(urth) Urth Digest, Vol 110, Issue 10

[Marc Aramini]

This time line is exacerbated by the decimal slip in maytera's thoughts at one point in long sun.  You know, 300 years, 3000 years, whatever. 

I think Wolfe intended the relationship to be literal but impossible to prove, a nagging feeling of possibility that requires a sophisticated physical and biological mechanism just hinted at throughout.  Enough equation between the city of the inhumi and Nessus and enough synchronicity between the mythic re-enactment of a man with a sword and a light letting free the waters and clearing out a sewer to be an echo of Severian's myth on Green.   

Hybridization equals INSTANT Speciation.  Eat em all, spit em out.  Could be very little time for the few animals left on urth to be changed. 

Sent from my iPhone

On Oct 11, 2013, at 3:10 AM, "Gerry Quinn" <gerry at bindweed.com> wrote:

> 
> 
> From: Andreas Johansson
> 
>> Seems more and more as if the relations between "our" solar system
>> an that of Blue should be considered symbolical, another doppelgänger.
>> Which has a very rational explanation - Typhon sent the Whorl to colonize
>> another planet, seems reasonable that he should send it to a planet that
>> resembles a pristine Urth. A very down-to-earth, common sense
>> explanation that's not very satisfying, but nonetheless it gives all the
>> mind-blowing depth of Wolfe a refreshing rationality. Which is of course
>> already there, the SF tropes hinted at from time to time (it's still just a
>> generation ship run by computer-gods, loaded with deeper meaning).
> 
> Agreed.  Indeed, I would argue that "it was Earth all along" (to quote from the Planet of the Apes musical in The Simpsons) is actually too much of an SF cliche.  Wolfe aims at subtler targets than such cheeseball revelations.
> 
>> Was going to ask also about the chronological work-out between the Whorl and
>> Urth, since Typhon's reign seems to be much more than three centuries past from
>> Severian's age (if the astral projection to Urth isn't a time travel as well), but then
>> I realized: time dilation & relativity. Ship time doesn't equal planet time - who
>> knows how long the Whorl was really out there, and how far they've travelled?
>> The crew at the East Pole could surely answe that but then again no-one asks them.
>> Fascinating how Wolfe created the Whorl cultures in such a pre-enlightenment setting.
> 
> It's worth noting that in Return to the Whorl, Silk/Horn specifically points out the Sun as a faint red star in the sky of Blue.
> 
> That does actually raise some questions if you look at it in depth, because you shouldn't be able to see such a star more than about fifty light years away.  Yet three hundred and fifty years seems a bit short for the time between Typhon and Severian on Urth, so one naturally invokes time dilation, which would in turn place them a multiple of 350 light years away, perhaps up to 2000 light years or so, from where the Sun would certainly be invisible.
> 
> There is also the question of why Typhon was bothered by the dimming of the Sun, if he could build engines powerful enough to accelerate the Whorl to a substantial fraction of light speed, he could easily have built satellites to warm Urth.
> 
> I take the view that Wolfe probably didn't consider these details so closely, and that we are intended to assume that time dilation took place and Blue is in fact 1000-2000 light years away from Urth.  [In short, I would apply the same caution to reading the science too closely as I would apply to reading other elements...]
> 
> But if you want to go with a hard SF interpretation, they went about fifty light years in total, and there was no significant time dilation.  350 years ago on Earth today was 1663, so it is still time enough for a lot of history.
> 
> - Gerry Quinn
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
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