(urth) Pike's ghost

[Jerry Friedman]

> From: Lee Berman <severiansola at hotmail.com>
> 
>>>  If a random someone has grown a fetus from a plant root for no apparent 
> reason, I
>>>  can't see that as a more interesting interpretation than one which 
> explains
>>>  who created that fetus and for what purpose.
> 
>>  Okay.  I can't see yours as an interesting interpretation.  That's 
> a matter of taste.
> 
>> David Stockhoff: .....except that the whole cloning/in 
>> vivo/possession/scanning trope was plainly already in Wolfe's mind, and 
>> as such maybe the LS/SS arcs as well. Typhon is a major connection 
>> between Severian in the Citadel and the embryonic Silk in the Whorl. So 
>> it stands to reason that Typhon created it as a failed experiment on the 
>> way to devising his colonization strategies, but it's not a critical 
>> plot point.
> 
> It is a matter of taste. It also is a constrast between viewing Wolfe's work 
> as a series of isolated incident

I don't view it that way.  Are you perhaps reasoning that if one possible connection doesn't interest me, I don't see any connections?

> or carrying a thread of connection as David illustrates. You may take 
> a reference to a mandragora and choose a Biblical connection to Rachel and 
> exclude the possibility that it refers to cloning and a mythological man-dragon.

I didn't exclude anything.  I don't know where you got the idea that I might have.

> It's just that cloning and Typhon are intensely important themes which Wolfe 
> has developed in work previous to and post-BotNS.

So is the creation of non-cloned sentient beings, such as Dr. Talos, who you mentioned earlier.  Are you excluding that as a possibility for the mandragora?

In general, biological engineering and its creations, or should I call them its victims, are important themes in Wolfe's work.  I take it we all agree that the mandragora is an instance of that theme.

> If your preference is to ignore that, and focus on an isolated reference to Rachel

It wasn't isolated--I connected that reference and the Shulamite reference to Ymar.

> I am not going to argue that you are "wrong". But I see no 
> reason to denounce my preference for seeing multiple internal connections across 
> Wolfe's work.

Good thing I didn't denounce it.  I was arguing against your statement that there was only one internal connection from the word "mandragora".

I admit this might make you, or someone else who thought it was the only possibility, less sure of the connection.  But Wolfe is sometimes ambiguous.

Jerry Friedman