Bakker XLIX - From Bashrags to Riches (No TUC Spoilers!)

[Hello World]

Hm... I'm seeing one on ebay right not... wonder who'll pick it up.

[Kalbear]

Just now, Hello World said:

Hm... I'm seeing one on ebay right not... wonder who'll pick it up.

The only ones I've seen were mislabled TGOs as TUCs. 

[Hello World]

It sold two minutes after I posted that...

http://www.ebay.com/itm/The-Unholy-Consult-Scott-Bakker-ARC-Proof-Advance-Aspect-Emperor-Four-4-Newest-/272674052001?hash=item3f7ca3d7a1%3Ag%3AY8IAAOSwKytZGzGe&nma=true&si=vKIeYskiXax%2FE8%2BFjcZ6Jo77O9c%3D&orig_cvip=true&rt=nc&_trksid=p2047675.l2557

[.H.]

Good lord.  Well, I had no intentions of paying that much for one anyway.

[Kalbear]

5 minutes ago, .H. said:

Good lord.  Well, I had no intentions of paying that much for one anyway.

At least it was for a good cause?

[.H.]

Just now, Kalbear said:

At least it was for a good cause?

Allegedly.

Probably, I mean I am not in a position to be paying $100 for a book I'll be buying twice more, in any case.

[Kalbear]

Just now, .H. said:

Allegedly.

Probably, I mean I am not in a position to be paying $100 for a book I'll be buying twice more, in any case.

I'm saying it went to the friends of SF library, which is a charity group. So that $100 at least is going somewhere nice and isn't just for lining profit. 

And yeah, this likely means the flood is going to be coming pretty soon. There will almost certainly be more in the next few days.

[Madness]

I'll not repeat my distaste for ARC-pocalypse but at least they fixed the "Lord-and-Profit" error in the synopsis.

[Hello World]

Funny, that's the first thing I looked for when I saw the posting...

[.H.]

10 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

I'm saying it went to the friends of SF library, which is a charity group. So that $100 at least is going somewhere nice and isn't just for lining profit.

Nah, i know, I saw that.  They sold a TGO ARC last year too.

12 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

And yeah, this likely means the flood is going to be coming pretty soon. There will almost certainly be more in the next few days.

Yeah, once there is a price point set, it usually opens up.  But if they start at a bill, no way am I getting one unless through the kindness of strangers.

[Callan S.]

Profit - Capitalism - Kellhus...it all ties in!

[Werthead]

15 hours ago, Madness said:

Right, they make them to send out to private resellers, given last year's ARC-pocalypse.

This is probably the "telephone effect" at work: someone mentioned to me in Quorum at SA that DR claimed to know the end of TUC. I haven't been checking in here for a minute so I'll chalk it up to hearsay.

Yeah, as I wrote, I'd have never believed that any of those mediums sold their ARCs. I know Andy and Rob personally and you and Pat are two of the longest standing online SFF bloggers in human history. EDIT: [Grimdark Magazine is the only wildcard and they've garnered some serious respect since their advent - and no single leak would account for 13+ eBay ARCs of TGO sold.]

By the way, is that accurate regarding Orbit not sending out galleys?

Correct. None last year and none this. Actually, none for TWLW either.

Come to think of it, I'm not sure Orbit has ever done them for Bakker. I bought the first trilogy after release (believe it or not, they were all out long before I even started the blog), JE and GO were Overlook ARCs, WLW was a pre-release final copy and TUC was an electronic proof.

[.H.]

To take this tread a little different direction for a moment:

For a long time now, I've had this feeling that the story of why Moënghus left Ishuäl simply didn't really add up.  Prima facie, it seems plausible that to keep Dûnyain society effectively isolated, outside influence must be avoided at any cost.  Compromised individuals must be eliminated, lest the whole endeavor necessarily fail.  However, some aspect of why Moënghus left don't really jive with that.

Let's start with what we're told:

Quote

“The Dûnyain have hidden from the world for two millennia, and they would remain hidden, if they could, for all eternity. Yet thirty-one years ago, while I was still but a child, we were discovered by a band of Sranc. The Sranc were easily destroyed, but as a precaution, my father was sent into the wilderness to ascertain the extent of our exposure. When he returned some months later, it was decided that he must be exiled. He’d been contaminated, had become a threat to our mission. Three decades passed, and it was assumed he’d perished.”

So, previous to a close reading of this paragraph, I had the mistaken assumption that it was encountering the Sranc that lead to Moë leaving, but this is not the case at all.  That stands to reason, encountering Sranc would be litter different than encounting a pack of wolves, especially if one never bothered to learn Aghurzoi, the Sranc language.  I mean, it is plausible that even knowledge of Sranc would be something of an outside influence, but I don't believe they were unaware of Sranc, so their continued existence would not be much of a shock.

On that point, Kellhus doesn't question Leweth when he speaks of Sranc, only show unfamiliarity with their particulars when Leweth points out their particulars.  This, to me, speaks to Kellhus knowledge of Sranc in the intellectual sense, but unfamiliar with the practicalities and particulars of them.  That is something of an aside though.

So, going back to the above quote, Moënghus leaves Ishuäl to investigate the Sranc's finding of them, so what would he presumably do?  Track them backwards, to see where they came from.  There are a few obvious options on what he would find would plausibly include:
More Sranc
More Sranc, but lead by Ursranc.
More Sranc, but lead by a Nonman.
A human settlement.
Human ruins.
Nonman ruins.

In the first two cases, there is little to suggest why Moënghus would need to be exiled.  Even if he learned Aghurzoi, what might a Sranc or Ursranc tell him that would lead him taint him?

If he met a Nonman, he could have learned of sorcery.

