(urth) Silk's origin

James Wynn crushtv at gmail.com
Wed Oct 12 13:23:42 PDT 2011


>>> On 10/12/2011 10:32 AM, David Stockhoff wrote:
>>>
>>> Let's put this to James. James, does an engineered-genes-insertion 
>>> link between Typhon and Silk work for your theory? After all, with 
>>> some wiggle room it makes them brothers, or closer than brothers. 
>>> And yet they will be as different as Silk and Mucor.
>>
>> [...]
>> But even that is too many degrees of separation for me. For example, 
>> why could only Silk be used as a donor to repatch Pas after his 
>> resurrection, and why did it require going all the way to the 
>> Mainframe? If it is only that he was carrying part of the god in his 
>> head, then he only needed to stand in front of a Sacred Window. And I 
>> still want him to be a son of Typhon somehow to have a hope of 
>> explaining the two parents Silk meets on the Aureate Path.
>>
> That's what I mean. In what sense must Silk be a son of Typhon---given 
> the "son not son" pattern of the Romans you have pointed to: legal? 
> No. Filial? No. Why not genetic?

Well, just sharing selected genes would not really make Silk a "son of 
Typhon". That would be true of any cousin of Typhon or any chimpanzee 
(as Gerry pointed out).

Now, yeah, it would work perfectly for "the son not of my body"  to mean 
that Silk is a clone of the son of Typhon and that Tussah is a clone of 
Typhon. I can't begin to relate all the ways that works.
If that were true, then I'd happily wave away all the references to Silk 
AS Typhon/Pas.
But if Chenille is the image of Tussah and Tussah is the clone of 
Typhon, doesn't it seem reasonable that Silk and Chenille would look 
enough alike for Horn to think they should be brother and sister?

Now, suppose this imagined original "Son of Typhon" were himself not 
really a genetic son. Suppose he was implanted in the original Kypris 
just as Silk was?  That would make it unnecessary for Silk to look 
anything like Typhon. But...

1) Why bother giving Silk the similarities to Typhon at all? Why the 
relatively unusual blonde hair and such?

2) Why, when asked about Silk's "ancestry" did Wolfe say "he was the son 
of the Calde and his mistress"? His ancestry would move a step back 
beyond Typhon.

J.



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