(urth) This week in Google alerts

[Marc Aramini]

--- On Sat, 11/5/11, James Wynn <crushtv at gmail.com> wrote:

> From: James Wynn <crushtv at gmail.com>
>> 
> Of course, Marc, the thing is that you and I have agreed
> about those trees and liannas from the beginning. Yet, we
> fundamentally disagree about their relationship to the main
> character. And, even more so, when we have people who
> adamantly refuse to acknowledge that Dionysus is an
> important touchstone even in Return To The Whorl, let alone
> the rest of the series...well, you have to set proper
> expectations. I can understand your frustration in that you
> believe that you have discovered a revealing understanding
> of a quite opaque story, and you would have liked some help,
> but all you get is hand-waving.
> 
> But there are obstacles and the obstacles have to be
> acknowledged in order to be resolved:
> * Astronomy: What is Blue (with presumably similar gravity
> to Urth)? Where is Lune? How did Green in up in this weird
> twin planet relationship?
> 
> * Zoology: The existence of the inhumi and Blue's very
> particular wildlife is something. Of course, they could be
> transplants from elsewhere...as could the Neighbors (ala the
> world of An Evil Guest).
> 
> * Humanity: If the Neighbors are NOT humanity's future,
> where have they gone. There's the barnacled fellow Horn
> encounters coming from beneath the waves. Has humanity moved
> below the seas of Blue? Green certainly seems abandoned of
> humanity except for immigrants from the Whorl.
> 
> The hostility and derision you received did not come from a
> good place. The lack of support you received is something:
> People just didn't know where to go with the Green Urth
> Theory based on the obstacles.  This makes me think of
> my Tussah-Typhon theory. It works on a lot of levels but I
> know it is not *quite* right--there's something else going
> on I'm not aware of. I am only confident that it is pointing
> in the right direction.


Yes James, my criticism is least of all directed at you.  It was just unfortunate that I wanted to share something with the list and it ultimately cost me an intimate relationship with Wolfe in speaking about his work AND the derision of the list in one fell swoop.

Lune's presence in the sky in New Sun is a big problem - especially since I was thinking for a while that maybe the Whorl was the hollowed out Lune (thus my question, is "an asteroid" necessarily not the moon?)  But if it went somewhere, how did it come back to appear in Sev's sky, much closer?  

Some cataclysmic cosmic event does happen to the solar system at the end of Urth of the New Sun, but I don't know how to account for the changes.  Apheta's race can make planets out of nothing, but I'm not sure how to apply that.  The temperature scheme is Blue colder than Red Sun Whorl is colder than Green, so that is at least seems accurate.  The city on Green and Nessus are compared by the narrator multiple times.  There is a mechanism wherein he thinks of Green before the evil when he accidentally winds up on Urth (of course Rigoglio is there thinking of Urth, too).

The Neighbors are all that is left of old mankind: eaten and assimilated.  They are not a problem except insofar as their origin is attributed to Blue, right?  They went elsewhere or when like the Hieros.

And I really do believe the hybridization is the ONLY way to reconcile that life on Blue and its weird doubled quality - those trees are definitely sentient and eat things, the question is if that is their reproductive pathway as it is for the inhumi and for the creature in Talk of Mandrakes.  

I am fairly confident that thing with the stiff birdlike gait on the very high ground on Green is some echo or shadow of Severian from the high ground on his unsubmerged island pinnacle, though.