From: "Dan'l Danehy-Oakes" <ddanehy@siebel.com>
Subject: RE: (whorl) Pas[sing] as Urthling
Date: Mon, 12 Mar 2001 16:06:58 

> For all we know Typhon's body--the part we never see (although I
> hear the autopsy photos may soon appear on FOX)--could have any
> number of limbs, or even one hundred heads, like the Typhon of
> Classical Mythology.

Some of us, as it happens, _have_ reread SWORD recently. My copy
isn't here at work with me, but... Do you recall _why_ he did a
head transplant instead of just putting his brain into Piaton's
body?  "The face." One. People were accustomed to obeying this one
face. Reasonable conclusion: Typhon-pre-surgery had one face and
thus, most likely, one head. 

Supporting evidence: A race with two or more heads (in, at least,
the usual meaning of this phrase) and only one personality would 
_not_ have the personality "stored" in a single head. Either it
would be distributed among heads, or it would be somewhere else
(cf. Pierson's Puppeteers). But Typhon is a single, apparently
normal human, head, grafted onto Piaton's body.


> Factoring in the "I was not born as I am, or born at all"
> leaves even more wriggle room, no?

Yes, but not for the "Typhon is a Neighbor" theory. (When 
a theory starts needing wiggle room, it's probably time to 
abandon it.) Much more plausible (particularly given the 
level of biotech that produced Silk and Mucor) is the idea 
that he was a gengineered in-vitro "birth." 

Actually, I picture him as looking like Ricardo Montalban...

--Blattid


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