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Discussion of Short Sun, at the Facebook Gene Wolfe Appreciation site

Some thoughts on the themes in Book of the Short Sun
[Spoilers]
I've just finished a re-read of Book of the Long Sun and Book of the Short Sun. Short Sun infected my mind more than Long Sun, I guess. I don't have as many questions about LS as I do about SS.
Wolfe is very obsessed with doubled identity throughout Short Sun. It's woven into so many aspects of the book that unless there is a transubstantial meaning I'm missing, I'm going to have to take it as a big clue that the narrator's identity is doubled. You could be forgiven for not realizing that the narrator has two mind/spirits inhabiting his body throughout half of the series. While Wolfe obscures this a little bit, he's telling you nearly everywhere that things are doubled.
• A Binary System of two planets
• Two quills in the pen case
• Neighbors are like doubled humans, 4 arms and 4 legs.
• Animals of Blue are doubled. 8 legs, 2 trunks, 4 eyes, 4 wings...
• Neighbors can be in two places at once. Soon enough the Narrator can be as well.
• Olivine says everything twice.
• Characters with two names, like Evensong / Chota of two nations
• Jahlee and Krait with assumed identities of Son and Daughter
• The Mother and Urth-Scylla
• Passilk
• Two types of parasites, Inhumi and Liana Vines
• Free will and Pre-Programmed identity of Silk as an engineered embryo.
That last one leads to a central theme of Short Sun, that of Parasitism. The Inhumi are a plague of parasites of humans and neighbors. Liana vines are a parasites of the all the trees of Blue and Green. I'd argue that the "Gods" of mainframe are parasites. They possess and control cargo to their own ends and are essentially nothing without the cargo. Their whole existence depends upon the humans. These Gods aren't good or eternal, they're parasites. The Long Sun Whorl was going along smoothly under this arrangement with the "God-Parasites" but then actually becomes infected with "real" parasite Inhumi before reaching the destination. Typhon is a sort of parasite to Piaton (Piaton is only mentioned in BOTNS but present here).
Is Horn then a parasite inhabiting Silk? Perhaps that's a stretch and I'm not sure I want to characterize it that way, but I guess so. Either way, Silk harbors another parasite when he eventually makes it to New Viron, that of Passilk. Silk as a Mainframe God, aka Silent Silk or Silver Silk, is merged with Pas and known to us also as Passilk. This is made clear in both Long Sun and the beginning of SS.
Pig is possessed by Passilk. When Silkhorn gives him his eye, he talks with Silk-in-Pig in front of the surgeon's glass and thus Passilk is transferred via the glass into Silkhorn. This should be very clear although the Urthlist is full of questions about how a bio-to-bio transfer could happen. On page 372, "When the nurse's glass had faded to silver-grey..." is the clue. The glass was clearly activated in the narrative gap.
Silkhorn spends much of the books pondering whether the gods of Mainframe have a place on Blue. He ponders if they are there already. He speculates that if they aren't there, maybe they shouldn't be. So when Silk releases Horn at the end, speaking with Ramora, he is still carrying Pas. At the end, no longer driven by Horn's need to get home, or his own need to deny that he is actually Silk, he realizes he's carrying Pas. Ramora is even working on a new God Window. This is not morally or ethically acceptable to Silk so he has to leave, taking the Pas parasite god with him. Blue has enough parasites as it is. Horn's son Sinew calls the whole thing early on in On Blue's Waters (which I don't have on hand to quote) when he says that the plan is really to bring Pas to Blue. Horn dismisses this as he dismisses Sinew constantly. But Sinew is right about the outcome, even if it wasn't "the plan".
Other themes abound. Fatherhood is a big one, though I'm not sure I have anything to say about it other than Horn doubts he's been a good father and spends much of the time trying to be a better father, even adopting "evil" children.
Rejection of bad governance is another theme that runs throughout the Long and Short Suns. Silk is essentially a genetic archetype of the revolutionary leader people idolize and want to be lead by. Revolutions and war spring up wherever he goes. Viron, Gaon, Blanko, Dorp, and New Viron all go haywire when he shows up. Leaders are changed, despots deposed, would-be-conquerors sent scurrying. Silk is probably so sick of this by New Viron that he just has to leave. A double motivation for him to leave.
I'm not sure what to make of Seawrack and Scylla/Mother on a symbolic level. I'd like to understand their importance more. There is definitely something there but it eludes me at this point.







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  • Marc Aramini     Much of this doubling is meant to be collapsed. The inhumi are the liana. For most of it the rajan is just silk but a silk who does not understand who he is. See how right before seawrack shows up Horn is thinking of the gods of blue and rips a piece of seawrack from the leafy floor to examine ... so the mother rips a piece of seawrack from herself yum yum.



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    • Mike Bennewitz       I’m not on-board with the Liana=Inhumi idea or the Urth=Green ideas at all. I’m midway through your write ups by the way. Thanks for sharing those. I also disagree that the Rajan is just Silk. I’m torn on Horn in Babbie. I see the weird reason for wondering it, but Horn is definitely present all through until the end or Silk wouldn’t look more like Horn in the Warping scenes. Those prove that Horn is still in him.


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    • Marc Aramini       Belief is the last to die. He still thinks of himself like horn.



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    • Marc Aramini       (I’m right though)



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    • Marc Aramini       That tower horn dies in with the broken plates is the matachin tower


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    • Mike Bennewitz       Marc Aramini I disagree. It’s all been argued on Urthlist. I don’t buy it. I see why you think so though.


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    • Marc Aramini       I guess paradoxes can’t be explained since they explain everything. I hope you finish the writeups though I put a lot of work into them. See the story of Silk in return to the whorl of the boy sent out from his home who stopped at a nearby place where his mother fell asleep. Got lost etc. Urth list never confronted many many aspects of the reading.


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    • Mike Bennewitz       Marc Aramini yeah I plan to finish them. I want to explore your genetic cross breeding ideas more.



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    • Eric Bourland       This is a fascinating discussion.



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    • Patrick McEvoy-Halston       Seawrack is loyal only to Father at the end, which, to me, strongly suggests that Horn is still very much part of the Horn/Silk conglomerate. Horn as Babbie didn't feel right when I read the text, either. Babbie as just more human, the enriching of his own self, felt persuasive.



