(urth) Ansible Interview

Tue Jan 27 11:44:27 PST 2009

Hello!

On 27 stycznia 2009, Jordon Flato wrote:

Are one of you going to pony up with some drawings or are we going to have to arrange for a duel?

Myself, I'd much rather see some drawings.

I'm having a devil of a time seeing anything but High noon all over the Whorl.

On Mon, Jan 26, 2009 at 7:41 AM, Matthew Groves <matthewalangroves at gmail.com> wrote:

No, each valley -- each bowl would be filled with shadow.  The
topography of the inner surface of the Whorl would have to be much
more eccentric than I had ever pictured it.

On Mon, Jan 26, 2009 at 5:16 AM, Jeff Wilson <jwilson at io.com> wrote:
> In this scenario, does "to the rim" mean the valleys are each filled to
> their respective rim, or does it refer to some larger container, like the
> Whorl itself perhaps?
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I am afraid you both start with a mistaken presupposition in regard to the Long Sun. Let's see some quotes from the books: 

"Exodus from the Long Sun"

"It's like the skylands," Horn ventured, "except we're a little closer and it's daytime." 
"A great deal closer, and the sun has already begun to narrow. We haven't much time left in which to look at this. A few hours at most." 

...
The airship had revolved, whether from the torque of its engines or the pressure of some passing breeze, until Mainframe stood upright as a wall, its black slabs of colossal mechanism jutting toward them and its Pylon an endless bridge that dwarfed the airship and vanished into night. 
Horn gestured. "See, Caldé? We don't have to sit on the edge, but we can go over there if you want to. Way, way down you can see the Mountains That Look At Mountains, I guess. It's kind of blue at first, then so bright you can't be sure." 
Nettle emerged from the hatch. "I still don't understand what Mainframe is, Caldé. Just all those things with the lights running over them? And why do they have roofs here if it can't rain? How would they get the rain to come down?" 
"This is Mainframe," Silk told her. "You are seeing it." 
....

Nettle said, "Caldé, you never did answer my question about the roofs. And I wanted to know why the shade's so close here, and we can't see the sun." 
"The Pylon makes it," Horn declared, "or anyhow it shoots it into the sky. Isn't that right, Caldé? Then the sun burns it but instead of smoke it turns into air. If the Pylon didn't shoot out more, the shade would burn up and there'd be daylight all the time. Only Mainframe would fry, because it's so close. The sun starts at the top of the Pylon and goes all the way to the West Pole." 

"Nightside of the Long Sun"

It had been late already when they had left the city. Beyond the black streak of the shade, the skylands had been as clear and as bright as Silk (who normally retired early and rose at shadeup) had ever seen them; he stared at them as he rode, his thoughts drowned in wonder. Here were nameless mountains filling inviolate valleys to the rim with their vast, black shadows. Here were savannah and steppe, and a coastal plain ringing a lake that he judged must certainly be larger than Lake Limna—all these doming the gloomy sky of night while they themselves were bathed in sunlight.

...

"I don't agree, though I won't argue with you now. What I wanted to say was that there is really nothing strange at all about what I'm doing, or about your helping me to do it. Does the sun ever go out, Auk? Does it ever wink out as you or I might snuff out a lamp?"

"I don't know, Patera. I never thought about it. Does it?"

Silk had not replied, continuing in silence down the muddy street, matching Auk stride for stride.

"I guess it don't. You couldn't see them skylands up there nightside, if it did."

...

The sky was empty or seemed so, the skylands invisible behind the endless, straight glare of the sun. Fliers, if there were any, were invisible too. Above the tops of the trees on the other side of the wall, distant fields curved upward, vanishing in a blue haze as they mounted the air. Lake Limna seemed a fragment of mirror set into the whorl, like a gaud into a cheap picture frame.

"Calde of the Long Sun"

Every god claimed that final line, even Tartaros, the god of night, and Scylla, the goddess of water. While he heaved the bull's head onto the altar and positioned it securely, he reflected that "by fire set us free" must once have belonged to Pas alone. Or perhaps to Kypris—love was a fire, and Kypris had possessed Chenille, whose hair was dyed flaming red. What of the fires that dotted the skylands beneath the barren stone plain that was the belly of the Whorl? 

