From: Michael Andre-Driussi <mantis@sirius.com>
Subject: (urth) 5HC details, another bit about PEACE and JURGEN
Date: Wed, 29 Nov 2000 13:40:27 

First, PEACE and JURGEN.  Maybe another point of interest is that Jurgen
himself is a very accomplished liar, and he does it by quoting or alluding
to texts by ancient authors--all a fabrication.  So he is a literary sort
of liar, which should remind us of both Lou Gold (his fake books) and A.D.
Weer (his fake fairy tales).  Jurgen is wildly successful with this
technique, since nobody he meets wants to admit that they don't know some
famous author or work.  Nine times out of ten, it seems, he gets away with
it--and that tenth time is pretty neat, too.

(Dan'l: right, my copy of JURGEN has the chapbook incorporated into it as a
chapter.  The guy pressing the charges of obscenity is a dung beetle.  I
first thought it was uncannily vatic in seeing the future of the book, but
a bit of research in THE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF FANTASY alerted me to the
chapbook--God bless the little devils; chapbooks, I mean--which actually
heightens the fun of it; JURGEN, I mean.)

THE FIFTH HEAD OF CERBERUS

Okay, my head is splitting open again.  Help me gather up all the seeds
before something disgusting happens.

1) Re the artificial-seeming age/decay of the buildings on Ste. Croix.
(Have we already talked about how) This is another strong pointer towards
Veil's theory being true--in that abos can't construct buildings; hence the
buildings were built by humans, and then the humans were quietly, slowly
exterminated and replaced. (?)

2) Length of Annese year.  Is this clutching at straws yet?  JVM says VRT
looks/is 16 (Terran) years old.  If "A Story" is autobiographical, then as
Sandwalker is 13 (Annese) years old around the time when VRT is 16 (T)
years old, then the Annese year is 1.23 Terran years . . . which equals
10788.922 hours . . . divided by 402 Annese days . . . gives an Annese day
of 26.838114 hours . . .

Which is quite close to my previous guestimate of 30 hours per Annese day.
(Actually JVM says VRT is 15 or 16, but using 15 gives an Annese day of 25
hours, which is simply too short to consider!)

3) My previous map is way, way off.  Apologies to all the few!  The Ocean
seems to lie to the East, for starters: coastal Roncenvaux is 500 km SE of
Frenchman's Landing, connected by train. The river Tempus thus flows toward
Frenchman's Landing from the Northwest, but there also must be a big loop
of it that flows NW for about a hundred miles or so (Sandwalker walks
"South" for five days, but one day bodysurfing the river and he passes by
his homeland).

=mantis=



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