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    • Mike Bennewitz       Patrick McEvoy-Halston yeah. There is no real mechanism to suggest the transfer into Babbie. I guess it could be a Neighbor. Something weird is going on in that scene, I just don’t accept that Horn is no longer in Silk at that point. He’s Silkhorn until the end as far as I can tell from the text. Why would he look like Horn when warping? Why would Silk bother to go to New Viron to announce Horn’s “failure” if Horn isn’t in him. Silk is stronger having been tempered by Horn.



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    • Marc Aramini       No mechanism? Horn thinks he is being called Babbie as he sits under the tree, which is a vanished god. p 377 someone on shore called again for Babbie, and I understood that he meant me; it never so much as occurred to me then that I had sometimes been called silk or horn



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    • Marc Aramini       the trees are the vanished gods they do everything in this


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    • Patrick McEvoy-Halston       Mike Bennewitz You argue that Horn died in the pit. Is this, do you think, actually important.... whether he did or didn't. Don't we when reading the bit, size it up and eventually say that it might have been skipped, left out, at no real loss? Still feels that way to me.


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    • Mike Bennewitz       Patrick I suppose I accept that he died in the pit more than argue for it. It’s oblique. If Silk was dead then the Neighbors can resurrect the recently dead. The Neighbors seem to be the only mechanism unless you’re willing to but into Marc’s Liana theory.


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    • Marc Aramini       Mike Bennewitz Let me just spell it out so that it's clear and people don't have to read those long ass writeups: there are two species that have descended from humanity. The trees hybridize with people in a eucharist by eating them, thus the central eucharist imagery and even the story of hyacinthus whose blood creates a flower. The islands are made up of giant "herbs" as Horn learns in the storm, so the pit on the island is actually the mouth of a huge vegetable mass that hybridizes their with Horn's blood, but he is resurrected after he is, as sea wrack calls him, food. Then the neighbor horn appears. The inhumi parasitize those trees as liana and are either a lower branch of them like the morlock to the elloi, and they return to that lower state in the absence of fresh blood, but still believe that they have the souls of humanity. Both are kind of parasitic but one is a hybridizer and the other simply preys on a host to become like them. See the Tale of the Boy Called Frog in New Sun for the birth of Spring wind when the tree impregnates his mother - the start of the hybridization on Mars/Blue.



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    • Patrick McEvoy-Halston       Mike Bennewitz I think what I'm probably getting at is not about figuring out the Short Sun universe, but just getting at where importance of feeling lies in the text. A lot concerning the neighbours feels extraneous. Vital to the universe, but to the narrative I think they almost function as a super-power some characters can sometimes make use off, powers of transportation, but also powers of instant empowered "friend"... like the giants that arrive at the end of Sorcerer's House. They're a ring of wishes you can use only thrice, or something.


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    • Patrick McEvoy-Halston       Does any change happen to Horn thereafter? Or does the dynamic between and the other characters just more or less continue on in the same fashion, if all he ever was was dead-seeming rather than really truly dead.


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    • Patrick McEvoy-Halston       Marc Aramini Your write-up of the Short Sun deserves to be read regardless of what they reveal, for they register you as someone who has registered so much that is alive in the text.



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    • Marc Aramini       Patrick McEvoy-Halston I think Horn grows immensely over the course of the books especially in his love for Krait, which stands for a whole lot of things, but he cannot reach the more noble aspects he admires in Silk, though I know you read Silk's character a little differently than I do.


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    • Patrick McEvoy-Halston       Marc Aramini I do appreciate that was how it came across to you. Myself, I'm not certain. I will say, though, again, that his refusal to interfere with Sinew... to allow him his adulthood, WAS impressive. Otherwise, though, it is possible to define the entirety of his "search" as him less coming closer to Silk than his coming closer to Blood. I'll write about it at some point, but boy is his adventure one great payback at Nettle/Echidna (I hybrid them here, to illuminate that the only other reference we have of children as competitors for the mother's breast/oral supplies/attention in the text, is in how "loving" Echidna is portrayed on Blue... children scrambling, vying with one another, to get her attention) for a mother's attention in the text for giving so much of the attention he himself had required to Sinew instead. (This very thing, was one of the grievance's he had with his own mother... you took what I valued, and made use of it to entertain my sister, and thereby shamed and mocked me.) It's hard, as well, to see someone becoming better at interacting with children, when one mates with women always so young, so beautiful... and always so frightened and timorous: the anti-thesis of the mature relationship, the non-adult to child relationship you'd nurtured with your wife. You're spurning those you have to contend with, for those that are less intimidating and where the power is all yours; they can serve as "places" where you can freely administer rage and hate you dared not land at their "source," something Horn could never do with Nettle, evidenced by his being proud of the fact that he actually looked at her in the eyes when she began to countenance what he'd brought along with him as "pressie" in his return. This does not describe Krait or Jahllee... which are big exceptions. But then Jahlee... doesn't she ultimately serve as some kind of anthrax he's long been keeping safe with him, so ultimately he has her to ultimately land on Nettle. Not just the attack on her physically, but as means to ensure she learns about all the women you've been sleeping with, while she's been at home, middle-aged, homely, never really likely to be the candidate for another's affections that you seem in your text so certain she might be. And then you can pretend, after she's delivered her wounds, to only have ever been her aid, the man who loves her, by kicking and killing her, as Silk ended up being when Blood's delivers pretty much Silk's own grievances upon Rose but gets to be only her loyal knight in defence by killing Blood.


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    • James Wynn      pastedGraphic_6.png Patrick McEvoy-Halston 
    • The reason it matters that Horn died in the pit is that it tells us who the narrator is throughout the story. It’s not Horn nor Silk — although their memories are there. The narrator is a Neighbor. His guilt over inadvertently “killing” Horn tells us about the passivity the Neighbors learned in order to make the inhumi inert. 
    • It makes the story hang together. It makes the ending make better sense. It clarifies what he was getting at when he remembers Horns story about his mother and the puppet (Horns body has become a puppet of the Neighbor). And that seems to be saying something about the relationship between the Neighbors and Mother. 
    • Finally, Wolfe is creating a rationale for the Trinity — Father, Son, Holy Spirirt.



