From: "Roy C. Lackey" 
Subject: (urth) Blue still ain't Ushas
Date: Sat, 21 Dec 2002 16:42:16 -0600

I argued, last spring, that Blue is not Ushas. If those arguments weren't
heeded then, there's no point in repeating them now. Those arguments were
from the text and/or Physics, so I don't know how it can be claimed "all
your reasons for Urth not being Blue AREN'T valid ones", as was recently
stated here. Be that as it may, the mass of textual evidence against Blue
being Urth/Ushas overwhelms the theory that it is. I have also argued that
Silkhorn's astral travel is spatial, not temporal. The only text-based
argument for astral time-travel that I am aware of is the appearance of Silk
and Oreb in Salica's story. That is evidence that the *story* was changed,
just as Fava's story was influenced by Silkhorn, not that the past had been
changed.

Proponents of the Blue=Urth/Ushas theory have also claimed that the
Neighbors were far-future descendents of the people who repopulated Urth
after it became Ushas. Where the Green Man fits into that evolution, I don't
know. At any rate, the text contradicts the theory that the Neighbors were
some future evolutionary stage of humanity on Blushas. When Silkhorn went to
ruined Nessus with Rigoglio and others, he spoke to Mora:

------------------------------------
    "I was trapped in a pit in a ruined city of the Vanished People once," I
remarked to Mora. "Have I ever told you about that?"
    She shook her head.
    "I've been thinking about it, and about the City of the Inhumi on Green.
Those were ruins left by the Neighbors' ancient race; these were left by
ours, I believe--we are as ancient as they, or nearly." (IGJ, 315)
-------------------------------------

This means that humans and Neighbors are roughly of equal antiquity, and
implies that the Neighbors' race may even be *older* than humankind.
Elsewhere it is stated that humans and Neighbors were molded by the Outsider
from different soils. If the text means anything to this argument, then the
above quote is a dagger in the Blushas theory.

-Roy


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