Date: Sun, 7 Sep 2003 19:11:05 -0700
Subject: Re: (urth) Duh! Part 2.
From: Don Doggett 


On Sunday, September 7, 2003, at 01:02 PM, James Jordan wrote:

>
> This is also the problem with reincarnation/metempsychosis. This 
> transference is soul is nothing different than if an animal at my 
> decaying body and my body transferred into him. There's nothing of 
> what makes me ME left. The difference between reincarnation and 
> personal annihiliation is merely a sleight-of-hand.
>
>

And yet this is exactly what happens when the Alzabo eats Severa or 
Severian eats the forebrain of Appian.  This is also what happens with 
the Inhumi when they feed on humans or (if the theory is correct)  to 
the trees on Blue when they devour things.  In UotNS Barbatus (I think) 
makes the analogy of a poem written on a wall or on a piece of paper 
(or some such, you get the idea)   Which is the real poem or the real 
soul?  Typhon?  Silk? Pas?  Severian the original, or Severian the 
eidolon?  Or is it the Severian in the mausoleum?  This is the biggest 
question in these books, and a deliberately open one, though I'm sure 
GW has his opinion.  As far as Typhon, there are practical reasons that 
he can't transfer himself directly into a clone.  Piaton is his 
strongest slave, the only one who could survive the head transplant, so 
that's out.  Transfering his brain won't work because the neural 
connections are too complicated.  This is all given in Sword of the 
Lictor.  Copying himself into a program and transfering himself into a 
clone on Urth gives him two Typhons.  No good.  He wouldn't share power 
even with himself.  This is what I think.  Silk was raised to be 
occupied by Pas and rule until Typhon the immortal (so he thought) 
could reorganize his empire and quietly dispose of him and take over 
his primitively equipped colonies, hence the lack of stellar weapons on 
the Whorl.  What he didn't count on, on Urth or the Whorl, was the 
rebellion of his family disrupting these plans.  And he certainly 
didn't count on the intervention of the Outsider in the life of his 
little uberclone.  Didn't GW recently give a speech saying that no one 
is beyond redemption?  I truly believe that is one of the strongest 
streams and themes running through this cycle.

Don
steps off his box


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