Subject: Re: (urth) Who is the Long Sun?
From: matthew.malthouse@guardian.co.uk
Date: Tue, 9 Sep 2003 10:41:39 +0100

On 06/09/2003 16:56:13 "Andrew Bollen" wrote:

>Roy wrote:
>
>> All this casual talk of cloning that's been going on lately from 
various
>> quarters strikes me as improbable, given what we know of Typhon. He 
wanted
>> to live forever--and he wanted to do it with the same face he started 
out
>> with. If cloning had been a workable option available to Typhon, why
>didn't
>> he use it, rather than resort to the bizarre choice of having his own 
head
>> cut off?
>
>Another gap between New Sun and SS/LS. IMO it would be odd if the Typhon 
of
>SS/LS could not clone huimans, given the apparent level of genetic
>technology at his command. And as Roy says, if the Typhon of NS could 
clone,
>and given that he can download personailites, a head transplant doesn't 
seem
>like the best solution to his problem.

We can store egg and sperm.  We can perform in vitro fertilisation and 
store the resulting gamete.  However human cloning remains a theoretical 
proposition and the "success" of animal cloning problematic.

If Typhon could do better such technologies would seem to have presented a 
simpler solution than chems.

The personality download is clearly possible but we can't say that it is 
perfect.  Pas is not the Typhon we glimps on Urth.  If the dlifferences 
are deliberate rather than an artifact of an imperfect process we need a 
motivation for the manipulations.

For New, Long and Short suns to be internally consistant Typhon cannot 
have perfect cloning or more esoteric genetic manipulation at his 
disposal.

If they are not internally conistsant (be that as deliberate policy or 
from the constraints of retro-fitting Typhon into the more recent story) 
there can be no coherant solution apt to both stories.

For my part I suspect that Typhon was a lot more technologically 
constrained than he sugegstes to Severain at either of their meetings.

Matthew

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