From: "Alice Turner" <al@interport.net>
Subject: (whorl) Re: Digest whorl.v005.n023
Date: Wed, 4 Jun 1997 09:47:20 


[Posted from WHORL, the mailing list for Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun]



>  Aren't priests the only ones who carry the gammadion?  For 
> that matter, is anyone besides Silk mentioned as having one?  
> Furthermore, the gammadion does function as a tool for working on the 
> 'Windows', the sources of 'revelation' whether you regard that revelation

> as true or false or (better I think) truth which conceals another truth? 

> And I don't think that Wolfe uses language in a sort of simple 
> equivalence such as gammadion = screwdriver and nothing more; after all, 
> he could have invented some science fictinal gobbledygook for futuristic 
> tools like they do on Star Trek (induced phase decoupler or some such 
> nonsense).

All priests carry them and have been taught to use them to fix Windows.
They get fancier with rank---Quetzal's is jeweled. Incus fixes Hammerstone
with one, and his non-priestly black mechanic pals doubtless wield them
too, possibly illegally or at least heretically. 

I don't think any of us thinks of a simple equivalent (gammadion =
screwdriver), but it doesn't hurt to use an analogy. Mantis once came up
with gammadion = Swiss Army knife, and I rather like that.

-alga-