From: m.driussi@genie.com
Subject: (urth) Typhon/exultants
Date: Mon, 21 Apr 97 17:11:00 GMT


[Posted from URTH, a mailing list about Gene Wolfe's New Sun and other works]

Reply:  Item #9810555 from URTH@LISTS.BEST.COM@INET01#

As usual, or perhaps moreso, none of these points are unarguable.
(Which makes me wonder why I bother putting them up.)

Exultants as offworld invaders:
-- Jonas says they are new (II, ch. 10).
-- Thecla born under zodiac sign of Swan (IV, ch 23), not possible on
Urth/Earth, but possible in a different star system.
-- their greater height may originally have been reflective of
adaptation to a gravity field less than 1 gee. [!This is speculation!]
-- they have access to higher technology (energy weapons, and by
extension fliers, clones, human bioengineering) that in the text is
called "stellar level" (fliers, clones, human bioengineering would
not appear to fit in the "smith" or "Urth" levels of technology).

Typhon as offworld invader:
-- "I have told you that I was autarch on many worlds . . . This
world, the most ancient of all, I made my capital.  That was an error
. . . those to whom I had given control of such ships as could reach
the stars had fled in them" (III, ch. 26).  Were the ships controlled
by exultants, or mere sailors?

Linkage between exultants and Typhon:
--exultants are ancient nobility (implying that they predate the
Autarchy), armigers are newer petty nobility (there is a suggestion
in the text that they were created by the Autarch to keep the
exultants in check).
--Vodalus seems to want to recreate the Monarchy (but then again,
most of the trappings he talks about were also inherited by the
Autarchy, so perhaps it boils down to Vodalus's technophilic
militaristic expansionistic drive, which, by definition, looks like
the Monarchy).

=mantis=