(urth) Grand Unified Theory

James Wynn crushtv at gmail.com
Sun Aug 29 20:12:24 PDT 2010


  :
>   
>
>     James Wynn - I think we should be looking for him elsewhere in the
>     story, as well. 
>
> Dave Tallman - Yes, there may be other places, but given the way 
> astral travel is portrayed I don't look for years-long roles (like the 
> entire lifetime of Patera Pike during the time Silk knew him). It's 
> not necessary for the known sighting -- Silk only got a glimpse of the 
> face of his older self, shadowed by the culotte. If you insist on 
> identical faces, then the Typhon clone theory can be brought in, but I 
> don't think it's required.

Oh no! In a Wolfe story I must insist that if a misidentification 
occurs, it is accurate in some way. Yes, there is the clone theory 
available. I used to like it a great deal. I still think it is 
applicable in several instances. But the Rajan-as-Pike is appealing too. 
I like it because it would answer what became of the Rajan -- to at 
least some degree. It turns a very strange ending to the Book of the 
Short Sun into a very Wolfean ending. I mean it turns it into an ending 
like that in "Peace" where you get to the end and say WTH? And then you 
think about the story and realize that the answers you were expecting at 
the end have already been answered. Knowing that the Rajan can 
Time-travel causes me to think we also should expect to find in these 
seven volumes, under other identities, Seawrack, Nettle, and Marble who 
left with him for the Whorl.

> I'm not sure about the argument from silence for the lack of relatives for Hyacinth. She was probably estranged from them all, so they wouldn't be invited to her wedding. If some of them tried to reconnect and were rebuffed that might not be important enough to include in the story. She was bitter about her past: "Hyacinth had hated all men, had hated men in the aggregate, because of things that had been said to her and things she had been forced to do for money, humiliations worse than spoiled fish."

Yeah, spoiled fish. It's an Oreb reference that I don't get. But let me 
move to your next point.

> That seems to me the worst thing about this theory -- what it does to 
> the Rajan's character. I could forgive Silk for killing Hyacinth in a 
> fit of rage and despair, but to force a young woman into years of 
> degradation merely to recreate the woman he loved is so morally 
> repugnant that it would destroy the story for me. He's better than that.

This argument I get.  But it's based, I believe, on a misapprehension. I 
do not believe that the Rajan = Silk or even "=Silk primarily". The 
Rajan has all Horn's memories, and he has all Silk's memories and Silk's 
body. But he is also the greenbuck Neighbor who reanimated them both. 
Three quills in a used case, as Stuart Hamm pointed out. The Rajan is 
not acting selfishly.  He views the situation more objectively. He knows 
that it must happen such-and-such a way for a cause that is good. This 
is like the argument whether Tzadkiel is good or evil. Abaia argues that 
the plan is evil. He certainly has a point. And I do not believe that 
Hy/Fava is an unwilling participant. Hy resents what she is forced to do.

Rather than degrading the Rajan, this theory uplifts Hy. She is, in a 
way, a Christ-figure. I do agree that she hates men in the way the Fire 
Aelf in The Wizard Knight hated humanity for their cruelty and greed.  
But, I am arguing that she has agreed to play her part in all this for 
the sake of the end--to be a wife to Silk. She could bail out if she 
chose. The Rajan has never seemed to be inclined to force anyone to do 
anything.

u+16b9
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