(urth) Urth-Earth links

[Gerry Quinn]

From: David Stockhoff 

On 10/17/2011 11:21 AM, Gerry Quinn wrote:
>
> > 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.

> So your explanation for his growth is technological as well? Is it a 
> side effect of immortality? Has he somehow managed to turn off a death 
> gene in his own body, or turned on a growth gene?

The latter, I think.  Whatever he has done he has tapped the cellular mechanisms of creatures such as crocodiles and tortoises, which are said to grow forever and never die of old age.  (I suspect that is not quite accurate, but the idea is well known.  And human growth hormone has been touted as an anti-aging technology.)

> I don't disagree with these possibilities, I just think natural genes 
> are an easier path. I know a few decades ago it was popular to wonder if 
> body death wasn't programmed, simply because it was then discovered that 
> cell death was programmed. The two may or may not be related. But at 
> least the presence of such an idea in popular culture might lend the 
> theory some substance without needing strong evidence.

Well, maybe he has managed to turn off or on some natural genes.  But presumably he still must use some unnatural mechanism – control genes, drugs or whatever.

> > > 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.
> Eh. Maybe. Who knows what gills look like on a humanoid or what Severian 
> notices. Recall that he had to get in bed with Baldanders to notice his 
> gills.

Perhaps they are usually covered by his shirt.  Juturna likes to swan around topless or worse.

> > As for Baldanders gills being natural: Baldanders is not natural, he 
> > is sui generis and a self-made man, right down to the gills.
>
> This reads like a thematic assumption applied top-down to prove itself. 
> If he's natural, so are the gills. I like Baldanders as self-created and 
> -experimented on, but what evidence is there that he's _entirely_ 
> unnatural or self-"made"?
> 
> Are you assuming that Baldanders was born a human man?

Yes.  Of course he could be from somewhere else, but we are not given any obvious indications of it.  And we know for a fact that he is heavily into biological experimentation.  If he were an amphibious alien, there would be no obvious reason for this.

- Gerry Quinn

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