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    • Mike Bennewitz       James Wynn very fucking interesting.


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    • Mike Bennewitz       But if it’s all Neighbor-Horn, then why is he wondering about the nature of the neighbors and their gods and such all the way through?


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    • James Wynn      pastedGraphic_6.png Mike Bennewitz That is a very good and very problematic question. I believe it has to do with Wolfe’s pondering of the nature of memory: Are we still “us” without our memories? This would be a very personal question for Wolfe bc of what his wife was just starting to go through when he began to write.

    • The Neighbor does not remember who he is and the narrative of the SS is the process of remembering that as he is burdened with the memories, motivations, and especially the regrets of Horn and Silk. 

    • That was the price he paid to reanimate Horn. He doesn’t fully remember who he is until the end of RTTW when he says it would be too painful to see Hoof and Hide.

    • SS is the story of him remembering his true self.

    • Even when he has glimpses of knowledge, he avoids speaking authoritatively about it bc that would mean admitting he was not Horn but Horn’s killer.



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    • James Wynn      pastedGraphic_6.png Anyway, its more interesting for the Narrator to “discover” who the Neighbors are and his true origin gives him more ways to do that than Horn ever would.



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    • James Wynn      pastedGraphic_6.png He’s not not the only one who has forgotten his true self — which will bring us back to Fava one day.



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    • James Wynn      pastedGraphic_6.png Mike Bennewitz 
    • BTW This might be interesting to you whether you believe my critique or not:

    • Forgetting your true self is a question that Plato took up in Timaeus and -- very important in the Solarian franchise -- it relates to the Gnostic story of Simon Magus and Helena:

    • Simon was incarnation of "the Father" the supreme being that made the angels that created/were the eons. This Conception of creation, Thought, fell through the eons, each corrupted angel seeking to claim her for his own. Until, one day Simon found her, as Helena, degraded in a brothel. 

    • I believe that this is an allusion woven into the story of LS-SS.
    • http://www.ccel.org/.../Helena,%20companion%20of%20Simon...

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      CCEL.ORG

      Dictionary of Christian Biography and Literature to the End of the Sixth Century A.D., with an…
      Dictionary of Christian Biography and Literature to the End of the Sixth Century A.D., with an Account of the Principal Sects and Heresies. - Henry Wace





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    • Marc Aramini       James Wynn the embedded story of Inclito's mother about the suitors directly maps onto these various species - to the beloved, they resemble each other, but to each other, they are enemies to be killed from beyond the grave with a serpent's tooth (the inhumi). The deal Horn makes with the other Horn (my theory explains why Horn is separate from Horn) that they can come back is scary - the lumberjacks going out into the forest know that the Vanished People are hostile because he threatens the trees. That's a sinister deal when you see that the trees on green are cannibal trees who eat trees. Horn eaten in the pit is a literal sexual act, given the connotation of the word Horn, (Hornbus, you whore!) and the vaginal maw of implied by the islands being giant herb-islands.


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    • James Wynn      pastedGraphic_6.png Marc Aramini Well, one thing we can definitely agree on: Inclito's mother's tale demonstrates emphatically that the Raja, the Narrator, travels through time with Oreb.



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    • Marc Aramini       James Wynn We don't even need it, given the scene where Silk just randomly slips back in time - i found it in my writeup so i'll copy and paste it


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    • Marc Aramini       >Those were magic words, although I had been ignorant of their power when I pronounced them. As a small boy I had heard the stories all children hear, and used to imagine that if only I could stumble upon the correct syllables a garden would spring up where our neighbors’ houses stood, a place of mystery and beauty in which the trees bore emeralds that turned to diamonds as they ripened, and fountains ran with milk or wine. Eventually I came to realize that the immortal gods were the only spirits who granted the wishes of men, and that prayers were the magic words I had sought. …

    • >Now - very far from those friends, men and women I will never see again – I had stumbled upon words that were magic indeed. No sooner had I pronounced them than I found myself back in Green’s jungles, squatting beside the young man who had joined us and fought beside us, as he writhed and bled beneath the arching roots. (*Green*, X 157) 

    • With all that poetic talk of trees and gardens, it should not be difficult by now to posit a mechanism for this transport through time. There is, however, one aspect of this scene which strongly hints that it is not merely a memory: Krait asks Silk why he hates the inhumi. His denial hammers home that it is specifically Silk from a future point in the timeline visiting this scene: “I’ve never told you anything of the kind … or talked to you at all until this moment.” It was Horn who had lived through this and traveled with Krait, and no matter how much Silk denies it, he is a different man. (Another point comes up during this exchange, which we should always remember when considering the understanding of the cargo placed upon the *Whorl*: “[The sleepers] memories had been tampered with, like Mamelta’s, so they were confused in strange ways” (*Green*, X 158). Even eye-witnesses such as Rigoglio and Mamelta lack sufficient perspective to understand where (and even why) they are. As Rigoglio says when asked if he knew Mamelta, “I may have known your friend under that name or some other … but I have no way of telling. It was a long time, years in fact, before I understood that I did not remember everything, and that not everything I remembered had actually taken place. … Our memories are less trustworthy even that yours. At first we try to live in accordance with them, but sooner or later we learn very painfully that they lead us astray” (*Green*, XVIII 276).) This scene also metaphorically describes the loss of Horn’s happiness: it is breached when Krait the inhumi is born, and only at his death, as a human man reconciled with a father who comes to love him as a son, does that chasm disappear. With the reconciliation of Horn and Krait, there is no more reason for Horn’s bitterness regarding his family life. We might draw a parallel situation with humanity, that will be forever at war and unhappy until it recognizes the nature of the inhumi as distinctly human, ending their threat.

