From: "Roy C. Lackey" 
Subject: (urth) Typhon as Silk?
Date: Sat, 15 Mar 2003 02:32:53 -0600

Don wrote:
>I would add in reply to Roy that Typhon being
>the baddest man in the galaxy actually furthers my thematic argument of
>his redemption.  Silk is arguably one of the best men in the galaxy.
>If they are the same person then, in addition to it being highly ironic
>(almost reason enough on its own), it is also the ultimate expression
>of the power and the Grace (in the theological sense) of the Outsider.
>Compare that to the ham fisted approach of the hiero's in dealing with
>the situation.

Unless you are willing to posit the Hierogrammates their own third-party
agenda, were they not angelic agents of the Increate?

As for your "thematic argument" for the "redemption" of Typhon, even as an
unbeliever I have a hard time swallowing that. Let's see: Typhon bankrupted
Urth's remaining natural resources (mostly to massage his own ego); by some
accounts he caused the wounding of the sun (leading to the passage of the
New Sun and the deaths of millions); he ordered the kidnapping of tens of
thousands of people, brainwashed them and doomed generations of their
descendents to being his worshipful playthings on the _Whorl_; he
slaughtered people wholesale ("I watched him kill a thousand once. Men,
mostly." -- Kypris, LS1:12). An omnipotent Increate/Outsider
permitted/ordained all that suffering, balanced the cosmic scales on the
backs of the innocent, just to save the soul of one evil miscreant who never
contributed a dime's worth to his own salvation or was made to suffer in any
way for the evil he had done? Is this the same Increate who kept Moses from
the Promised Land for the moral equivalent of a parking ticket?

Then, on top of all that, Silk's soul is hijacked to sweeten the kitty.
Instead of being a person unique in the Increate's Creation, Silk is
subordinated to Typhon. Typhon gets a second chance, through no merit of his
own. If Typhon gets to Heaven riding Silk's coattails, where is the justice?
If Silk is a clone of Typhon, do clones have souls of their own? If so, how
can Typhon be redeemed by another's goodness?

-Roy


--