Date: Tue, 26 Mar 2002 10:53:24 -0700
From: maa32 
Subject: (urth) redux on objections

Here is one more thing that bugs me: has the Short Sun narrator been gone TWO 
YEARS or THREE YEARS?  you can't get the same number in the text.  Conjunction 
has happened. More time dilation? How long has Horn been gone?

Someone (Blattid, right?) posted a huge list of objections.  I mostly agree 
with Andy's defenses.
I NEVER posited a space warp that the whorl flew into - i thought it flew in a 
circle. As far as I know, you can control direction in a space ship or you are 
doomed to an eternity of going forward.

Polyploidy is instant speciation - that's the whole point.  It can spring up 
in one generation, and disappear in one generation.  No time needs to pass to 
create new species.

I NEVER said that Blue was Urth of the past - it is Ushas of a somewhat 
distant future - enough time for the trees to kill the colonists on Lune, come 
to Urth, kill everyone there and die out or "move on" in one (or a few) 
generation(s) before the whorl comes back to recolonize the planet. So many 
things are the same (flooded planet, wall underwater, analog species)  And I'm 
sorry, hybridization is SOOO textually prevalent, as is man to flower imagery.
I HAVE posited a prototype green man - who isn't green yet. He can't feed in 
the winter, he doesn't eat, and he has normal limbs.  Who is he? Your humble 
narrator Silk. and he has wounds from branches - he runs into a tree as soon 
as Hyacinth dies.

As I've said before, the moon (green) is in an oscillating, self correcting 
orbit around blue - it can always be seen in the sky. It was pulled from its 
decayed orbit by the new sun.  Green orbits Blue in oscillation, sometimes 
close, sometimes far, but that has nothing to do with its orbital period.

also, there is every indication that the children of polyploid species are not 
the same. Look at the corn - the second generation is weaker and even a 
different color.  Indeed, a return to the haploid state is necessary for 
children to be viable - and this is what we have in the life cycle of the 
inhumu, clearly delineated in the text. If the Neighbors go a generation or 
two, perhaps they will lose those excess limbs.  (If they can regain fertility 
at all, because hybrids are notoriously infertile).
Also, the inhumu do not gain excess limbs because they do not instantly create 
a new species: they are simple sexual producers who feast on blood, save it, 
and then incorporate that DNA into their children.  That is different than the 
trees instant consumption and recombination.  They are different species 
working on the same terraformed principles.

And Gene wolfe sets up the mystery of the vanished people as something that 
can be solved: Silk/Horn claims that his son already knows where the vanished 
people went and where they came from, but that it would be better if "he 
figured it out for himself", which  implies that a reader of the text should 
be able to figure it out, too.

Marc



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