    • We shall reinforce the idea that Silk’s travel through dream is also one through time later, and that it was his thoughts that led him to a past Urth, knowing that he intended to reach Green, but Hoof gets much the same impression during his final journey to the Red Sun Whorl: “Father stopped talking, and it seemed to me that he had stopped a long time ago someplace a long way from where I was”



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    • James Wynn      pastedGraphic_6.png Marc Aramini When the Raja dream travels to Green and ends up on Urth, this is to my thinking, the very strongest evidence that Green is the planet of Urth. The argument that "there are no inhumi on Urth" is weak since the Urth of Severian itself contains many invasive species. Green would be a post-Ushas iteration. Which is why I'm not convinced Horn's tower is the Matachin Tower however perfectly that would work. 

    • When the Narrator negotiates with Scylla and she says she wIll convey their agreement to her "sister". It would work very well if Urth's Scylla is actually Blue's Mother and that is why she sends help to Horn just before he dies in the form of Seawrack. But what is Scylla doing on Blue and not Green? 

    • It bugs me, though, that Green has two Mars-like moons. That's a misdirection too far I think.

    • On the Mars connection, I was able to convince Michael Andre-Druissi that SS is lain over ER Burroughs's Mars story while at Windy Con. It was not the multi-limbs of of the inhumi or other fauna that did it. I said, "In A Princess of Mars a man goes to sleep and dreams his way to another world."



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    • Marc Aramini       James Wynn I don't remember those moons


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    • Marc Aramini       the three bodies involved that Silkhorn (not sure when it occurs) thinks about are the whorl, Green and Blue. conjunction shows an unstable orbit now ...


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    • Marc Aramini       clouds and double darkness veil the sky. The city will look to the sky for a sign but the only sign it will get is from the fish's belly. Wolfe is all about that misdirection


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    • Marc Aramini       paraphrased of course


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    • James Wynn      pastedGraphic_6.png I'd have to look search for it, but the first? time the Raja takes a troop to Green (and actually gets there). The two moons are small satellites like those on Mars.



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    • Patrick McEvoy-Halston       James Wynn The passage suggests a great deal of ambiguity about Mother's relationship to anyone, as if who She is is someone who knows how to deliberately play to your susceptibilities to get you forever bidden to Her. Hiding within her body is something Seawrack used to do, but it is also something we know Horn's mother wanted for Horn himself -- to never leave her and remain a child. Two prompts here to think of his own feeling played by his mother, which is what follows in the text, who would take what you'd foraged for yourself as your own skill (representing your own autonomous action), your puppet-making, co-opt it to herself, and suggest through her expertise and mastery that you disown yourself of the skill entirely for being so inadequate in employing it. 

    • And the bit about Mother being a manteoin, a palace, into which people find themselves lured to for protection, may also explain why Horn ends up hiding himself within a body of someone who represents a more godlike and empowered male personage than he -- in Silk. Taking up Mother's bait made that goal that much more important to achieve, for he could never permit himself to be lured back into what he had once escaped, and owed his whole adult life TO having escaped. 

    • The ambiguity of the massive body of the Mother! likely also explains the undertanding of obesity as carrying power. It's the Mother's body, it's many of our mothers' bodies, as we knew them when we were dependent and wholly susceptible to her. It also explains... along with other things in the text, why Seawrack would never ever have killed Horn for raping her during that evening, for having had a male now to take her away from Mother! was such a miracle she was willing to endure anything if need be. This was a prize she would never forgo, for he was protection from clinging back... from no longer representing simply a part of someone else, like Merryn essentially is the Mother in New Sun. Horn probably sensed this when he raped her. He should be kind, but he could do what he wanted. And he made use of this advantage to revenge upon her all the anger and shame he felt in Nettle choosing Sinew over himself (... or so it seemed to him) to give her love to.


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    • Mike Bennewitz       Patrick you have such a different take on all this. I took the shameful rape to be sonething beyond his control and a result of the Siren-Song that he coerced her to sing. It seems very much like she knew the song would make him mad with lust and lose control. It’s not what he wanted to do. She didn’t want to sing because she knew.



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    • James Wynn      pastedGraphic_6.png Yeah, my understanding was that Seawrack was a literal siren -- biologically designed by Mother to be irresistible when she chose to be. Apropo of nothing, I always imagined that the name she actually gave Horn was "syrinx".



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    • James Wynn      pastedGraphic_6.png As far as the puppet goes, shortly after his story about the marionette, Horn is set upon by a leatherskin, a massive sea creature with triple-jaws. The only creatures I know of with jaws like that is a manticore and the Dog-Fish from Pinnochio. After Gippetto is swallowed by the Dog-Fish, the Fairy with blue hair becomes his mother and sends him to school.

    • Other significant mother's:
    • Silk's who wanted him to enter the Juzgado
    • Hyacinth's mother who gave her two gowns and a green umbrella.
    • Blood's mother who was Maytera Rose 
    • Auk's adopted mother who was Maytera Mint
    • Olivine's mother and Mucor's adopted mother who was Marble/Magnesia


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    • James Wynn      pastedGraphic_6.png I guess that Mother being a house means that Mother is a kind of craft, perhaps a living one, perhaps one staffed by many beings.


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    • Patrick McEvoy-Halston       Mike Bennewitz It could that he was compelled to, owing to the voice. For sure. But here's the thing. When Horn describes how his powerfully adverse relationship with Sinew (and thereafter unsettled one with his wife, whose favourite years with her were in the whorl, not on Blue) owes to his wife putting attention to him as a toddler/baby that he himself wanted claim to, what he is describing is akin to what a lot of husbands have made complaint about, especially in the past. They, however, don't end up displacing the blame onto some outside source, like this narrative allows Horn, in figuring in a witch/vampire that is ostensibly solely responsible for creating this powerful lasting rift in the family unit. And it's usually the wives who credit the real culprit as their husband's mothers, who they gossip as not giving their boys the love they required so that as men they sought out to be mothered by their wives... like Severian does many of the women he meets, and became irrationally jealous of their focussing their attention on their newborns. 

