (and/or perhaps a happy marriage). To ignore the mythological underpinnings of mythological named characters is to ignore who Gene Wolfe is and insert yourself in his place.

Double ditto. Oreb is only given two words and with them I think we may trust that he is always right and never lies. Just an authorial constant. I see Oreb less as a character and more as an oracle, a status his rescue from sacrifice at the beginning might grant him. Silk learns more from his living pronouncements than his dead innards.

Horn died in the pit. That is when his spirit abandoned his body and went the Outsider. That is why the Rajan, at the end of RttW says that he "killed" Hoof & Hide's father. The Rajan was that greenbuck Horn was chasing when he fell into the pit. The Neighbors that have survived have developed a high sensitivity to preying on others. That is how they survived. No sentient inhumi will prey on them because their children would starve. I think that Horn's "good-bye" at the end of OBW needs to be interpreted with the understanding that we don't know Silk is in there at that time. Nothing in the narration lets on that the narrator has exchanged Horn's body with Silk's. That is the big reveal/cliff-hanger at the end of OBW when he says "I took the ball, I won the game." It's supposed to be a WTH moment. So when the narrator only says good-bye to Horn's family there, he is just maintaining character. But he doesn't die. The tree, the inhumi, the fear that he will be killed...we're still laying the foundation there. J.

Oreb didn't deceive at that time. It is inconceivable that Silk, who has performed dozens if not hundreds of sacrifices by this time, would not know the difference between a dead bird and a fainted one or a faking one. Oreb was possessed (most likely) by Pas. I think you are right though, David, that Gerry's elaborate theories designed with the primary purpose to keep out answers he didn't think of or derived from allusions he doesn't already know make it unfruitful for him to collaborate with those that view the stories differently.

Mythological allusion, giant beings who bud off pieces and "animated vegetables" are not only serious, they are in the text. Gerry you are being dragged, kicking and screaming, to a greater understanding of Gene Wolfe whether you like it or not and whether you admit it or not. Deny it all you like. You wouldn't be here if you weren't learning.

But you are not simply waiting. You are prodding and provoking and driving people to expand upon their ideas and enlighten us all. Don't try to pretend you don't know that. You do a good job, Gerry! You are a much better cattle prod than the skeptics of the past. Your urgings have led to some really significant advancements in Lupine theory over the past few years. Keep up the good work.

It's becoming plain to me that not only do you not begin to comprehend how Wolfe constructs his narratives, but that you prefer not to. And so you promote impossible theories, while catcalling promising ones, apparently just for the satisfaction of dragging down attempts to explain by observed principles. If a better idea does turn up, I am convinced that you will pretend to entertain it reasonably just to shoot it down as it is explained to you. Your ego prefers a wasteland.

Silk tried to kill himself and "was not really there" in his own body. He was so distraught he tried to destroy his own spirit. At least that is the best explanation for why Horn would be the dominant personality there. It's only after Silk's personality has been reinforced by a helping of Silver Silk from Pig (this is why the climax of the search for Silk is in sacrificing the eye) that Silk is in the mix again, causing the confusion of the guy writing OBW.