URTH |
Date: Sat, 15 Jun 2002 12:58:15 -0500 From: Andrew ReevesSubject: (urth) Thoughts on Undines, and other ramblings I'm quite thrilled to have discovered this group, and as such, I'm going to air a few more thoughts that have nagged me concerning the main villains of the Briah universe, the Undines. First off, I'm trying to make a list of what we do know about them: -They are basically shaped like homo sapiens that never stop growing and can breathe under water. -They've been on Urth since around the time of Typhon, and were likely brought by Scylla (can't remember her human name, and the book's not handy) or an associate of hers, as related in Jonas's tale. -There appears to be at least one on Blue. -They're really into high tech and enslaving humanity (viz. Baldanders and the Ascians). They are the brains behind the Ascians. -They can project their mental presences. All of the above still leave a whole lot of questions. The first of these is the rather blas=E9 attitudes of Silkhorn and Severian near the end of their series when actually meeting a representative of them. When Severian meets Juturna underwater (if it's not a dream), he basically gives her a tip of the hat and moves on. Later, when Silkhorn projects to Urth, he basically says, "Hey, I really dig Seawrack, tell me how to find her." Now, both of these men are Gene Wolfe's attempt to draw saintly, Christian figures. I would think that such figures would have severe reservations about the way they dealt with such beings. Of course, Silkhorn doesn't really know the pedigree of our giants, but I would think that the first thing Severian would do when he realized that he has Godlike powers would be to try and find Erebus, Abaia et al and finish them for good so that humankind could begin to climb back from the level of hunter-gatherers without interference. But then again, since the Green Man doesn't indicate that Abaia and Erebus are a problem (and forms non-Maoist sentences), perhaps someone else has. That also brings to mind the whole question of the Commonwealth's force projection capability. By the age of Severian their stuck at a fairly primitive state, but in the early days of the Autarchy, especially around the time of Ymar, they probably had the tech level to go after the giants in the water. The other question of tech level and undines is that there seem to be some indication that Urth under Typhon might have had the capability of superluminal travel, since there's a really good chance that Scylla went to Blue and brought back the undines. If that's the case, why would the Whorl move at sublight speeds? Or am I reading to much into the text? One final ramble: By the end of our series, Severian is but one AU from the source of his power, and is probably going to have a hard time dying, even of old age. He may grow really, really bored. Just rambling. Andrew --