    • So more or less when he hear of how Horn was jealous of Sinew, it is for us to ask if he seems the kind of man who... even without Jahllee appearing to prey on Sinew, would have formed the same rift with him and for the same reason. And it is for us to ask ourselves if he would feel anger not only with Sinew but his wife as well, however well he'd be able to baldly admit with his wife. My sense is that he is exactly this sort of person; that he'd be glad of the unreal circumstances (...well, maybe not so unreal in Blue, where vampires, if not stregas, are real) that permitted him to displace the blame onto a witch/vampire; that he'd unconsciously also hope that circumstances would develop which would permit a terrible sort of revenge on his wife for "spurning" him for her more "clearly" "attractive/appealing" child. 

    • The narrative offers him this with Seawrack. He's going to have repeated sex with her, and even as he says that he's going to be completely honest in his account... at least offer his wife that, that she would, even if hurt by his account, know she's seen him at his worst -- be granted that power over him -- he still contrives to make his relationship with her one that couldn't be helped: all men, he argues, when given a beautiful young naked child/woman to have sex with, would find themselves greatly sexually excited by her: it's not Horn, but every man who is at fault. And when given an opportunity to situate her as someone who could serve as Nettle for spurning him for another more beauticious soul, he can apply it on someone who is built to accept it as just a wife's due -- the Mother told her she would be abused by her man, but to take it is what wives must do -- and a better alternative even then to returning to her past life. They've met Krait and Seawrack has just admitted that... "he IS handsome," playing to a capacity to be caught out in jealousy she might assume her "husband" to be comfortable with, but it turns out, simply isn't there. 

    • He then begs her to sing, and following it, rapes her... making her bleed from pretty much everywhere: an outrageous explosion of rage, that'd equal only that inflicted by massive amounts of prior shame and anger that had been waiting for such a perfect target to out itself. The narrative allows us ascribe it solely to the singing, for... such and such. But if this bit about her singing had not occurred... if it never had any such property or if she never had sung, it is for us to ask if we could see Horn raping her in that situation anyway, and for me it is. Mother has allowed him means to sort of "excuse" it as just something men do, and also primed anticipation of it, expectation of it... it's there, waiting for you, dear Seawrack. She's "baiting" him with jealousy, and the simple fact of being a wife who, unlike his Nettle, a mature woman his age, is much less threatening, and hardly open to any kind of rebuttal that would interfere in his activity; operate only as victimizer rather than victimized. 

    • He seems exactly the kind of guy akin to Bill Clinton, who'd have a history of a history of deflecting off of his "scary" wife to "make address" with a whole sequence of younger woman, which would include raping them, and certainly humiliating and shaming them. Hillary argued once, in an interview with Tina Brown, that Bill was looking for attention from her that his own mother failed to offer him; that he had a denying mother, and like all sons of such could only consciously ascribe her as a holy saint while in practice making other women pay for the "crimes" he knew he'd incurred from her.

    • "Were neither of them ever quite able to forget that he had raped her once?
    • I have tried hard to punish myself for that, and certain other things. No more. Let the Outsider punish me; we deceive ourselves when we think that we can measure out justice to ourselves. I wanted to end my guilt. What was just about that? I should feel guilty. I deserve it.
    • I should feel a lot more guilty about having had other women while I was (as I still am) wed to poor Nettle. When I read that business about my thoughts flying around her bed [this is the passage he is referring to: “My night thoughts circle your bed, glowing but invisible, to observe and to protect you. Never doubt that I love you very dearly.”] I was sickened.
    • Sickened!
    • For all our lives I have been a false lover and a false friend. I would beg her to forgive me if I could. If only I could. I do not dream about her anymore.”

    • Displacement onto Jahlee, and onto Seawrack's song, yet both occurrences -- rift in the family unit, rape of a young woman -- readily plausible whether they had manifested or not... already from this Horn who would have us believe he is being completely laid bare in his narrative, despite the fact that he weds Seawrack because... no man could resist, and has scores of young wives as Horn/Silk because he would doom them if he refused. The point -- would you have anyway? Never addressed. But in this passage he evidences some awareness that he's crafting something, this book, not only to come clean, but to near deliberately "inadvertently" terrorize her, for accepting the lure, the bait, of opening herself to him through this obligatory reading of his final days.


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    • Mike Bennewitz       Patrick McEvoy-Halston I don’t know. I’m not particularly interested in this angle... sure, it does often seem like his admissions are cruel to Nettle, that’s for sure. It fits into Horn constantly saying he’s not good and constantly trying to be better.


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  • Eric Bourland     Interesting!



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  • Patrick McEvoy-Halston     I think at one point Silk argues that without the gods, as negligent... as truly awful as they are, morality would die. I think Horn argues that Nettle did good by encouraging his sons to believe... that that would save them. Quetzal even says something about the gods as well, that suggests damage is done by thinking them parasitic. He says something like, even as we know them as they are, they remain our "parents"; we have to believe in them. 

  • If Horn is trying to be a better father, I'm not sure he ultimately succeeds. With Hide and Hoof, he ultimately has sons who seem too easy advocates of his point of view, and from my point of view, Sinew is the only one of his children who finishes up able to live independent of him, and whom Horn/Silk, who is so ready at most times to intercede in people's lives, luring, jostling them all over the place, mastering them, won't cross; leaves at peace. He seems typical first born to a family of love-needing parents, has better attachment skills, is more comfortable being autonomous, because the parents know they don't have to cling to him for there will be others to come... the empty nest is not yet in sight. 

  • The motive for why Silk leaves is certainly worth a deep conversation, but I remember when I first read Short Sun I didn't blink at it. I'll explore this at some point. I suspect his departure does not owe to SIlk's possession of Pas (when was it confirmed that Pas is in Silk, btw). We should get into that at some point. I like how you notice how things go haywire when he shows up. The one place it doesn't happen -- Sinew's village.


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  • James Wynn    pastedGraphic_6.png I have many firm opinions about the plot of SS that are debatable. But that Horn died in that pit and that Silk killed himself in front of Hyacinth’s casket seem so obvious to me. 

  • I don’t think the ending of SS is compressible without recognizing that the plot of LS is not as straightforward as people think.



