(urth) vanished people=Hieros

[larry miller]

If the Whorl left after Severians encounter with Typhon in Urth then
that would explain the "disaster" they were trying to escape from.
Surely Typhon recognized Severian as the Conciliator/New Sun and
possibly had some knowledge of what his presence signified (the
arrival of the  White Fountain and flooding of Urth) and built the
Whorl and Mainframe so that he could live on after the flood.  That
was the basis of my ark theory anyway.

On 11/10/11, Gerry Quinn <gerry at bindweed.com> wrote:
>
>
> From: Marc Aramini
> Sent: Thursday, November 10, 2011 3:02 PM
> To: The Urth Mailing List
> Subject: Re: (urth) vanished people=Hieros
> --- On Thu, 11/10/11, Marc Aramini <marcaramini at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>> Can the moon be an asteroid or not? No?
>
> I suppose it could be described as one, especially by someone who didn’t
> know where it originated.  The definition of ‘asteroid’ is a bit vague, but
> it’s generally thought of as a small body, too small to become a sphere due
> to its own gravitational force.
> The largest asteroids are about 500 miles in diameter somewhat ellipsoidal –
> there are moves to categorise them as dwarf planets.  The Moon is over 2000
> miles in diameter and spherical.  So it doesn’t really fit the picture if
> you expect an asteroid to be somewhat irregular in shape.
> Also, the Moon’s gravity would render hollowing it out next to impossible.
> And despite the Whorl being both large and of ill-defined size,  it is
> difficult to imagine that it could be as large as the Moon.
>> > The passage of time makes it difficult to imagine that the
>> > long sun whorl didn't go somehwere, unless it's not 300 but
>> > 3000 years as the lost digit in Maytera's ruminations might
>> > hint at - not enough information.  It seems to have
>> > gone somewhere.
>
> I’m guessing the intention is that it travelled for 300 years Whorl-time,
> but due to relativistic time dilation that was about 2000 years on Urth.  [A
> problem is that Sol seems to be visible, albeit dimly, in the skies of Blue,
> indicating a distance of less than a hundred light years.  Another is that
> if Typhon had that much energy at his disposal, solar dimming shouldn’t have
> troubled him.  But it’s in accordance with SF tropes, so I think we are
> probably intended to read it so rather than nit-pick the physics.  An
> alternative explanation is that the Whorl travelled at only a small fraction
> of light speed, in which case only 300 years passed on Urth also.]
>
>> > I always saw it as an ark, too.
>
> Well, a generation ship in SF *is* an ark.  But if the implication of ‘ark’
> includes escape from a disaster, it doesn’t really work.  Typhon was surely
> at the height of his powers when he had it constructed.
>
> - Gerry Quinn
>
>