(urth) Urth-Earth links

[Gerry Quinn]

From: David Stockhoff 


On 10/17/2011 10:27 AM, Gerry Quinn wrote:
> *From:* Gerry Quinn mailto:gerry at bindweed.com

> > > How the kiss would have worked, I don’t know – perhaps Juturna’s saliva
> > > contains nanomachines that would have restructured Severian’s body for
> > > underwater living, or perhaps Wolfe would have been content to leave the
> > > matter unexplained. But Baldanders already has his gills, hidden in 
> > > plain sight by Wolfe as he likes to do.
> > And (I should have noted) Juturna has no antigravity belt, and she 
> > could certainly have benefited from one. Nor, if I recall correctly, 
> > does Severian mention any gills, though I suppose it may be that his 
> > eyes were drawn elsewhere. The technologies, magicks or whatever are 
> > different.

> I like the idea of Baldanders giving himself gills. But then who and 
> what is he? Why is he doomed to grow so large?
He is a man who – inspired by the sea monsters – is trying to make himself into a god by the use of technology.  He intends to attain immortality, and, like many animals of our own Earth that do not die of old age, this requires continuous growth.  He may well be centuries old already, and when he meets Severian at the end of _Urth_ he has not aged in fifty years, just grown larger.
Perhaps his large size also accommodates a larger brain.  In any case, he has given himself gills because he knows he must eventually enter the sea and dwell there.


> Would it not work just as well if he's of Juturna's race and size, and 
> those are natural gills Sev mistook for scars? Are we to believe Juturna 
> must come up for air like a whale? What is her race anyway: is she a 
> large human who swims deep, or a fish evolved to be humanoid? Let's get 
> our assumptions straight.

Juturna is not human, I believe, nor fish either.  She has been created or spawned by one of the sea monsters.  If we assume that the bean story refers to the sea monsters, then eggs or nanofactories or whatever were thrown into the seas of Urth, eventually becoming them.  Their origin was off-Urth.
Whether she comes up for air I don’t know, but I think if she had gills like Baldanders then Severian, who gave her a good looking over, would have noticed it.
As for Baldanders gills being natural: Baldanders is not natural, he is sui generis and a self-made man, right down to the gills.
- Gerry Quinn
 
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