(urth) Short Sun blog review

[James Wynn]

>>   James Wynn wrote:
>>  From the Urth Q&A again:
>>
>> Q: /What was Typhon's purpose in launching the Whorl and was the
>> Blue/Green [solar] system the intended destination?/ --
>>
>> A: Knowing Typhon as I do, he probably had at least half a dozen
>> purposes; but certainly one of the chief must have been
>> self-aggrandizement -- to return human kind to the stars would be a very
>> great thing indeed. Yes, the Blue-Green system was the intended destination.
>>
>> This answer would require some finessing given the evidence in the Book
>> and Urth of the New Sun that human-kind is already spread across the
>> heavens, that Typhon himself was born or reared extraterrestrially, and
>> that at some point he was still free to leave. Perhaps he means
>> returning Urth humanity to the stars. The self-aggrandizement must mean
>> he wanted to wow the humanity left on Urth, not the humanity being sent.
>> Because he deprecates his memory among the colonists.
> Roy-
> Lemur said:
> "A certain ruler, a man who had the strength to rule alone and so called
> himself the monarch, built our whorl, Patera. It was to be a message from
> himself to the universe." (LAKE, 298)
>
> The people on Urth would never see the _Whorl_, never receive the message.

Isn't this like saying that the Apollo lunar missions would never be 
seen by Americans or Soviets or the other nations it was intended to 
impress? It certainly isn't true for the Apollo missions. Why would it 
necessarily be so for the Whorl mission?


> [snip]To go from royalty
> to deity is hardly a step down in status.

To go from royalty to deity is a step up. But have the new worshipers 
FORGET your deeds as royalty is something that would be done only by 
someone ashamed of his flesh-and-blood deeds  -- unless it was 
absolutely necessary. Since Typhon probably does not fit the bill for 
the first category, he must be in the second.

There is no evidence that the non-cargo passengers on the Whorl 
worshiped the Nine. They saw the for what they were -- system interfaces 
that had gotten buggy. Only the wakers and sleepers had their memories 
tinkered with AFAIK. So the system of gods was a practical issue, just 
as Lemur described it.

u+16b9