(urth) interview questions

[Jeff Wilson]

On 12/30/2010 2:59 AM, Lee Berman wrote:
>
>
>> Jordon Flato: I'm intrigued by this notion you're playing out Lee.  I'm not completely on
>> board, but I really like the idea of the loss of purity in the human strain,
>> so to speak.  Especially what you bring up about Dr. Talos' play......In terms of the role of
>> demons, and how they relate to the Hiero's and hierogrammates, for me the theme that resonates
>> more with this (and I fin this particularly true with the Inhumu/Human chain), is the idea of a
>> lower life form being raised to a higher state by a higher form.  So, as we become
>> 'higher' in taking the blood of Christ, so the inhumu become higher by taking the blood of man.
>
> I think you are right on track Jordon. What bothers many about my view of BotNS is that it involves
> Severian being the product of alien/fallen angel types and humans mating. Too Creepy! Scientifically
> impossible! etc. etc. This doesn't bother them reading a story about Hercules or Gilgamesh or
> other giant demi-god folk heroes. But when it comes to SEVERIAN, well!

Hercules' and Gilgamesh's stories don't include extended meditations on 
numerous scientific principles, and they do not appeal to the authority 
of science to suspend the reader's disbelief in their fantastic 
elements, while Sev's story does many times over.

> We are creeped out by the possibility of Severian's being partially inhuman because the story is told
> in first person. He is SO human to us, in contrast to Hercules or Gilgamesh. Severian himself is so creeped
> by his alien heritage that he lies or feigns ignorance and refuses to openly discuss the creepier aspects of
> his being, hinting to us only with labels like "Father" Inire. (Inire does not call himself that).

Whose father does? Did your dad introduce himself to people as "Father 
Berman?"

> For example:
>
> We know from mythology that the mermaid's "kiss" confers the ability to breathe underwater. We have Juturna's
> word during an erotic interlude that she can give Severian this ability. We have Baldanders with strange
> scars on his neck, an association with Juturna and him breathing under water.
>
> Then, at the end of UotNS we have Severian encountering Juturna again a couple times. We have Severian able
> to swim for hours or days underwater. We have Severian mistaken for a fish god. But never does he admit
> "kissing" Juturna. *Come clean Severian!!!* What are you not telling us??? You screwed the undine and you have
> gills. Your being is partly from Fomalhaut in the constellation Pisces.

Given the profound difference in scale, how could Sev's encounter on the 
strand with Juturna be characterized as erotic?

And how is he connected to Fomalhaut? The Cumaean is, but her use of a 
link to a familiar power to help her call Apu Punchau to manifest 
doesn't make it a full circuit.


-- 
Jeff Wilson - jwilson at io.com
Computational Intelligence Laboratory - Texas A&M Texarkana
< http://www.tamut.edu/CIL >