(the following happens during the night, but the skylands are shadowy)

There were fires, as she could see easily from the peak, one just a few streets away. Saddle Street or String Street, she decided, probably Saddle Street, because that was where the pawnbrokers were. More fires beyond it, right up to the market and on the other side, as was to be expected. Darkness except for a few lighted windows up on Palatine Hill.
Which meant, more surely than any rumor or announcement, that Maytera Mint had not won. Hadn't won yet. Because the Hill would burn, would be looted and burned as predictably as the sixth term in a Fibonacci series of ten was an eleventh of the whole. With the Civil Guard beaten, nothing—
Before she could complete the thought, she caught sight of it, way to the south. She had been looking west toward the market and north to the Palatine, but it was over the Orilla... No, leagues south of that, way over the lake. Hanging low in the southern sky and, yes, opposing the wind in some fashion, because the wind was in the north, was blowing cold out of the north where night was new, because the wind must have come up, now that she came to think of it, only a few minutes before while she had been in the palaestra cutting up the last of the meat and carrying it down to the root cellar. She had come upstairs again and found her hoarded wrapping papers blown all over the kitchen, and shut the window.
So this thing—this huge thing, whatever it might be—had been over the city or nearly over it when she had glimpsed it above the back wall of the ball court. And it wasn't being blown south any more, as a real cloud would be; if anything, it was creeping north toward the city again, was creeping ever so slowly down the sky.
She watched for a full three minutes to make sure.
Was creeping north like a beetle exploring a bowl, losing heart at times and retreating, then inching forward again. It had been here, had been over the city, before. Or almost over it, when the wind had risen—had been taken unawares, as it seemed, and blown away over the lake; and now it had collected its strength to return, wind or no wind.
So briefly that she was not sure she had really seen it, something flashed from the monstrous dark flying bulk, a minute pinprick of light, as though someone in the shadowy skylands behind it had squeezed an igniter. 

The sparkling path divided. He hesitated, then turned to his right. A few steps more, and there was no light save that from the skylands floating above the whorl. "His Cognizance would like this as much as we do, I believe, Oreb. I've been in his garden at the Palace, and this reminds me of it, though that's an open-air garden, and this can't be nearly as large." 

When he opened his eyes again, she was back with an old man whose name he had forgotten, the waiter who had offered him wine in the sellaria, the one who had told him of Remora, the footman who had opened the door, and others. They rolled him onto something and picked him up, so that he seemed to float somewhere below the level of their waists, looking up at the belly of the vast dark thing that had come between the bright skylands and the glass roof. His hand found hers. She smiled down at him and he smiled too, so that they journeyed together, as they had on the deadcoach in his dream, in the companionable silence of two who have overcome obstacles to be together, and have no need of noisy words, but rest—each in the other. 

Grease the steps now, and scrub them, too; then it would be light out and time to hang the wash, the first thin thread of the long sun cutting the skylands in two. 

...

And now let's again see the interview:
http://www.ansible.co.uk/cc/cc77.html#wolfe

8. How is Silk able to see these valleys filled with shadows [in the skylands at night, at the opening of chapter 4, book 1] if the Whorl is a cylinder with the long sun running approximately down the centre?  -- This one throws me completely. Where is the difficulty, unless all the valleys run parallel to the Long Sun? Naturally they don't. [DRL: I see a Wolfean trap here. The groundlings' references to the 'shade' of night strongly suggest a literal revolving shade around the sun. But there are later indications that night involves some sort of dark stuff sent in pulses along the axis to mask a certain length of the Long Sun.]

Now, look again at the 3rd quote, that about the shade being created by Pylon.

You all presuppose that the shade is a kind of stiff lampshade revolving around the Long Sun, so that if at midnight you were standing on the inner surface of the Whorl and looking lengthwise (east-west), towards the Mainframe (East Pole) or the West Pole, there would midnight at all points of that imaginary line. 

But that is not true. The shade is launched from the Pylon near Mainframe as a kind of spiral or helix, which is gradually burning down. It is not a stiff construct, and it does not cover the whole length of Long Sun in a straight line. So, if you look east towards Mainframe, there will be alternate zones of night and day before you. 

Now, if the Shadeup (morning) comes from the East, the light will fall parallel to the Long sun, but not from straight up, from the Zenith - since above you the Shade is still covering the long sun. In fact, even when the sun is wholly covered, there will be some diffused light from the east.

Similarly, at Shadelow (evening) the light will come from the West.

And so, since, as Wolfe said, not all the valleys run parallel to the Long Sun, those which are not parallel will be filled with shadow at their shadeup and shadelow. 

-- 
Best regards,
Stanislaus B.

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