(urth) Silk's origin

[David Stockhoff]

On 10/12/2011 4:23 PM, James Wynn wrote:
>
>>>> 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).
I have to remind myself sometimes that I am addressing a bunch of 
engineers. :D

(1) Is percentage of shared genes the only way to compare species? 
Obviously not.
(2) If chimps and humans are 99% the same, then that pretty much kills 
that usefulness of that viewpoint. Further, most of the 99% is junk, 
rendering the figure meaningless. Is there a biologist in the house?
(3) If God walked the earth 10 generations ago, and I had some of His 
genes spliced in so that I could throw thunderbolts, you can be damn 
sure I'd call myself the Son of God and throw thunderbolts at you if you 
gave a peep. And so would you. "Cousin" would not do it.

Point being, Silk has some of Typhon's superiority, if we accept this 
theory. Naturally, if you don't think Typhon is in any way superior, 
this doesn't work so well---you would indeed be talking about mundane 
traits.
>
> 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.
I guess I may be talking about partial cloning, if that makes sense.
> 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?
Not if Silk didn't get his looks from Typhon, just his physical 
superiority. Recall that I am proposing splicing specific genes for 
specific traits. We can do that now already. Some may be accidental or 
connected, of course.
>
> 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?
It's a sign to the unusually dull reader. ;)
>
> 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.
Ah, well. Some things are inexplicable.
>
>


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