URTH |
From: Ranjit Bhatnagar <ranjit@gradient.cis.upenn.edu> Subject: (whorl) silk flowers, sleepers awake, whorl gazetteer Date: Fri, 28 Feb 1997 13:31:05 [Posted from Whorl, the mailing list for Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun] Rereading Nightside. What the heck's going on between Silk and Hyacinth? I-Ch 6 - Silk has dismissed the monitor and snuck into Hyacinth's bedroom. "As he bent over her, something within him reached out to her; and though he had not touched her, he felt the thrill of touch." A suggestive choice of words, as the augur said to the monitor. Mucor touches without touching, too... I-Ch 8 - He's finally made it home after a long night of breaking-and-entering and attempted extortion. "The familiar, musty smell of the manse was like a kiss. He dropped into a chair, pulled the azoth from his stocking, and pressed it to his lips, then stared at it." Kissing an azoth? Hmm. Why did Silk fall so hard & fast for this dell? Adrenaline & pheremones? Kypris' Secret Love Charm? Another loose bit of genetic programming? Did Hy or Ky snare him on purpose, or just take advantage of it when it happened? Should I, as the monitor would say, abandon this line of inquiry? I noticed this time while scanning II-Ch4 that Crane has given Hy cosmetic surgery like Talos did Jolenta. Does Crane remind anyone else of Dr Talos? -- By the way, what's with all this speculation about the sleepers being genetically enhanced or programmed with special knowledge? The only evidence we have is Mamelta repairing a rocket: heck, maybe she was a rocket scientist on Urth. Also, I can't see Mamelta's work reviving the sleeping gods of Viron; she barely managed to get the monitor half-working in the independent subsystem of a lander. -- Just for the heck of it: What cities do we know of? Gens ("they got tails in Gens"), Trivigaunte ("the girls fight like troopers in Trivigaunte"), Palustria ("down amongst the pollywogs, eh?"), Urbs and Urbis (can't find a quote). -- Finally, another suggestion for the gammadion/voided cross: a central hub with four screwdrivers (two philips and two flat?) and four removable, gamma-shaped hex-keys. With the gammas snapped into place with their crossbars facing the screwdrivers, they form hollow rectangles; four hollow rectangles make a voided cross. r. Questions or problems to whorl-owner@lists.best.com