(urth) Typhon's nature

[Gerry Quinn]

From: David Stockhoff 
On 10/12/2011 11:09 AM, Gerry Quinn wrote:

> > For me they are not confusing because I do not find it very important 
> > what exact mix of technological, personality, and psychic powers is 
> > possessed by Typhon. Whether he has sent his thoughts into far places 
> > by telepathy or by logging onto still extant computer databases is 
> > something we are simply not told, and Severian, if he knew, would 
> > probably find both possibilities equally astounding.

> Astounding, or else pedestrian. We can't really tell, can we? But I 
> agree that mechanisms are not strictly critical outside of hard SF, 
> which this ain't. But what about my point above? An interstellar emperor 
> who basically uses Daddy's wealth to create his empire is quite 
> different from one who asserts the power of his self, is it not? (A 
> Trump-style president who uses self-promotion to hide his incompetence 
> vs an Eisenhower?) Force of personality, force of mind, same thing. 
> Fancy electronics---not so much. BIG difference there, and that's a 
> bigger point than ESP, aside from the cloning debate.
> 
> Typhon wants to govern the universe by unleashing (ungoverning) himself. 
> That's why I call him anti-Autarch. If his powers come from himself, the 
> point is more strongly made.

But I think we can all agree that Typhon does have great force of personality and will to power.  This is the essential thing about him.  To fulfil his drive to conquer he uses the things and people about him, and any tools available to him.  He uses armies, he uses databases.  He uses the power to command that by way of propaganda and years of power have been identified with his face in the mind of the populace – hence the whole head transplant.  If he has innate psychic powers he uses them too, but they are no more significant than the strength of his hands.
In the Long Sun series, we learn more about life on Typhon’s Urth from Mamelta, a young computer technician who was one of the millions selected by Typhon and commanded to enter the Whorl as a sleeper.  We learn much from the very fact of command, of course: “We had to volunteer.  They were – you couldn’t say no.”  She agreed with Silk that the Loganstone was a “slave boat”.  [Note: This passage also seems to make it clear that Mamelta was nobody special on Urth.  Of course she might for all we know have been forced previously to donate eggs, and one of them could have been fertilised and engineered to eventually become Silk, and then she might have become the one of many sleepers woken by Mucor to be woken just as Silk arrived, but there is no indication in the text that any such series of coincidences happened.]
We also learn that the inhabitants of Typhon’s Urth (or maybe just certain classes or occupations) were wired into some kind of always-on telepathic internet. They did not need to use normal speech to communicate, and the system was also used for control: the family of the Monarch danced or stalked through their dreams.  When they were placed in the Whorl, brain operations were needed to remove the apparatus (whether that consisted of modified brain tissue or electronics we are not told) associated with this internet, and to reduce their mental dependence on the rulers.  The latter was not possible to completely achieve  - and thus came about the eventual political/religious structure of the Whorl - but the surgeons did “as much as they dared”.  Brain centres associated with speech processing may have also needed to be revamped, or it may be that the ability to speak “to move my lips and my tongue... while I make this noise in my throat” was present anyway, though unused.
So Typhon’s psychic domination of his people was technologically mediated, in the end.  Of course, Wolfe probably hadn’t decided on any of that when he wrote BotNS, and for all we know he may have leaned the other way at that time.
- Gerry Quinn
 
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