From: Peter Westlake <peter@harlequin.co.uk>
Subject: Re: (urth) Re: Digest urth.v013.n004
Date: Fri, 12 Jun 1998 10:58:51 +0100

At 23:56 1998-06-11 -0400, Alice Turner wrote:
>Four-Eyes:
>
>>what were the footsteps in the cave of
>>the man-apes? The first step "might have been the walking of a
>>tower on the Final Day..." (Claw, VI). And then two books later,
>>lo and behold, ".. a machine that flashed fire, a machine that
>>was like a tower walking." (Citadel, XXII).  Then scarcely a page
>>later, Mamillian's footstep remind Severian of "that I had once
>>waked in the mine of the man-apes." (Citadel, XXIII). It's like
>>a Martian war machine in the War of the Worlds!
>
>
>It's a Tall Ass! I love this! Bravo! And we just know the taluses are going
>to show up as important in TBOTSS because of the inordinate amount of time
>Wolfe spent on the factory that makes them, so it's a tie between the
>series. Hooray!

It's a bit bigger than that, isn't it? And it walks, too, rather than
having caterpillar tracks. When Severian looks at the Ascian armies
from the Autarch's flyer (why don't flyers float right off into space,
BTW?) he see "machines as big as fortresses", which I take to be the
same thing. They look like towers walking.

They might be intelligent in the same way as taluses, of course.
That would make more sense than having soldiers on board if you
were going to leave one down a mine for centuries.

(Would you really want one of those things aboard the Whorl?
 "Stamp! Stamp! Crunch, crack, wheeeeeee...")

Sbear.


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