(urth) interview questions

[Roy C. Lackey]

James Wynn wrote:
> Well, here's the deal on Sol vs Blue/Green.
>
> Marc, you have a couple quotes that give me pause--that have always made
> me feel that Sol and the sun of the Neighbors are very close. When the
> Rajan says
>
>     "I've been thinking about it, and about the City of the Inhumi on
>     Green. Those were ruins left by the Neighbors' ancient race; these
>     [ruins in Nessus] were left by ours, I believe -- we are as ancient
>     as they, or nearly"
>
> ...it reminds me of the scene in Dicken's "A Christmas Carol" where the
> Spirit of Christmases Yet to Come takes Scrooge to hear discussions
> about a man who has died. At last Scrooge says:
>
>     "Spirit, I see. I see. The case of this unhappy man might be my own.
>     My life tends that way, now."
>
> On the other hand, the quotes supporting this view are scanty and
> obscure. And Roy--although IMO his refutations often prove far less than
> he believes they do--in this case I must admit that they are at least as
> weighty as yours.

Huh.

I really, really don't want to get into another tedious Urth/Ushas = Green
or Blue debate; it's been done to death. But since you brought up weighty
arguments, I don't recall that this one has been brought up before:

If the ruined city on Green is actually the ruins of Nessus, then Green is
post-deluge Urth, which is Ushas. Unless Urth's Lune was somehow made to
disappear and a ringer planet brought in to replace it, then Blue is Lune.

Unless science counts only when it pertains to certain subjects (say, how to
plant and grow kernels of maize) but can be safely disregarded when it comes
to simple physics, the last time I checked, the pull of gravity on the moon
is only about one-sixth that of the pull of gravity on Earth. On the LSW,
the rotation of the ship simulated gravity. It isn't explicit that the
ship's simulated gravity = 1 gee, but I have always assumed that it must
have been pretty close. For these purposes, it doesn't really matter because
gravity is going to be a problem for this theory, no matter what. Wolfe put
enough thought into the ship's simulated gravity to have a Guard floater
start "flying" when it went too fast in the wrong direction relative to the
ship's spin, the floater that crashed into the pit at the Alambrera.

There is no indiction whatsoever that the colonists who landed on Blue
experienced any significant changes in their perceptions of gravity;
Silkhorn failed to note any difference. We are not exposed to what the
colonists who went directly from the LSW to Green experienced when they
arrived. But we do have the instances of Horn and Sinew going from Blue to
Green on a lander. Horn was born on the LSW, but Sinew was born on Blue. If
Blue is Lune and Green is Ushas, Sinew should have collapsed upon being
forced to endure six-times his normal weight. Neither father nor son seem to
have had any difficulties with Green's gravity.

-Roy