Date: Thu, 28 Mar 2002 12:32:19 -0800 (PST)
From: Jerry Friedman 
Subject: Re: (urth) Meschia and Meschiane


--- Spectacled Bear  wrote:
> At 06:12 2002-03-28, Marc wrote:
> ...
> >People seem to be primarily arguing about the indentity of Blue as Urth
> - and 
> >I use the trees to justify it.  Is it the trees that are one step too
> far for 
> >most people, or do most people agree that the trees can eat people and
> spit 
> >out copies sans Blue=Urth?

Like Rostrum, I haven't noticed anything about the trees' eating
people, although I do remember a strong hint of their sentience (when
Horn sees through the dying Krait's eyes).  As for spitting out
copies--xylography?--I don't remember any hint of that.

> The ideas about trees are extremely interesting, even without believing
> that Blue is Urth. And the reason it seems unlikely that Blue is Urth is
> that you can see the one from the other, or at least see the Old Sun
> from Blue.

I can see two possible explanations for this.  One, which I saw
suggested by Jeff Wilson, is that the _Whorl_ got back to Ushas by
going through a space warp, which is still warping the path of the
light from the Red Sun and sending it on a round trip.  The space
warp would have been placed in the _Whorl_'s path by the Hierodules
or somebody, presumably to repopulate Ushas after the People Vanished.
The difficulty is that you have to assume something with no evidence
in order to save a theory that's already short of evidence.

The other is that Silkhorn is not being overly scrupulous with the
truth, as part of his campaign to tempt Juganu into helping him and
Oreb and Hoof travel astrally back to Urth.  After all, how does
Silkhorn know which star it is?  The difficulty is that most of his
dishonesty is suppressio veri and suggestio falsi; what he says about
the red star would be pretty close to a direct lie.

-- 
Jerry Friedman

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Movies - coverage of the 74th Academy Awards®
http://movies.yahoo.com/

--