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    • Patrick McEvoy-Halston       What do you make of the fact that Silk died with so many cuts to his body? I think Borski pointed out that the place itself has been trashed. He argues Pig killed him, and his best argument that that is a possibility is that some other... I forget who, wonders if a godling had inflicted the wounds. But what works against considering that possibility is that it's difficult to imagine Pig, considering his size and strength, not cleaving Silk into two if he succeeded in cutting him several times... and as well, there's the matter of Silk being an expert at arms (we remember how many giants a trained fighter can take down just by applying the right cuts to the right places, in the Knight.) This is one I'm still thinking on.



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    • Mike Bennewitz       The argument that Pig killed him Silk and lied about everything is interesting. It sure seems like Silk killed himself there or at least he was working himself up to doing it. I accept that Horn dies in the pit. I accept that Silk was probably dead when Horn transferred into him though I’m not sure it needs to be read that way. Probably though.


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    • Marc Aramini       Silk has suicidal tendencies. But there is a way in which getting the eye back into Pig is a way for the personality of Silver silk to be freed from Pig and put back in Silk if it is missing.



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    • Marc Aramini       But there are some memories in Return to the Whorl that the body of Silk seems to remember from two point of views, so it doesn't seem that he is totally gone.



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    • James Wynn      pastedGraphic_6.png I think Silk slashed his wrists in front of Hyacinths casket. His soul has left but their is just enough life left in his body that the Neighbors can replace him with “Horn”. All that is left of Silk at that point are his physical memories.

    • There’s a bit where the Narrator talks about how we don’t die when the soul leaves the body —the soul leaves because the body is destroyed.



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    • Marc Aramini       James Wynn I have thought that maybe the significance of the eye is that it lets Silver Silk be a "reboot" for Silk



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    • Patrick McEvoy-Halston       Mike Bennewitz The relationship of SIlk TO ANY possible suicide deserves consideration as well. There's a bit in Short Sun where he thinks on killing one of his young wives... so that she would serve as a displaced killing of his own self... and of course that he lured Horn out into a position where he was primed to serve as the same sort of replacement self-sacrifice... and Oreb always (it turns out, rightly) worrying about being done in by him. If he ever gets in the mood, someone else seems so always to be the one to pay the price. Something about this is why it sometimes seems impossible that he'd ultimately let himself go for anyone, even if that is what in fact happened.



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    • James Wynn      pastedGraphic_6.png It’s hard to say when he has Silk’s memories and doesn’t because all of this is written after the fact. I would want Silver Silk to have a narrative significance.



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    • Mike Bennewitz       James Wynn the narrative significance of Silver Silk is that Silkhorn brings Passilk to Blue. Horn doesn’t want that and presumably Silk has come to his way of thinking about the Gods of the Whorl.



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    • Marc Aramini       (Silk was to be Typhon's vessel from the start - "In some higher reality I am a cognate of Sand" What was sand? A sacrifice to bring back Pas.



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    • Mike Bennewitz       Marc Aramini yes


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    • Mike Bennewitz       Marc Aramini yes but after spending time merged with Horn he has decided Fuck That!


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    • James Wynn      pastedGraphic_6.png Merged with “Horn” 
    • 😉



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    • Marc Aramini       James Wynn My reading of that is that the separate neighbor also known as Horn (his name is my name, too!!!!) who shakes hands with Horn was born from falling in the pit, but that Horn got resurrected from the remaining CLAW OF THE CONCILIATOR/WHITE FOUNTAIN residue lingering maybe even in the thorns that shared Severian's blood - somebody planted that shit and grew a wondrously nasty garden, maybe.


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    • James Wynn      pastedGraphic_6.png Pas was possessing Sand. Silk — I have come to believe — is a clone of Typhon. When Silk wonders if the gods can come to Blue, it’s ironic because he’s already there.



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    • Marc Aramini       James Wynn I agree Typhon is his clone and the talk between him and scylla where they wonder if Typhon would forgive her is SO poignant because Silk says yes. It's like this proxy reconciliation



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    • Marc Aramini       James Wynn you know what i mean. silk is his clone. And I am certain mucor is Scylla's because of the dreams - when Scylla is laid to rest, Mucor is too. The whipped horses in the carriage: Mucor and scylla



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    • James Wynn      pastedGraphic_6.png i think the greenbuck was the Neighbor that resurrected Horn — that is, took his place.



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  • Jordon Flato     Man oh man I have to re read these books for the nth time now.



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  • Marc Aramini     I totally agree that him leaving is freeing humanity from Typhon's tyranny



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  • Mike Bennewitz     Marc wrote: “That tower horn dies in with the broken plates is the matachin tower. “
  • Horn and Silkhorn saw those towers from the inside and out. How would Silkhorn not recognize it as the same place? I guess you posit that Horn has left him by that point but that argument seems to require that Horn’s memories live on in Silk. So wouldn’t he remember? I think so. He’d at least feel something weird like he seems to often.


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    • Marc Aramini       My whole writeup is about his insane denial - he can’t even recognize who he is.



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    • Marc Aramini       How much can a man deny? Is the title of it



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    • Marc Aramini       Because he just can’t handle recognizing these hard truths - that humanity is all dead


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    • Marc Aramini       Or that horn died for him


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    • James Wynn      pastedGraphic_6.png Who says he doesn’t recognize it? He knows more than he records throughout the story.

    • I say this as a point of debate. Although I believe soul travel is time travel, and there are technical problems with the Green Urth theory.



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    • Marc Aramini       James have you read my revised one? It’s much much better and more convincing. Blue is a red herring- mars.


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    • Marc Aramini       The goddess of purity on green is the Virgin Mary. The story of mars and its hybridized trees is told in the tale of the boy called frog in which spring wing, mars, is born when a tree impregnates his mother. So the vanished people arose on blue but they are people from green/Urth and that city of the inhumi is Nessus


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    • Marc Aramini       When the people at dorp ask if silk is being a traitor to his race by helping windcloud, windcloud laughs and takes them to Urth.


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    • Marc Aramini       Time travel occurs when silk is talking to one of those girls, fava or mora, and slips back to see krait’s death but says he never met krait before, then watched him die. Straight up time travel right in the middle of a scene. Nuts



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    • James Wynn      pastedGraphic_6.png Doesn’t Green have two moons?



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    • Mike Bennewitz       Marc A big problem for me is that someone familiar with Landers wouldn’t likely call Dilapidated towers landers. He distinctly mentions both towers and landers on green.


