From: "Dan'l Danehy-Oakes" <ddanehy@siebel.com>
Subject: RE: (whorl) Twin planets
Date: Mon, 9 Apr 2001 10:08:32 

> Daniel, 

Grumble: It's "Dan'l," with no "ie". Or "Blattid," or "Roach"
if y'all prefer.


> the Dante parallels could do with a lot of expansion (how
> about it?), 

When I'm done reading Dante -- I only noticed because I happened
to decide to read the Commedia recently.


> and the intertextuality with Le Guin's THE DISPOSSESSED is compelling.
> A thought there: in a Le Guin/Wolfe mapping, Anarres (attempt at
> utopia)=Blue, and Urras (dystopia)=both Urth (old, over-exploited,
> hopeless) and Green (like capitalist A-Io in THE DISPOSSESSED, only a
> Darwinist Hell in place of a Social Darwinist one.)

H'mmm.  I think this underestimates the "ambiguous" of Le Guin's
subtitle: THE DISPOSSESSED is about two worlds each of which 
_claims_ to be "utopian" vis-a-vis the other, but neither quite
manages to be a utopia. I think the key to understanding THE 
DISPOSSESSED is an idea expressed (of all places) in THE BOOK OF 
THE NEW SUN v.1 -- the passage of the lake of the dead in Hildegrin's
boat, where Dorcas delivers herself of a little speech on how the
good and the evil in the world remain in a kind of balance between
internal and external. 

Of course, Le Guin isn't a Catholic, but move the idea in to her
belief-system and you have the key to THE DISPOSSESSED: each world 
_ought_ to be a Utopia, Urras because it has the resources, Anarres 
because it has the anarcho-Taoist philosophy: but neither quite makes 
it because it lacks what the other possesses. Each is dispossessed, 
each incomplete without the other. 

Of course, any simple mapping to THE DISPOSSESSED is going to be 
radically flawed because SHORT SUN contrasts four worlds, not two,
and (counting roughly off the top of my head) at least ten systems 
of governance -- Viron's, New Viron's, Gaon's, Soldo's, Blanko's, 
the village on Green, the inhumi city, Dorp, uh, the place at the
end of the Whorl where Pig gets his eye, and the Commonwealth: all 
their governances are shown at least in miniature; all are offered
to us in contrast with the others.

H'mmm.

Does someone have handy their copy of SHADOW? It would be 
interesting to look at SHORT SUN in comparison with the short 
treatise on governance Severian recites to the Malrubius-
aquastor.

--Dan'l


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