(urth) vanished people=Hieros

[António Pedro Marques]

Marc Aramini wrote (08-11-2011 12:50):
> --- On Tue, 11/8/11, António Pedro Marques<entonio at gmail.com>  wrote:
>> Nessus is of cyclopean size, but it has 'moved' along time. The
>> abandoned parts, iiuc, largely crumble to pieces after a while. The
>> underground, iiuc, is made of layers upon layers of ancient buildings.
>>
>> We don't know the size of the City of the Inhumi, other than it's large
>> and it's got some standing towers.
>>
>> They look similar because both are large cities, in fact the only
>> proper planetary 'modern' cities the narrator knows. You can certainly
>> say a relationship between them is possible, but from there to a pretty
>> good mapping there's a distance. These are just not enough data.
>> _______________________________________________
>
> So that canted tower that they expected to "save them" because it was a
> stripped rocket ship didn't do it for you with the round port windows?
>
> It's the conglomeration of comparisons.  Yes, the city of the inhumi
> reminding the rajan of Urth (or vice versa) is hinted at more than twice,
> and when introspective the narrator thinks things like, I had to stop and
> think about what I had really just said - because he knows he is not
> making the correct connection.
>
> I don't know what kind of concrete evidence you want - wolfe started out
> with the intention of writing  a story where the didactic purpose was on
> top but the who what when where why and how (main character, setting,
> time) would be hidden and obscure without deeper level analysis.
>
> What similarity would satisfy you beyond doubt? That is not in the text
> because it can't be obvious; Wolfe wanted to obscure all the normally
> easily answerable questios here through the device of a narrator [SILK
> after OBW with only the barest trace of Horn] who is in denial about what
> has happened to himself, what has happened to his wife, and what has
> happened to his species.
>
> So I can't prove it but all the comparisons and hints and that big huge
> stripped rocket tower with round port windows sure create a similar
> image; I can't do any more with that so let's just say you don't find the
> evidence compelling, but that doesn't mean the relationship is not hinted
> at.

I said 'You can certainly say a relationship between them is possible'.
Something that would be beyond *reasonable* doubt would be to have some
structure specific to Nessus appear in the City of the Inhumi; even make it 
something the narrator doesn't know in Nessus, so that the descriptions 
given in the two books are from different perspectives and not matchable 
without some good thinking on the part of the reader. The rocket tower falls 
a bit short of that, though it is a possibility.

It's just that 'the City of the Inhumi is Nessus' is an extraordinary claim 
*even considering that Green is Urth's future*.