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    • Mike Bennewitz       James yes. I believe he’s saying Mars hit Lune and absorbed it. The two moons could be fragments. But the gravity and orbital situation between Ushas would be all fucked if Mars was that close. Also somewhere someone points out the Red Sun system from Blue or Green. I forget where that happens though.


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    • Marc Aramini       It's near the end, talking about visualizing it way out there and trying to find the light of the red sun whorl far away



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    • Mike Bennewitz       I’ll admit Mora and Fava’s involvement after Fava dies confuses the hell out of me.


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    • Marc Aramini       but like i said, the narrator really doesn't know where he is


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    • James Wynn      pastedGraphic_6.png I think I understand Fava. But you’d have to accept that Pike’Ghost in LS is soul traveling “Silkhorn” and future Oreb for you to find it credible.




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    • Mike Bennewitz       James i’d need you to unpack that for me. I never gave much thought to Pike’s ghost.


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    • James Wynn      pastedGraphic_6.png Pike's Ghost is traveling with Oreb who flies out the window and fades away (Silk's Oreb is has a busted wing and denies he went upstairs). Silk is awakened by Mucor. In On Blue's Waters, Mucor goes looking for Silk. Who she finds is "Silkhorn" (a name I don't like but that ship has sailed) at Silk' manse. Silkhorn tells Mucor to tell Horn not to come looking for him because HE KNOWS it is lethally dangerous -- he's seen it already.


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    • Mike Bennewitz       James wait, in OBW mucor reaches Silk not Silkhorn. Silkhorn isn’t until the Neighbors send his spirit when he dies in the tower. I do remember something weird about seeing oreb and then Oreb denying it.


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    • James Wynn      pastedGraphic_6.png Mucor says she found Silk. And she did. Anybody on Blue can tell you that is Silk. 

    • Horn leaves to get to the Whorl.
    • Horn sends Mucor to find Silk. She soul travels in a way that is analogous to Silkhorn and meets him in the astral plane (maybe she can't time travel without Silkhorn). 
    • Horn goes on and dies in a pit. Replaced by a Neighbor. Becomes Neighbor-Man.Get's his "son" Krait.
    • Neighbor-Man goes to Green. Dies.
    • Neighbor-Man calls to the Neighbors with his magic ring. They can't repair the body again. So they send him to Silk's body which is about to vacated. 
    • Adventures on the Whorl returns to Blue.

    • When Silkhorn meets Mucor in his timeline could have occurred just about anytime after that, including after the end of the book.


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    • Marc Aramini       (My reading of Pike’s ghost is that it is silk going backwards in time with oreb, pretty much.)


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    • Mike Bennewitz       James Wynn when she soul travels to Silk he hasn’t gotten Horn yet. That’s all I’m saying. But yes, everyone else in the story knows where Silk is. It even says it in the first few pages when it’s easy to misunderstand.


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    • James Wynn      pastedGraphic_6.png But.... given that dream travel is time travel, why does it matter what hasnt' happened yet. Pike's Ghost appears before any of this happens.



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    • Marc Aramini       Short sun is a pain in the ass to talk about lol



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    • James Wynn      pastedGraphic_6.png Here's the the thing about LS-SS: It's a sequel to tBotNS. That is a cyclical book. It shouldn't be a surprise that this is too.



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    • Marc Aramini       I think it is even more circular than James does. A big, big circular trip on the whorl.



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    • Patrick McEvoy-Halston       Marc Aramini You believe Silk won't admit he isn't Horn because he can't handle that Horn sacrificed himself, died, for him. The reason this doesn't quite feel right is that it would seem that Silk would at some level know that he has nearly primed Horn so that he would be very willing to sacrifice himself for Silk, eager to do it even, perhaps to show himself that Silk's last encouragement that he do so, suicide himself for him, was something other than it was; so to get past a previous gross mishandling by him. Horn knew that whatever spell Silk'd cast on him was sufficient for him to put himself onto a ledge where he'd have a decent chance of dying, and we know him as someone who wrote his book almost as someone who was still trying to IMPOSE on Silk that he ostensibly mattered so much to him... he's a bit too eager to show how much Silk must have noticed him, almost as if he might be still uncertain... as if he'd had loud counterproof, which he actually had had. 

    • There is a sense almost that what Silk refusing to acknowledge himself as SIlk when he's Horn/Silk does is let someone else carry him through a great expanse of the journey, only to awaken at some later point when he's ready to appear; that is, as him almost doing the Pas bit. If he did kill himself over Hyacinth but then knew himself to be alive again, letting someone else take over for a long while would give him a chance to reset himself into some kind of acceptance. He pulls back into focus, as overtly, Silk, when he feels a bit more grounded, as he's now away from anything reminiscent of Hyacinth -- the whorl itself -- talking with someone who grounds him, is wise and experienced but whom also he doesn't fear, feels composed and relaxed around -- Remora, who's a spirit-brother to SIlk in that both had mothers who had high expectations of them to succeed; both had mothers who were highly deeply integrated into their whole adult lives, and were more important to them ultimately than any "Hyacinths" could ever be.

    • For Silk to be so devastated at Horn's sacrifice.... feels almost like something Horn himself would inscribe into a text, to further prove his "obvious" worth to someone who had already showed he loved him so much he could be in mood to readily dispose of him so to be himself disposed of a depressive mood he no longer wanted to be caught in. It's Olivine insisting that her mother could still love her if only she proves more, offers more... really against the available evidence. All you've proved by doing so, as Rose admits at some point in the text, is that you're the perfect vehicle to be used and used and used again. Horn can say that Seawrack might have killed him for raping her as he would of done the same if he were in her place, but at some level you know when the person before you is built to take what you'll hand them, and so in truth this just amounts to recovering you as a good person and also as a taunt: further affliction of pain. 

    • "Moti came in with a little brass kettle and mint tea. I could have killed her, not because I have anything against the sweet child, but as a substitute for myself. I handed her my dagger and told her to stab me between the shoulder blades, because I lacked the courage to drive in the point. Bent my head and shut my eyes. What would I have done if she had obeyed?"

