From: "Jeff Veyera" 
Subject: (urth) Double planets not necessary
Date: Tue, 24 Dec 2002 10:10:22 -0800

Marc wrote:
As far as I understand it, the oxygen given off by trees might aid in the
formation of rain and in the formation of an atmosphere, right?

Here is something interesting - remember that Lune is bigger than the moon
in
our time, according to Rudesind the currator.  This either means it was
moved
closer or it was replaced with a much larger object.  When the long night
begins in the miracle of Apu Punchau, instead of the ship blocking out the
sun, could Severian summon Urth (a doubled version he grabs from somewhen,
maybe when he feels himself doubling and splitting in two in that scene
where
he leaves through his own ear in Citadel of the Autarch at the pelerines
altar) and replace the moon with it?  Could the passage of the white
fountain
create a twin of Urth?  To save Severian in the past with an Urthly eclipse?
Could reality have been altered in the solar system so that there are, and
always have been, twin worlds?  Could the introduction or swapping of a
planet
produce an unstable orbital pattern such as those exhibited by the
blue/green
system?  Could the picture of buzz aldron just be from a previous cycle?

I am sure that Green is Urth now. But I don't know what blue is anymore.
And
if Mr. Wolfe randomly doubled the Urth system, how the hell were we supposed
to figure that out?  Seems like cheating either way, doesn't it?

By the way, there is evidence that there isn't the same kind of biotic life
on
Blue that there is on Green, and that Blue is even colder than the Urth of
Severian's time.  Here is my question - if Green is bigger, but farther
away,
than the moon of our time, what kind of effect would it have on the tides of
a
hypothetically flooded moon?  They would be greater from farther away than
the
effect of the moon on our tides from a closer range, right?

And if people were doubled somehow, and the planet doubled as well through
some kind of mirror reality created through Inire's mirror universe, might
not
they appear doubled in limbs, too?  As the vanished people do?  Have people
gone up one dimension, and as a result become "weird" looking?

I am so confused right now.

Marc Aramini

I reply:

I think you're still trying to explain the alien nature of the Neighbors and
those 8 limbs with all this talk of planetary doubling.  If Green is Urth,
that is not truly necessary---doesn't the text indicate the Neighbors arose
on Blue and later colonized Green?  If so, it seems to make some sense that
Blue's fauna would be different from Green's, perhaps genetically engineered
for survival in a lunar terraforming effort in the distant past.


--


--