(urth) Silk beating two horses, Orpine rotting to vines, and Wolfe's dedication

[Marc Aramini]

Just wanted to also add very quickly that the proliferation of theories in attempts to explain basic elements of the story indicates Wolfe is NOT straightforward.  These kind of disagreements are impossible between intelligent readers discussing, for example, Asimov, or even most other SF authors, despite weird situations.


It says Silk's an embryo, but we have NO idea if the embryo has been grown before or is unique instead of a clone, if other embryos besides Silk are possibly related to Pas or artificially engineered.  We do see four sets of parents.  Are even Mucor and Silk related?

from Gerry: no real specific parentage is implied in concrete details in the text beyond the calde and his adoptive mother

others: Mamelta is his birth mother

Lemur: typhon wanted an heir

others: he is that heir, of Typhon and Kypris

me: Kypris is Mamelta, he is an heir to Pas

others: he is a clone of typhon or a clone of the son of typhon and kypris

me: he is meant to succeed his father
others: he is meant to be taken over by Typhon's personality
others: there are a proliferation of Typhon's family and himself, cloned and placed into the whorl, to re-establish his monarchy as it stood before.

If we can't agree on even the Plan of Pas, its because Wolfe is not straightforward and clear in explaining exactly what is going on.

We can all agree R Daneel Olivaw is a robot with human qualities.  Jonas is too, but in a really really really different way.

I don't think these basic disagreements would arise even if we were discussing Shakespeare or Joyce before Finnegan's Wake.  This multiplicity of interpretations is not possible in a straightforward author.