<html><head><style type="text/css"><!-- DIV {margin:0px;} --></style></head><body><div style="font-family:times new roman,new york,times,serif;font-size:12pt"><b><span style="font-weight: bold;">From:</span></b> Gerry Quinn <gerryq@indigo.ie><br><div style="font-family: times new roman,new york,times,serif; font-size: 12pt;"><div style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 13px;"><font size="2" face="Tahoma"><b><span style="font-weight: bold;"></span></b></font><br>From: "David Stockhoff" <<a ymailto="mailto:dstockhoff@verizon.net" href="mailto:dstockhoff@verizon.net">dstockhoff@verizon.net</a>><br><br><br>> Wooden ships used to be carefully and colorfully painted. And rooms in those ships would be opened up for dinner and divided up for sleep, much as larger rooms in older buildings have been divided up for cubicles or apartments for about 100 years now.<br>> <br>> But that's different. And imagine the problems you'd
have with painted rooms in a starship, even without flaking paint.<br><br>> Actually, I can't.<br>...<br><br>Me neither.<br><br>>> I like the thought that clouds relate to the Fortunate Cloud. But painted vaulted ceilings tend to<br>>> have skies painted on them. Such a ceiling could not be more ordinary in a palace.<br><br>I agree. Everything we know about the antechamber seems normal for a palace in which an<br>underground waiting room was expanded as Jonas describes.<br><br>> It would be quite remarkable in a starship.<br>...<br><br>Not so much for the painting, in my opinion, as for the vaulting. If rooms in a starship have vaulted<br>ceilings, you get lots of strangely shaped spaces between them and the floor above. Of course,<br>those spaces /could/ be just right for the flux capacitors...<br><br>> Anyway, I don't want to get into a war over such details. I am defending the theory, but as I said
I<br>> am not wedded to it. And our interpretations of BotNS do not stand or fall on the question of<br>> whether the Antechamber was or was not part of Jonas's starship.<br><br>No, wait! This has to be do-or-die!<br><br>> But I ask again: has anyone any better explanation for Jonas's (confirmed) architectural observations<br>> and the other things I mentioned?<br><br>He just recognizes that the antechamber looks like a bunch of rooms joined into one.<br><br>What details does he have? The room is big, with a low ceiling, and he recognizes it as a drop ceiling.<br>There are lots of alcoves and niches around the walls, presumably the outlines of the original rooms,<br>and there's a uniform tile floor. That might be enough. Big rooms usually have high ceilings; this one's<br>low ceiling suggests the ceiling isn't the original. And big rooms in a palace might be expected to have<br>neat, symmetrical plans;
this one's irregular outlines, probably shaped like parts of rooms, would also<br>be a clue.<br><br>Since no pillars are mentioned, maybe only the walls are original. You seem to be suggesting that<br>Jonas recognizes something about them, which Severian never mentions, as starship architecture.<br>But I think there's enough other information for him to figure out what happened.<br><br>Stay tuned for the next episode of This Old House Absolute.<br><br>Jerry Friedman<br></div></div>
</div><br>
</body></html>