Date: Fri, 13 Dec 2002 07:09:35 -0700
From: maa32 
Subject: (urth) blargh and rapid evolution

I am not convinced that the interview is a valid criticism of Blue = Ushas.  I 
do, however, want to make the claim that the secret of the inhumi is the 
equivalent of rapid evolution - very, very rapid one generation evolution, 
which is why I snagged on the term polyploidy - or, as I like to think of it, 
instant speciation.  Chromosomes may doubled in one generation in plants when 
a mutation like polyploidy occurs, and a new species is produced, sometimes 
with twice the chromosomal content.  This means that, on a symbolic level, you 
might represent something like that going on by, say, doubling the limbs 
(without giving your audience a dissertation on chromosomes that the 
inhabitants of the planet probably wouldn't know about).  This is different 
that natural selection - very very different.  In one generation, 
hybridization creates new species.  NO TIME IS REQUIRED.  So we cannot make 
any claims as to how long it would take the species of the Blue to evolve - it 
could be three generations - if the same kind of recombination (through 
"canibal trees" eating) is going on planetwide.  Here is one bit of evidence 
that supports the idea that the narrator is traveling astrally through a white 
hole:
in the crypt with Severian and Cillinia, Hide keeps talking about the eerie 
light that radiates from the image of Silk in the corner - that light might 
stem from the astral trail that Silk has taken - through the sun and into the 
past - and doesn't the ship in Urth of the New Sun travel freely to the past, 
if it's there to block out the sun with its sails, as is generaly accepted, at 
the long night of Apu Punchau?  And I thought there was some kind of 
description of this travel in which the ship goes through some kind of rift in 
space, and Severian sees the gravid matter of the universe, or something.  
Whatever the general consensus is, I've quite convinced myself.  
Marc Aramini



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