Date: Thu, 14 Aug 2003 20:42:20 -0700
Subject: Re: (urth) Two Ships
From: Lisa Schaffer-Doggett 


On Thursday, August 14, 2003, at 07:21 AM, Andrew Bollen wrote:

> The universes of New Sun and Short Sun really don't fit together very
> snugly. IMO, if you took them as standalones, you'd say that Short Sun 
> is in
> the future, while New Sun is in the *deep* future. A few hundred years
> versus a geological age or two. I think that GW did a lot of 
> back-filling to
> tie them together. (Not that I really mind - myths are generlly cobbled
> together from pieces which don't fit very well, in a logical sense.)
>
> Obvious examples:
>
> - Typhon in New Sun at least desires to rule an inter-stellar empire, 
> and
> offers Sev the job of satrap of Earth. How does this make any sense 
> without
> superluminal travel? If Typhon can travel faster than light, why build 
> the
> Whorl? If he can't, is he really going to feel good about a clunky
> slower-than-light hollow asteroid crawling through space while the 
> immense
> shp/s of the Hiero-whatsits leap/s over dimesnional boundaries?
> - The universe of New Sun has a bunch of human-settled planets in some 
> kind
> of contact with each other, if only via port-calls by Tzadkiel's ship. 
> Why
> would Typhon think it was a cool thing to send out a slow boat to 
> found a
> crappy little colony when these old, established ones already exist, 
> and he
> presumably intends to conquer them?
> - The literary survivals from our age in the Chras Writings are 
> *really*
> implausible for a deep future setting.
> - At some point in Exodus Silk talks of French and Latin as extant 
> languages
> (at least literary languages). Ditto.
> - Why none of the bio-engineered animals from New Sun on the Whorl? No
> destriers, no smilodons ...
> - Why no chems on Urth, apart from throwbacks like Jonah? Maybe there 
> are
> some around at the time of Sev vs Typhon in UOTNS; we don't meet them,
> AFAIK. But surely Typhon's army would have been predominantly chems?
>
>

Don replies:

I think that these "inconsistencies" that you bring up may very well 
point to another motive for the existence of the Whorl.  In some 
perverse way, I think Typhon is seeking to create a renewed "Urth" 
(meaning whatever planet he chooses to colonize.  It will be Urth like, 
be full of Urthlings, Urth technology and Urth animals).  French and 
Latin could easily be recreated from the books in the Library (or 
whatever stands in for the Library in Typhon's time).  Remember, the 
Whorl is not Urth and doesn't have to reflect what the trends and 
patterns are there.  It is only a reflection of Typhon's will.  As far 
as chem armies, they'd be much more costly and alienating than human 
ones.  The bio engineered animals aren't there because Typhon doesn't 
want them.  Just some thoughts.








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