From: mary whalen <marewhalen@yahoo.com>
Subject: (urth) Free Live Righteously
Date: Thu, 2 Jul 1998 20:17:36 

This is Sean Whalen (prion).

I have always had the feeling that the wooden plane in Free Live Free
is the same as the ship Tzadkiel.

Why?  Well, they both are made of wood (though by the Tzadkiel time
the wood would be replaced, and backed by other materials) and are
flying ships.

Ben Free even says near the end of the book that in a few years the
plane will be permanently located in space, as opposed to flying
through the atmosphere.

In case you don't remember or haven't read the book, the reason the
huge wooden plane was built was for a place where the leaders of
America would be safe, as it was untrackable by radar.  I wonder how
it will fair with the powerful optical satellites of the modern age?

Of course, this might just be Wolfe's love for modern stuff made of
wood, but it just seems too similar to me.  It also seems strange Sev
says the wood is there to preserve warmth, but plastics or composite
would be much better, to say nothing of whatever has been developed by
the Hierogrammates in their eons of existence.

Then again, in The Castle of the Otter Wolfe says that he thinks
missiles should be stored in a scattered flotilla of wooden ships
because of their radar-invisibility, so both examples may just be
ideas grown from his affinity for using old things for modern purposes.

prion




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