(urth) Urth-Earth links

[Jeff Wilson]

On 10/18/2011 7:06 AM, David Stockhoff wrote:
> On 10/17/2011 11:32 PM, Jeff Wilson wrote:
>>
>> I don't believe there are any strong distinctions. Before the Short
>> Sun rerconnage, the final word from on high was in URTH where the
>> Yesodis say there was no extraterrestrial higher life in Briah, only
>> Man and Man's modifications of himself and lower animals, and their
>> modifications, etc. Baldanders gives himself gills by altering himself
>> technologically, likely as did Idas' forebears and similarly those of
>> the other sailors born on Urth who Sev remarks "appeared hardly human
>> to me."
>>
>> This implies that the great beasts are not quite the Lovecraftian
>> Things we have been lead to expect, but titanic masses of quasihuman
>> flesh that used to be something like an individual. If Baldanders can
>> double his size in 50 years, the thousand years since Typhon's reign
>> could allow similarly growing humanoids to double 20 times over. This
>> potentially if improbably allows increasing their size a million times
>> but is more than enough to achieve the mountainous size claimed by Jonas.
>>
>> It also would satisfy David's desire for dire beats with dread mind
>> powers, because they could have the genes for psionic abilities as
>> easily as Decuman and Typhon and Ceryx seem to have them.
>>
>>
> More importantly, it fits their proposed (observed?) ability to squeeze
> off undines, making psionic powers unnecessary to postulate. It also
> seems to fit the "horror" theme of mindless, almost cancer-like growth
> that pops up here and there.

I'm not seeing any evidence the undines are squeezed off: Idas and 
Juturna seem to have distinct personalities. The pandours also seem to 
be undines, and their armored state heavily suggests they are either few 
in number or individually valuable or both, rather than pinched off a 
mountain-sized mass at need. That they are being deployed on a surface 
vessel also suggests that Juturna-class minions, who could convey them 
as fast or faster concealed beneath the surface, are spread a bit thin.

Growth is another important theme, it seems like it is one of the 
easiest modifications to do, and since it is established that it can be 
done during life by the examples of Baldanders and the Exultants, this 
does not rule out land-born humans becoming huge undines eventually. 
Juturna could have been equally likely as Jolenta to be expelled from 
the witches for being too lustful (she only wants the humans' love, 
recall) and fallen in with the Abaians.

Or she could have returned to her original family, the Abaians. It is 
very suspicious that Dorcas is seen to revive when she is put in the 
lake water, that the boatman has such a long life in frequent contact 
with the water, and they previously lived in a neighborhood surrounded 
by the river on three sides. If Severian already has undine blood in 
him, the attraction to a giant undine woman is much less improbable and 
consumation is less matter of scale than of time.

And it returns us to a Lovecraftian theme, as in "The Shadow Over 
Innsmouth."

-- 
Jeff Wilson - jwilson at clueland.com
Computational Intelligence Laboratory - Texas A&M Texarkana
< http://www.tamut.edu/CIL >