JDG wrote: > >What's more, the wreckage >of The Zeus is floating nearby - and Leie is presumed dead. > Did you believe Leie was *really* dead? :-) > >Analysis: >We know that Stratos is entering a Time of Changes. > Hmmm... Where else did I read this expression? O:-) >Additionally, men seem to be staying in "rut" longer than before. >(This may well be a cause of the latter.) > Hmmm... I think Maia suspects that there some other - possibly illegal - reason for the male rut. > >Maia finds a symbol (pg 113) in an ancient temple: a dragon with lines of >fire emenating from its teeth that spear a hovering wheel-shape. The >wheel-shape has been "defaced to almost nothing", implying that the wheel >shape represents "the Enemy." The wings of the dragon are spread over a >scene of tumult: soldiers of "the Enemy" are represented as demons with >allegorical horns, fighting a combined force of men and women. The fact >that this symbol is on an ancient temple, however, and the fact that the >symbol suggests heresy to Maia, is very suggestive. Perhaps this battle >with "the Enemy" has passed to the margins of Stratoian Society in some >way? > Also, there's still no hint about this "The Enemy", and what it was. >Perhaps in the intervening years, Stratos experienced a religious >revolution of some sorts? Perhaps a revolution in the science of >Christianity revolutionizing Judaism? > Uh? > >Does anyone want to comment on the final paragraph of this chapter? I've >read it several times, but the sheer number of reflexive clauses keeps >leaving me in knots. Translating the last sentence in particular leaves >me with: "Maia would call the faint sense of loss 'childhood.' " But that >doesn't really seem to make sense. > I think the meaning is: childhood = the period of Maia's life when everything she did had to be shared with Leie. >-There were no men among the Founders. Also, the Founders apparently left >no descendants. Everyone on Stratos today is apparently descended from a >group of humans that were genetically engineered in laboratories over >several generations. > This seems unlikely. You can't have "multiple lab-designed generations before Great Changes were complete" without _someone_ directing those changes. Or could Man have conquered death before coming to Stratos? >-jacar tree: short, spindly, shrub, umbrella-shaped leaves and chemical >defenses (pg 112) > and in extinction, because Earth life forms found the jacar tree delicious. >Technology >-The position of Grange Head is known down to the centimeter. This >possibly implies that the Stratoians have maps produced by GPS, even if >they (or the average sailor at least) can no longer access the GPS >satellite network.(pg 104) > However, there are navigational satellites, an expensive and unnecessary luxury in a many-mooned planet. My notes, in a somehow disorganized order: p.93: the storm hit them after they left Lanargh; but there's no hint about how long did it take p.103: there's a clan that found a weird niche, working in a "feather factory" and climbing heights p.104: two weeks after storm they arrive at Grange Head. There's a dawn sighting of the 5-pulser in "th' Plough". It's the new satellite put by the Outsider "this summer" - What is the Plough? There's a Plough constellation in Earth's sky, could it be the same? If so, Stratos must be very close to Earth, so that some stars are in common. [When we finish this book analysis, I plan not only having a Timeline, but also having a stellar map of Stratos *and* the location of Stratos relative to the Sun :-)))))))))))))] - What are these navigational satellites, and how high are they? p.106: reference to the "Old Net". The dead sailor is Micah, the son of Captain Pegyul and an Ortyn - which means that men probably kept track of their var and male kids p.110: Maia left the temple in Grange Head some weeks later. p.111: "There were no men among the Founders, when the first dome habitats bloomed on Landing Continent".
