(urth) Short Sun blog review

[DAVID STOCKHOFF]

I agree. Point taken about the probable lack of television exposure as we know it, but an even better comparison might be to the Tower of Babel---whose building was an act of hubris, but which could be looked on with genuine pride by all who saw or heard of it. It's the kind of thing that cements the reputation of a king as a statesman, or an emperor as a god. 
Maybe the peasants of the time didn't know or care, but the important people would have seen what was going on and understood why it was important. No king can be overthrown who actually restores the glory of a national past.
I wonder how much the glasses were able to transmit back home during the voyage, or if they were designed to do so at all.

--- On Wed, 9/22/10, James Wynn <crushtv at gmail.com> wrote:

From: James Wynn <crushtv at gmail.com>
Subject: Re: (urth) Short Sun blog review
To: "The Urth Mailing List" <urth at lists.urth.net>
Date: Wednesday, September 22, 2010, 11:44 AM


>>> 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.
>> 
>> James Wynn-
>> 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?
> 
> António Pedro Marques-
> The Apollo missions wouldn't be as impressive if they hadn't really been
> shown to reach the moon. The landings on Blue/Green weren't televised back
> to Urth.

Let's try a different analogy. Do the governments of Pakistan and Iran need to use a nuclear weapon for their nuclear weapon projects to inspire patriotism?

Imagine footage of the construction of Whorl...the carving of the asteroid, the building of the cities, the prospect of sending thousands of Urthlings to a distant planet that could be freely portrayed as a fertile Eden, a lucrative opportunity, and a Land of Adventure. The actual landing of the colonists was almost irrelevant. What mattered  was the huge propagandist art based on the construction project and the /aspirations/ of its purpose. The Whorl would be a monument...the Hoover Dam, the Golden Gate Bridge, and Mt. Rushmore to the third power. It would definitely capture the imagination of the masses and *portray Typhon's rule as one of affluence, technology, and limitless power*.

In Lan Wright's "The Last Hope of the Earth" (which has far to many parallels to the LS/SS to be coincidental), the colonization project was the central support for Earth morale even though no one on Earth had seen any of the actual colonies. Typhon would not have been saddled with /their/ limitations. And to the extent that realities of the project was less than inspiring, the Whorl was far enough away that he could make stuff up.

u+16b9
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