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<DIV style="font-color: black"><B>From:</B> <A title=severiansola@hotmail.com
href="mailto:severiansola@hotmail.com">Lee Berman</A> </DIV>
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> Gerry Quinn: Wolfe plays fast and loose with the laws of physics when it
suits the story.<BR><BR>> Actually, he doesn't. He is as meticulous as he can
be. In this case it is completely <BR>> unnecessary for inhumi to fly through
space. And they don't. Wolfe would not give us such<BR>> an implausible
scientific impossibility unless there was a desperate need for it in the<BR>>
story. And there isn't. The way inhumi travel through space is shown: on
spaceships, using <BR>> deception to stow away in one form or another.
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style="FONT-STYLE: normal; DISPLAY: inline; FONT-FAMILY: 'Calibri'; COLOR: #000000; FONT-SIZE: small; FONT-WEIGHT: normal; TEXT-DECORATION: none">Even
if that’s correct, what difference does it make? It does suggest, I
suppose, that humans on Blue have less to worry about than they might have
thought, given that their collapsing tech level will soon render space flight
very rare or non-existent, and assuming that inhumi can indeed breed only on
Green.</DIV></DIV>
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style="FONT-STYLE: normal; DISPLAY: inline; FONT-FAMILY: 'Calibri'; COLOR: #000000; FONT-SIZE: small; FONT-WEIGHT: normal; TEXT-DECORATION: none">If
they can breed on Blue, it makes no difference at all unless they can be
exterminated there.</DIV></DIV>
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style="FONT-STYLE: normal; DISPLAY: inline; FONT-FAMILY: 'Calibri'; COLOR: #000000; FONT-SIZE: small; FONT-WEIGHT: normal; TEXT-DECORATION: none">Personally
I think they can fly through space. Wolfe often uses cool but physically
implausible ideas, even when they are not strictly necessary to the story.
And the spaceship theory doesn’t explain why they appear in increased numbers on
Blue during Conjunction. While it might save fuel, there’s no indication
that many ships are launched then. In fact they wouldn’t be, there is more
to worry about.</DIV></DIV>
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<DIV><BR>> Raising the possibility of their unassisted space travel is used
to illustrate the power of <BR>> lying, not to encourage fantastic,
non-texual biological impossibilities. The inhumi need <BR>> this secret to
be well-kept or they will lose the vital element of deceit they need to get
<BR>> onto spaceships.<BR></DIV>
<DIV>But spaceflight is almost dead anyway.<BR> <BR><BR>> Listen to
yourself, Gerry. You are inventing rotissirie chicken spinning in space and
>insulated, radiation-proof hard shells from nothing. And for what? To allow
the inhumi to not >be liars, when they are all, without exception,
demonstrable liars.<BR><BR>Liars do not lie all the time, as Dorcas points
out. And the things I invented are just the ordinary methods our primitive
satellites use. <BR><BR><BR>> If there is a grain of truth in their lies
about them flying in space during the <BR>> conjunction it is that they ride
on short-distance landers which rely on the </DIV>
<DIV>> conjunction for the shortest travel path.<BR><BR>Are you saying inhumi
have their own landers? Of course they have captured one, but it seems
improbable that they have much of a space fleet. <BR></DIV>
<DIV><BR>> FWIW, Juturna is also a liar. The passage suggests it by
conflating her statement </DIV>
<DIV>> with those of Baldanders and Talos. Her lying is supported by the
appearance of </DIV>
<DIV>> Idas on the Ship. She is cellular, thus she does not "swim between the
stars" unassisted, </DIV>
<DIV>> like a mini-spaceship. If pinned down, perhaps she would explain that
swimming </DIV>
<DIV>> between the stars is a poetic way of saying she can travel through
time, "in the </DIV>
<DIV>> spaces between stars" i.e. space-time. Or something like
that.<BR></DIV>
<DIV>I am not so certain. If she can allow Severian to breathe underwater
with a kiss, perhaps by expressing nanobots which will create gills for him, as
the Mother somehow created gills for Seawrack, she may well be able to adapt to
periods in vacuum without difficulty. Of course, neither ability is
proven, but neither is disproven either. Erebus and Abaia may be
post-Singularity beings of almost unimaginable capabilities, and some of these
capabilities may be loaned to their more senior slaves.<BR> <BR><BR>>
This leaves Tzadkiel's space-borne image in the mirror book to consider. Her
self-</DIV>
<DIV>> description of her sponge-like character seem to suggest she is
cellular in nature.</DIV>
<DIV>> So what gives with the outer space Tzadkiel? My interpretation
is that image was</DIV>
<DIV>> Tzadkiel's true essence. He/She is, in essence, spiritual
only, not biological, as </DIV>
<DIV>> befits an angel. Tzadkiel, like angels, only takes a biological
form when he/she</DIV>
<DIV>> needs to interact with others of that
type. <BR></DIV>
<DIV>So Wolfe sticks rigorously to physics, except when he doesn’t?</DIV>
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<DIV>- Gerry Quinn</DIV>
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