Subject: (urth) Marc's smoking gun?
Date: Wed, 4 Dec 2002 09:15:25 -0700
From: "Dan'l Danehy-Oakes" 

(This is a somewhat artificial post ... I've self-edited but
left in some weird stuff to indicate how my thought processes
went.)


Among other things, Marc points out

> The underwater wall that surrounds the huge city Seawrack=20
> speaks of: evidence of a flood.

Okay ... This may or may not count as a smoking gun, but=20
(to my own vast surprise, as I have a deep-seated _dislike_
of the Blushas theory) I found it extremely persuasive, and=20
in fact felt quite startled that I had not noticed it before.


Later (in the same post), he wrote:


> ... can't Silk in his astral travel go through the same
> "white hole" or whatever to go back in time in his travels?
> There you go: he travels far enough away to pass through that=20
> dying/gestating black/white hole, and the red light he seeks=20
> is through that barrier.  Since he travels with light, of
> course he is drawn to the spiritual birth of the New Sun.


I don't see any evidence that the Narrator's astral travel
has anything to do with the White Fountain, but that might
be another

OH.

Wow.

_Duh!_

Now I'm convinced. The whole thing makes sense, in an utterly
Lupine way.

How does the _Whorl_ wind up back at Ushas? How does so much
time pass? What odd relativistic effects stretch the thousand
years or so we have been talking about to many thousands, maybe
millions?

Let's answer that question with another question: As the=20
_Whorl_ was heading out from the Urth system, what major
spacetime anomaly was heading _toward_ it ... ?

Hidden in plain sight. Marc, I hold the Blushas theory as
fully plausible and highly probable. You da man.

Now, this doesn't actually solve the mystery of why the
Narrator winds up at Severian's childhood ... or does it?=20
Again and again, I'm looking for a mechanism that fits=20
with the other known constraints upon the Narrator's=20
astral travel.=20


Elsewhere in the post, he wrote:=20

> if a ship has the ability to reach back in time, like=20
> the ship Severian takes by moving through space in UOTNS,

Need I point out that the ship in _Urth_ runs by angel power?


> The abilty of Green to affect the tide at its closest.

This remains puzzling. If Green =3D=3D Lune, then the orbital
mechanics get messed up ... I showed earlier that Green=20
need not be nearer the Short Sun than Blue, but we need
an orbit that puts them close together _only_ every -- uh
-- however many years it was, my little grey cells seem to
have failed me; and we need an explanation of how Lune
became massive enough to hold an atmosphere -- massive=20
enough that Horn doesn't notice a difference in weight=20
when he travels there.

Actually, we can handwave this latter point and say that
it must have happened _before_ Severian's time, because
it obviously must hold an atmosphere in order for the
"forests of Lune" to exist at all; but the orbital problem
remains. I do not suppose it intractible, but I'd like a
solution.

Other problems remain:=20

o If (as Wolfe has clearly stated) Severian's future is=20
  the future of the Green Man, then where are his people,
  (possibly the descendants of the Cargo?), and who are
  the Neighbors?
o Why have all the creatures on Urth developed extra
  limbs while, apparently, remaining otherwise
  recognizeable? (Handwaving about doubled chromosomes
  _won't_ solve this one.)=20
o What kind of evolution accounts for the inhumi? The
  Neighbors? Those gosh-darned trees?
o And what about Naomi?

--Blattid


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