If he met a human, he could have learned of history.  The same for the ruins of the former Kûniüri empire and so the lineage of the Anasûrimbor.  Plausibly, something of the same for Nonman ruins.

None of this really seems all that tainting.  But wait, we once asked Bakker about this very topic.

Quote

Isolation from external causes is the key to the original Dunyain mission. Allowing Moenghus back in would have been tantamount to allowing every he had experienced back in.

My emphasis added.  My above analysis is presuming that it was something Moënghus learned that lead him to not be fit to be allowed back to Ishuäl.  But cagey, cagey Bakker points out, it was what Moë experienced that left him unfit for return.

I asked Bakker, in that thread a follow up question (followed by Bakker's answer):

Quote

I never doubted this.  However, I have, at times, doubted the wisdom of allowing a Dunyain to exist in the wild, from their perspective.

It's hard to imagine them not considering the risks in allowing someone with knowledge of Ishual's location to simply walk out.  Why didn't they force him into the Thousand-Thousand Halls, like the Pragma did when he polluted them in turn?  I've come up with some conspiracy theories on this, because it seems somewhat unfathomable that they didn't consider the risk in allowing him to leave.

Quote

They had no difficulty killing themselves afterward, and he was their better, so why assume he would have difficulty?

 

So, wait, I took this to mean that Moënghus was yet another Anasûrimbor prodigy and so the Pragma felt no right to demand he kill himself.  I don't this is what he meant though.  It wouldn't make much sense to allow a prodigy to go on a seemingly suicidal mission to scout out Sranc anyway.

No, I think, again, Bakker is being cagey with his wording here.

Moënghus didn't leave Ishuäl the first time as their better, he returned to Ishuäl as their better.

What?  Why would tracking Sranc better Moënghus?

Because, just as Kellhus learned when he left Ishuäl, Moënghus experienced domination.  He experienced that Sranc could be manipulated (as his latter appearance to Scylvendi in the "captivity" of Sranc shows).  He probably experienced that world-born men could be dominated as if children.  He returned to Ishuäl knowing full well that he was more, the full power of the Dûnyain.  The Logos unleashed.

He had a taste of the power that the Logos offers.  Why give it up?  Rather, he chose to leave Ishuäl.  This is also why he chose to head south.  He must have known that was where human civilization was.  He would go there and he would dominate it.  A Dûnyainic dynasty to lead and guide Men.  But he made the first major blunder with choosing the Psûkhe and so the rest is history, as they say.

[kuenjato]

2 hours ago, .H. said:

snip

Interesting. The Dunyain were aware of the outside world, to a limited extent -- ignorance of sorcery (held as superstition) but aware of Nonmen (Kellhus's knowledgable reaction to encountering one in the prologue).

Just reached the 3rd chapter of TGO, where it starts with Kellly encountering "himself" and talking about drawing the God "from the ground" by burning the fields. I feel this is hinting at something extremely important for TUC (the God is sleeping? unaware of the 99's greedy domination of souls?)

[Michael Seswatha Jordan]

30 minutes ago, kuenjato said:

Interesting. The Dunyain were aware of the outside world, to a limited extent -- ignorance of sorcery (held as superstition) but aware of Nonmen (Kellhus's knowledgable reaction to encountering one in the prologue).

Just reached the 3rd chapter of TGO, where it starts with Kellly encountering "himself" and talking about drawing the God "from the ground" by burning the fields. I feel this is hinting at something extremely important for TUC (the God is sleeping? unaware of the 99's greedy domination of souls?)

Doesn't Leweth tell Kellhus about the Nonmen?

[redeagl]

20 hours ago, Callan S. said:

Profit - Capitalism - Kellhus...it all ties in!

Exactly! 

By the way, I didn't find your quote with Aurang lamenting about the Skin spies BUT since they didn't have an entry in the TTT glossary, I am sure they will have one in the TUC one, and you will see for yourself 

[.H.]

45 minutes ago, Michael Seswatha Jordan said:

Doesn't Leweth tell Kellhus about the Nonmen?

Yes, but not in our "hearing," Kellhus only remarks later that they are "another of Leweth's myths come true."

[Lord Patrek]

My review of The Unholy Consult is up on the Hotlist.

Minor spoilers. . .

[lokisnow]

@.H. very interesting I agree with it except for kellhus knowledge of sranc. K is not prepared for sranc, does not even consider that an unknown footprint is their track because he assumes them mythical. If K is aware of sranc in theory then his dunyain intellect would decipher the track just as easily as it decodes every other new encounter.  And the nonman description is: another of leweths myths come true, but the only other thing he has encountered is sranc, so he thought them mythical. This means that the post hoc explanation of moenghus leaving because of sranc is a lie because he needs a story that is believable and he needs a story because he is hiding his own ignorance of why moenghus left.

rather, I think koringhus and kellhus together give us clues to moenghus, the three of them experienced things beyond the ken of the dunyain, and moenghus as he eventually deduced he was not delusional, knew he would be killed if others discovered what he was learning or believing or discovering (in other words the beginnings of the TTT came to moe while he was in Ishual and caused him to leave).

i think moe, without any apparent external motivation observed by the other dunyain, just got up and walked out one day. This unpredictable event was so terrifying that none dared follow him. Since they had thirty years of unmolested peace they assume he perished, but they are ignorant of the why's of his leaving. His return in sorcerous dreams facilitated their reaction, which is to order his death--this means if he has ever left and returned he would be killed or have to die, so he never left and returned never was exiled by others he exiled himself by simply walking out--no drama. And the dunyain were too paralyzed by the novelty of this to react.

[Hello World]

6 minutes ago, Lord Patrek said:

My review of The Unholy Consult is up on the Hotlist.

Minor spoilers. . .

Quote

it rapidly becomes clear that the lost Lord-and-Profit is not so easily shaken from the mission.