Date: Tue, 10 Dec 2002 13:41:02 -0800 (PST)
From: Jerry Friedman 
Subject: Re: (urth) Marc's smoking gun?


--- Dan'l Danehy-Oakes  wrote:
> (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 
> > speaks of: evidence of a flood.
> 
> Okay ... This may or may not count as a smoking gun, but 
> (to my own vast surprise, as I have a deep-seated _dislike_
> of the Blushas theory) I found it extremely persuasive, and 
> in fact felt quite startled that I had not noticed it before.

More (but not as good) evidence of a flood is the Neighbor in the
tree that one of the twins sees through the Neighbors' ring.
Somewhere late in RTW.

> 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 
> > dying/gestating black/white hole, and the red light he seeks 
> > 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 
> _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.
...

This is very appealing from the text, but it doesn't seem to fit
with that interview that everybody's been quoting at
.

"3. What was Typhon's purpose in launching the Whorl and was the
Blue/Green [solar] system the intended destination? -- Knowing Typhon
as I do, he probably had at least half a dozen purposes; but
certainly one of the chief must have been self-aggrandizement -- to
return human kind to the stars would be a very great thing indeed.
Yes, the Blue-Green system was the intended destination."

Maybe I'm missing some way to reconcile it.
 
> Elsewhere in the post, he wrote: 
...

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

Any large object would do that.

> This remains puzzling. If Green == Lune, then the orbital
> mechanics get messed up ... I showed earlier that Green 
> 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 
> enough that Horn doesn't notice a difference in weight 
> when he travels there.

Wasn't it six years?  Anyway, I don't think we should worry
about celestial mechanics.  I'll bet Wolfe didn't.

> 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;

That strikes me as reasonable, not handwaving.

> but the orbital problem
> remains. I do not suppose it intractible, but I'd like a
> solution.
> 
> Other problems remain: 
> 
> o If (as Wolfe has clearly stated) Severian's future is 
>   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.)

Those two seem to me to be very good questions.
 
> o What kind of evolution accounts for the inhumi? The
>   Neighbors? Those gosh-darned trees?

The same that accounts for Lyle Alzabo, that is, whatever Wolfe
wanted.

> o And what about Naomi?

Dorcas's mother?

Jerry Friedman

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