    • This to me is not about an instinct for suicide, but about a large ability to make psychological torture of a young human being who half worships you, in order to push yourself ultimately out of your mood. Silk may have known that if he had Horn back in him, then he was both alive and now, unlike before, had a "Moti" available to him who could be used in whatever way necessary to keep him from succumbing again into attacking his own self until that mood has passed. The particular way he made use of Horn was to keep him at the forefront until he had recovered his poise and was ready to take-over. He wouldn't need to worry about Horn taking over the conglomerate (I know you argued Horn actually isn't there anymore anyway) because Horn would be satisfied as if his life was now completed; he did his bit where he had summed it up as something which had offered more than most people would ever know, and all that. He had accepted his story as over with it showing him as overall in good account. 

    • Silk invited upon himself the horde of inhumi horde and made gross use of Juganu to do so, but though he says he had hoped it would lead to his death it really seems of no surprise to me that it actually lead to the death of others. For him to go off on an adventure, it's best to do so after an attack has been invited upon "you," and where there will be scores of other people to present themselves as more available... as weaker targets, victims, because it'll be done after a price was paid. You get the fresh start that Wolfe knew as someone whose early adult years were after the Depression and World War Two. 

    • If SIlk is so affected at what he might have done to others he loved -- "I killed their father" -- then why isn't so much of the text about his reminiscing on Mora's being gang-raped after being encouraged into sudden action by his encouragements and counselling. The text conveniently shows her, this girl who's barely a woman and who is desperate for any friend at all, not being all that adversely affected by it, so we don't need to think much of it if we don't want. But still, it shouldn't stop us from expecting that if Silk could be driven to deny his whole existence over what he'd made Horn do, that he'd have been nearly as set awry by what he'd done to Mora; what he'd effectively "lured" her into doing (I'm not quite being fair in this interpretation, I know). But again, there's so little register... he feels bad about it but really just seems to walk away. The same too about putting a knife into his bride's hands and instructing her to kill him... no thought on what this must have done to disorient her... and all his brides are described as girlish, frightened and timorous.... and Silk knew that for example being grossly used as a prostitute had for example made Hyacinth -- a young, vulnerable person at the time herself -- into someone so discombobulated she ended up hating all men other than Silk.



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    • Mike Bennewitz       Patrick McEvoy-Halston an interesting reading.



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    • James Wynn      pastedGraphic_6.png On time-travel, dream-travel, and Mucor. Something I just remembered.

    • I have a side hypothesis, that when Mucor leaves to look for Silk, he's already died. Even on my first reading, I detected that the timeline seemed screwy. Hoof or Hide carefully details how long it was after Horn left before they went look for him and how long it took to find him. And, curiously, the time seemed way to short to me. I have a speculation that there is a significant period of overlap lap of Horn looking for Silk and fighting on Green for the lander and the events of RttW. It's not necessary for Silk to have been dead when Mucor goes looking for him, but it would make a little *more* sense and it might explain the weird timeline issues.


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  • Patrick McEvoy-Halston     If Silk leaving was freeing Typhon's tyranny, it is also them losing the person we've had described as the difference maker for mankind. With Silk around, people really might just manage to be their best selves, is what we've been lead to believe. Silk's leaving FELT right at the end... and this may reveal that what actually FEELS right about him, is that ultimately he depart so that others have a chance to grow. Silk has always been someone who seems to make himself master of whatever situation he is in, so they'll all have to listen to his fifteen points about this and that in its entirety. We probably all feel that it's probably okay we're free of him for awhile, for ourselves having had his company the whole time and often situating ourselves not in him but in the people who submit to him. We didn't want Silk to displace Bison and Mint on the whorl, because we liked their spot, and we don't want him over-arching "his" children's new lives, either. His leaving gives them all the air they need to breathe.



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  • Mike Bennewitz     Marc Aramini Mark I just finished your Short Sun Thesis. It's really great. I got a lot out of reading it. I'm very happy to see you're thoughts ultimately deal with the symbolic intent in the plot, rather than just trying to find answers to riddles. I get pretty sick of the elaborate theories people make up to fill the lacunae in Wolfe's books while not discussing the real meat and potatoes of symbol and meaning. You're thesis doesn't fall into that, which is refreshing. Some of the ideas I've rejected previously are more compelling now, and I like the fact that you don't outright insist on your solutions being the only reading. You anticipate the rebuttals too, such as my rebuttal that Horn is still in Silk for the astral travels. Well done. In reading your nutshell answers here on facebook I worried that you would fall into that trap. I mean, you've said more or less that the SS is about the crossbreeding of plant and animal to bring about the Green Man / Heirogrammates of a post human future (sorry if that paraphrase isn't fair) but the actual thesis doesn't make that the top point. That you frame that as a deeper part of what the book is about, one that resonates with what it is clearly "about" at a surface level, that of becoming a better person, or that of humanity becoming better people. I neglected to mention that in my post about the themes, but that is clearly the theme of the Solar Cycle at large. So even if I don't want to accept that the "hidden" story has ANYTHING to do with Lianas, Heirogrammates or Ushas=Green, I can accept the ideas because they don't alter that main theme, they expand upon it. That said, I'm much more willing to entertain those hidden plot ideas after reading your thesis. You make a good case that your ideas are supported and not contradicted by the text. I have to accept this as a legitimate reading of the text. Many times I've read people's thoughts on the hidden plot that skew so far from what seems to be the author's intent, but as wild as these ideas are, they don't cross purpose with the intent I sense when I read these books. That's a lot of work you've done. Thank you for sharing it with us. I hope you can get those published. (I still need to finish the Long Sun one.)



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    • Marc Aramini       Thanks so much for reading and for these kind words - this has been a BIG bugbear on my shoulders for years. Glad you enjoyed it ! I'm almost done with the project - Mostly through Evil Guest and then only Land Across left. I hope you enjoy the other writeups!



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    • Mike Bennewitz       Marc Aramini I have to admit to not having read those newer books. I keep rereading the solar cycle. I think I'll reread Latro next.



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      • Marc Aramini         Mike Bennewitz I'm really proud of my Latro writeup too let me know when you are done ;)



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