(urth) Fish and Caves

[Gerry Quinn]

Marc, I think some of your ideas about the Short Sun are very interesting, esp. Horn as Babbie.  I'm less convinced about Neighbours possessing Horn, either your version of it or James's.  But I need to re-read the Short Sun trilogy before I make too many comments on those matters.

However I can't really accept the theory that Urth and Lune are Green and Blue.  Unlike you I see lots of compelling evidence, or perhaps it would be more correct to say that I do not buy your theory that the humans (and animals) of Urth suddenly all mutated into a different species! 

Also, here is Silk/Horn stating explicitly that Urth orbits a distant star:

********************************
"Soon it will be evening," he said. "If we still haven't gone, we'll go up onto the roof of this house. Standing on the tiles I will point and you will peer until at last you see a certain dim red star. It's a long, long way from here. Think of it now, the sky like black velvet strewn with diamonds in the bottom of a grave, and among the diamonds a minute drop of blood.

"There is a whorl circling that star, an ancient whorl. On that whorl, Juganu, there is an old city you have seen, and through it a river. Its waters are turbid and foul, and seem scarcely to move. You know that river; you have sailed on it. There are women in that river, women who swim up from the sea. I do not speak of the feignings of the sea goddess, but of real women. Some are as tall as towers, some no larger than children. Their hair is green and streams behind them when they swim, their nipples black, and their eyes and lips and nails as red as blood.

*********************************

(Interesting too that he distinguishes the brides of Abaia from the "feignings of the sea goddess" - and just WHICH sea goddess does he mean?  But that's another matter.)


As for Fomalhaut, there is one question mark over it, which is its distance from Urth - only 25 light years.  That does have the advantage that the Whorl could have travelled at a non-relativistic speed to get there, which at least solves the question of why Typhon, if he commanded such energies, did not himself create a new sun for Urth and Lune.  However, that's an excessively technical quibble anyway, as Wolfe is not a hard SF writer.  But Fomalhaut's distance raises another technical problem which I think is more serious in the literary context - there appears to have been a significant amout of relativistic time dilation on board the Whorl; perhaps 2000 years have passed on Urth while 300 passed on board the Whorl and Blue/Green.  However, a 200-year journey to Fomalhaut would have caused a time discrepancy of only a few months.

Of course, Fomalhaut could have moved since our time, but then it would no longer be in the Fishes Mouth!

Still, there are minor issues (as is the fact that Fomalhaut is too young for advanced life to have evolved on its planets) - it may be that Wolfe did not worry about them.  

Overall, I don't see any particular reason to believe that the ancient intelligence contacted by the Cumaean lived on Green or Blue, but no particular reason to rule it out either.

- Gerry Quinn
 



  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Marc Aramini 
  To: The Urth Mailing List 
  Sent: Wednesday, December 22, 2010 3:06 PM
  Subject: Re: (urth) Fish and Caves



        Now, Lee, this mention of Formalhaut, the Fish's Mouth, the first compelling evidence I have seen that in fact Green/Blue is not just Urth/Lune substitute from Yesod, with the last lines of the Short Sun being Good fishing, good fishing, good fishing, etc.

        I am under the impression that there is some other mechanism of astral/temporal transport at work that allows Silk et al to go back in time with Rigoglio instead of just across space, that on Green the city they walk through is the ancient remains of Nessus, that they are in a future setting and the bird like man on the cliff with the stiff awkward gate might be the immortal remnant of Sev, etc but what my theory is missing is a compelling reason why they would go to that time period, I can't seem to realy find one except that Silk is obssessing about the dust of the past or something.  (We've seen Silk in weird time paradox situations twice - once in the old lady's story at the beginning of IGJ, and in Long Sun where such a huge deal is made about whether Silk is wearing a blue or black tunic in some scenes - important to keep track of that more carefully on my next read through.)

        BUT the fishes mouth, well, you know, let's see where that goes.  And yes, I agree that the story of Fish and Frog must be very important, too, though I used it once to argue that Pia was Sev's sister (her description of dark hair with pale features, high cheekbones and a thin waist really mirrors Sevs, and he finds a girl who looks like Pia eviscerated in Baldander's castle) and that one of them was sent down the river, but someone convinced me the river was headed the wrong way or something.


        --- On Wed, 12/22/10, Lee Berman <severiansola at hotmail.com> wrote:


          Considering the fish that ate Mamelta and perhaps the fish in Father Inire's  The Cumaean says she is contacting a being on a planet circling the star, Fomalhaut,
          "The Fish's Mouth", 
          ......
          I think Fomalhaut is a very good candidate for the star around which Blue and Green orbit.
       




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