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<blockquote cite="mid:006a01cb5a89$9e42fa00$82d04a0c@rclackey"
type="cite">
<pre wrap="">Me -
Imagine footage of the construction of Whorl...the carving of the asteroid,
the building of the cities, the prospect of sending thousands
of Urthlings to a distant planet that could be freely portrayed as a
fertile Eden, a lucrative opportunity, and a Land of Adventure.
</pre>
</blockquote>
<br>
<blockquote cite="mid:006a01cb5a89$9e42fa00$82d04a0c@rclackey"
type="cite">
<blockquote type="cite">
<pre wrap="">Roy-
If that were the scenario, then people should have been clamoring to go.
Mamelta said: "We had to volunteer. They were--you couldn't say no." (LAKE,
chap. 9, 251)
</pre>
</blockquote>
</blockquote>
<br>
This only means that the desire to go or stay was irrelevant. But it
is simply not conceivable that there were not more people on Urth
_willing_ to go (people who would gladly have traded places those
who were selected to be Cargo or Sleepers) than there were slots to
go. But _wanting_ to go was not the criteria. The Whorl was probably
not such a bad place to live when it was first launched with plenty
of chems to do the work. The use of cards as money might suggest
that money wasn't even seen as necessary initially because the
designers did not expect scarcity of basic essentials. Still, a
young woman with prospects on Urth would probably not want to go. An
established member of the ruling class would not want to go. I
seriously doubt that any among Typhon's court were clamoring to go.
They went out of duty or they went because Typhon (or some sub-ruler
ordered to procure people with defined criteria) was ready to be rid
of them. Members of the ruling classes rarely volunteer for war if
there is a reduced chance of coming back to medals and accolades.<br>
<br>
<blockquote cite="mid:006a01cb5a89$9e42fa00$82d04a0c@rclackey"
type="cite"><br>
<pre wrap="">Roy-
There isn't the least suggestion in the Urth Cycle that the Whorl project
even existed, not even when Severian was there while Typhon was still alive.
If there had been a massive propaganda campaign to promote the project, it
was a monumental failure.
</pre>
</blockquote>
<br>
Two reasons: 1) Wolfe had not invented the Whorl when he wrote of
Severian's encounters with Typhon. <br>
2) Typhon died shortly after the Whorl was launched, and his empire
was quickly divided between competing alien powers who had no
interest in promoting Typhon as a Great Man who had Returned
Humanity to the Stars. You know all this.<br>
<br>
<blockquote cite="mid:006a01cb5a89$9e42fa00$82d04a0c@rclackey"
type="cite">
<pre wrap="">Roy-
I realize that the lack of evidence for a propaganda campaign in the Urth
Cycle doen't prove anything, but neither does your supposition of such a
campaign prove that it existed.
</pre>
</blockquote>
<br>
I never claimed that there was anything detailing Typhon's reasons
for the Whorl Project. Wolfe has already implied that he didn't
consider that question much himself. I was merely responding to the
following:<br>
<br>
<blockquote cite="mid:004b01cb5a09$51d7e520$64d24a0c@rclackey"
type="cite">
<pre>Roy-
The people on Urth would never see the <span class="moz-txt-underscore"><span class="moz-txt-tag">_</span>Whorl<span class="moz-txt-tag">_</span></span>, never receive the message.
Typhon was raw ego. Mt. Typhon's sole purpose was to flaunt his face and
gratify his ego. He did not deprecate his memory or that of his family among
the colonists, he just changed the family names to reflect the new reality
of their digitized existence as gods in Mainframe.</pre>
</blockquote>
<br>
I was trying to show that the Whorl _would have been_ a useful
monument to Typhon's ego for his subjects on Urth, even though I
argue that it was not really much of a monument to his ego for those
who left. <br>
<br>
Incidentally, there is a conversation between the Rajan and Hound
that I think touches on some of this:<br>
<br>
<blockquote>"You're saying that everybody could have been asleep?
All of us? No houses and no people, just trees and animals?"<br>
"No, I'm saying Pas must have considered that and rejected it as
unworkable, or at least undesirable."<br>
Hound nodded. "He'd have had nobody to worship him."<br>
"That's true, though I'm not sure it was a consideration. If it
didn't seem so impious, I'd say now that the Chapter and the
manteions seem almost to have been a joke, that Pas made himself
our chief god largely because it amused him.<br>
[snip the parable of the farmer meeting Pas in Mainframe]<br>
"Pas wished to mold and guide us; and for him to do it, we had to
be awake. As our chief god, he was ideally situated, though the
false memories given the sleepers may have been intended to serve
the same purpose. Like the farmer we complain of storms, but Pas
must have foreseen that there would be storms--and things far
worse--on the new whorls. How could we cope with them if we never
saw snow, or a wind storm?"<br>
<br>
One thing though. I have said that Typhon deprecated the memory of
his Terrestrial achievements among the colonists so they would not
remember who sent them and try to return. An obvious question
would be, then why did he mess with the memories of the sleepers?
<br>
~ page 131 of RTTW pb. <br>
</blockquote>
There's more as well, including an argument for why Pas's
construction of the Whorl was not purely malevolent or egotistical
("Pas was made by the Outsider"). Remember that _Pas_ could not be
a god on the colonized planets. Even the Writings made it clear
that the Nine were only gods on the Whorl.<br>
<br>
~ u+16b9<br>
<br>
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