Date: Wed, 27 Feb 2002 18:30:36 -0600
From: Jeff Wilson 
Subject: Re: (urth) For Jerry- a response

> From: Michael Straight 

> On Tue, 26 Feb 2002, maa32 wrote:
> > distance for him is no more real than one of space.  The ancient and old
> > images imply that it is from a long, long time ago.  The distance is real
> > because the universe has moved so much since then.
> 
> The universe has moved, but it's not moving faster than light, which it
> would have to in order to be able to see the old red sun in the sky of
> Blue.

	If the Whorl traveled through a region of space that curved back upon
itself, then it's reasonable that the old Sun would be visible back
along the way they came. There's no particular reason for this to be
impossible based on the speed of light, as the BOTNS glosses over many
such concerns to start with. 

> From: "Dan'l Danehy-Oakes" 

> Chiming in -
> 
> Marc, while I find a lot of attraction in your theory that
> Blue/Green is a much older Ushas/Lune (particularly the implicit
> identity of the Mother and Scylla-on-Urth), it just isn't plausible
> for a largish variety of reasons.
> 
> Probably the most significant of these, for me, is that if we take
> the more-or-less canonical set of assumptions about the voyage of
> the _Whorl_ (discussed in some detail in the archives by Mantis and
> others), the timelines are just too _neat_ to drop: but there are
> also the questions of Greenish gravity (despite the tower-climbing
> scene, I believe that lunar-type gravity would warrant some pretty
> direct observation by a character coming from urth-type gravity),
> of the apparent visibility of Urth's red sun in the Bluvian sky, of
> the doubled body parts of Bluvian life forms*, etc., etc.

It's been previously discussed that Lune hasn't sufficient gravity to
retain an atmosphere; given that gravity manipulation is featured
discretely in Severian's time, it's possible that Lune's gravity was
increased during the age of wonders to keep the air held down. There is
also the possibility that the Whorl's gravity was intentionally set
lower than Urth's.

-- 
Jeff Wilson
How Am I Posting? 1-800-555-6789
"If your SecOp can see you, so can the enemy." -Cpt Law


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