Date: Fri, 15 Aug 2003 20:10:54 -0700
From: Michael Andre-Driussi 
Subject: (urth) Whorl <> Second Empire


Whoops, I missed one point from before, when Andrew Bollen wrote:
>- Typhon in New Sun at least desires to rule an inter-stellar empire, and
>offers Sev the job of satrap of Earth. How does this make any sense without
>superluminal travel?

Andrew, for starters you seem to be insisting that Typhon's post-Urth
capital will be in another star system.  I, for one, have always assumed it
would be on Skuld, our Venus terraformed.

>Sure, all this cool stuff is available to non-Urthians, and quite likely to
>New Sun Typhon, but there's no hint that it's anywhere on the Whorl. I
>suppose you could say it's there, but unused, given Typhon's premature
>demise.

We are not communicating here.  I did not mean to suggest that there was an
ansible on the Whorl; I tried to say that an ansible network would ease the
ruling of an STL empire.  I did not mean to suggest that Typhon, the
original, biological man, would personally visit the colony set up by the
Whorl; I did try to say that the colonization project was a hedge, so that
even if his empire should fail, there would be this mark he had made on the
galaxy in the form of a colony world that worshipped his computer-version
persona.  Just as the mountain was carved =should he die.=

>But I don't think New Sun Typhon would be satisfied with a STL empire.
>Doesn't he say somewhere that he and his followers returned from the stars?
>If I've got that right, did they come back frozen in a slow-boat? Does this
>story of his return really square very well with Roger's description of
>Typhopn's rise in IGJ?  In Claw (?) Typhon talks of delaying his decision to
>leave Urth too long - was he planning to freeze himself on a slow-boat? is
>his digital presence on the Whorl a kind of poor-man's alternative?

I don't recall a passage about Typhon and his followers returning from the
stars.  All this talk of freezing is kind of beside the point.  If Typhon
did come from another star system I'm fairly certain it wasn't nearly as
far as the Blue/Green system is (iirc it seems like 500 to 900 light years
away).

>Obviously, all of these things which look like mis-matches to me can be
>glued together, but I think it needs some fairly sticky chewing gum to do
>it.

Or we could look at your unexamined assumptions and see how strongly the
text supports them.  Or not.

>> So why the Whorl?  Another hedge, I say.  While all the other stuff is
>> conquer and control, this other project will be "pure" colonization.
>
>But at some point the :"real" Typhon is going to want to take control -
>what's the point of having even an empire if you don't get to rule it? Will
>he have to assert his authority over his digital avatar via ansible? Of
>course, you can postulate some kind of built-in thingy giving real Typhon
>authority over digital Pas, but I don't find it very convincing.

Again, the Whorl is a =different= project from the Second Empire project.
Colony <> Second Empire.  I don't agree with the notion that Typhon plans
to visit.  If he thinks he will be immortal, which seems plausible, then he
will be pleased to hear from them.

>I don't understand this point. If Typhon can stock the Whorl with many
>thousands of chem soldiers, why does he not use them on Urth? Perhaps they
>were intended just for the Whorl, but again I find this quite dubious. Why
>should it be so?

We have different perspectives, clearly.  I thought that the Whorl project
was a contributing factor in the =stripping= of resources from Urth, =such
that= chems and the like could no longer be supported at the level that
passes for "living."  (You seem to be ignoring the obvious non-Jonas
examples of machine life =seen= on Urth, that is, the mountain-carvers, but
who can blame you?  They are very enigmatic.)

As for the nature of the battle on Urth, my impression was that Urth at
that point was a palace-grounds, and the battle was a family-fight with all
the limited resources at hand.  The Whorl had already left by the time the
rebellion began -- in fact, as you pointed out, =all= the functional ships
were gone by that time.

=mantis=



--