Silk is a Mary Sue

[avram]

I realized the other day: Patera Silk is a Mary Sue!


He’s got unusual hair and eye colors (blond and blue) for his culture (Latin American).

He’s good at everything, even things he’s just trying for the first time. He successfully breaks-and-enters a house that a professional burglar had said he wouldn’t try. The first (or maybe second) time he picks up a sword, a master swordsman refuses to believe Silk hasn’t had earlier lessons. He pilots the Trivigaunti airship without having been taught.

Almost everyone he meets loves him. The general populace of the city want him to be caldé (mayor), and a beautiful prostitute falls in love with him after just meeting him briefly. Even the goddess of love seems smitten with him.

Comments

ha ha

[mittelbar.livejournal.com]

yup.

[cattitude.livejournal.com]

Yup, though at least it's justified in-story.

[drcpunk.livejournal.com]

How?

[avram]

The Book of the Long Sun is actually Silk fan fiction written by Horn and Nettle.

[cattitude.livejournal.com]

As Avi points out, the book is essentially fan-fic.

His abilities are justified because he was raised from one of the embryos stolen from the stores set aside for the landing. Presumably they only stole the best; Silk was likely intended, and genetically engineered, to be the leader of the landing. I speculate, though I don't have any direct evidence of this, that Silk is the improved clone of Typhon.

[avram]

That would explain why Kypris falls for him. And why she offers to make him part of Pas — if Pas is missing parts, she may figure she can get some of him back by scanning in Silk.

Re:

[drcpunk.livejournal.com]

Whoa -- a genetically engineered embryo stoles from the stores? Is this stated explicitly? If not, how do we find out?

I've started reading The Knight.

[avram]

It’s explicit for Gene Wolfe, which is to say that you can piece it together from things located in four or five spots around the book:

Someone (Remora?) mentions that Tussah (the last caldé) had bought one of those embryos and implanted it in a woman.

Silk tells Potto and Loris that Tussah’d fathered a daughter on his housekeeper. Chenille then accuses Potto and Loris of having killed her father, implying that her father was Tussah, and Silk never contradicts her, and reinforces her statement a few times later. And there are hints of this earlier.

Silk also refers to Chenille as his sister, accidentally, and asks the person he’s talking to to forget he’d said it.

Tussah is a kind of silk. Chenille is a kind of yarn which can be made of silk.