Not to be the unhinged theorist in the Locked Tomb fandom but the Resurrection Beasts and Alecto have some peculiar themes that just tie too perfectly into radiation.
Like the blue light with Varun. Because if theres a real world example of a haunting blue light you never want to see in person ever, it's this:
Also, Nona does not want and probably can't really eat, which is both a running gag but also one of the first sympthoms after somebody gets radiation poisoning. And at the end of the book, her condition deteriorates.
And even from a narrative point of view: John Gaius used to be a scientist. He wanted to save everyone. He also kinda took the soul of the earth. He embodies powers that, if kept in check, can help many but they can also spell untold destruction. It just works. The resurrection beasts and their rampage basically being the equivalent of a melting reactor would mean it is still John's fault and it fucking is so I will just keep believing it.
Mercy describes Varun as "blue like Loveday's eyes", and Gideon compares Cytherea's (aka Loveday's) eyes to "electromagnetic radiation" specifically.
And there are debatably implications they were working with radiation in the first place for the cryo project! From the sound of everything combined, probably testing that the frozen people shipped off to Tau Ceti would be good to survive the radiation of space, and they'd gotten it up to an estimated 92% chance of success without significant lasting damage for the average person, but to get to those numbers, they'd wound up with a whole mess of very irradiated corpses. Which was why they were going to have so much trouble disposing of them, and when John talks about just burying them he sarcastically mutters "you would've loved that", and why the general population was so freaked out by how Scary it sounded, and why John got blacklisted from a lot of shit (despite having been the one to insist on clearance from Asia-Pacific Environmental!). He describes the latter specifically as "I was irradiated." And we do know how Muir loves layered meanings, especially through John!
And I mean. Necromancy in general is fossil fuels 2.0, so making the RBs nuclear feels right. And!! There's my recent theory that the whole solar system is A SYSTEM, effectively like the sun as a brain and the planets as organs for one big body, with all of them innately connected, but with or without that take, we know at minimum there's a lot of sun association with John and Alecto. So there's nuclear fusion too!
Someone in the comments said something about fusion and fision. I think there are parallels between that and the idea of thanergy/thalergy. The violent removal of a soul from its body always produces a revenant. The violent splitting of two parts of a whole generates vast amounts of energy. Only the nine houses planets produce death energy. The planets that were violently split into two parts.
Oh god, this connects SO many dots in my own terrifying Megatheorum. I won't even fit this in one reblog, because this is taking forever to write - but I think it's worth it.
On Tor's website, TLT is listed as Scifi/Fantasy. However, when forced to choose, Tor picks Scifi above all. This is HUGE, because even with all the necromancy and fantasy elements of The Locked Tomb, the publisher looked at the series and said "No, this is scifi." Ergo: the "magical" elements must have a basis in science.
Now, spiritual/religious elements (souls etc) can exist alongside science without much issue. But if you're manipulating physical objects in a real-world environment, you have to explain it in a way that could conceivably track with scientific theory as it functions in the real world. You can extrapolate from there.
So. In GtN, we enter a world of fantasy tropes and Regency-era hand wringing about social morés.... but we also see Palamedes tear his hair out about dating Canaan; how nothing seems to fit a reasonable timeline. In real life, scientists use radiometric dating in geology & archeology to determine the age of objects. (also, do necromantic (or irradiated) interactions with objects impart additional radiation? I don't know!!)
TLDR; You can tear the soul out of a planet, but the actual tearing process needs to make enough sense to pass muster in the Scifi world. Nuclear fusion is a great candidate, as mentioned by @oh-jod-dammit and @championofdnd and is supported by the text ("the soul was like a tiny atom bomb"). God, it's right there.
This, of course, raises some questions.
If necromancy is related to radiation, what power does Alecto/Earth impart to John that allows him control of (assumingly) irradiated corpses? and WHY? What about him was so fucking special? Sure, he was trying to get humans off Earth for its own sake, presumably by testing radiation shielding for long-range space flight. (aka the problem with pregnancy is you have to worry about irradiation for fetuses or reproductive organs. probably.)
But how is John a better ally than an eco-warrior or biologist or any number of scientists that were presumably trying to save the Earth? Alecto (allegedly) said she chose him. How did he bring himself to her attention? If we keep following this logic, how did radiation connect them?
I'm tired. Let's review some facts from both sides.
.Electromagnetic Radiation is produced by stars and other celestial bodies.
.Planets, people, and stars emit different types of radiation.
.Planets and people are proven to have souls, which can be removed from the body by force.
.Do stars have souls?? The sun?? The Moon in the Fucking Sky??? (where is the Moon, btw??)
.Does radiation serve as a connection to a different dimension? Are radio waves a bridge to The River? Did John tear a hole in spacetime and make some kind of wormhole?
"you were the noise that was everywhere" thats RADIO WAVES. tamsyn muir I will GET YOU
This is why Wake is wearing a Haz suit in the River Bubble, btw. She only started experiencing negative effects when the suit was punctured. (right?). It's why The Eggs All Died. It's why flipped planets slowly mutate. RADIATION. I love y'all.
The stupid First House robes? They're a fucking PRISM. Electromagnetic Radiation is visible light!! GODDAMN!!!
And here's where I leave this for a breather. My original document got corrupted somehow. probably the radiation :(
Okay @oh-jod-dammit brought up some REALLY interesting things in the comments that set my brain on fire
On Wake:
Ya gotta ask - Why was Wake wearing the Haz suit before she died? On the Ninth, her body is found wearing a life support suit as an outer layer, but that's different. This suggests she was possibly wearing the Haz suit underneath - to protect against what?
Also, good catch with Jod being chosen/unchosen! I think it's more like -
Jod is very close to the electromagnetic spectrum through his work with irradiated corpses
So close that he, a living person, is able to “make waves” in the EM field - aka influence physical reactions, like moving/manipulating bodies.
This work puts him closer to whatever plane the souls reside in (The River) and thereby Alecto.
That's what brings John (unknowingly) to her attention; he *was* chosen by her (“I picked you to change, and this is how you repay me?”) BUT she had no idea he would force a connection through the opening made by the death of “the nun” (which, btw: pre-resurrection, Christabel is never given a first letter like M– or A– ; only “The nun” or “M– ‘s nun”).
If John had stopped at physical manipulation - kept curing cancer, found a way to heal the earth using EM waves, etc, he never would have broken through. But by cracking the “atom bomb” of a soul that was the “missing link,” John forced a door to open between the physical plane and The River/astral plane. He may have pushed a ton of EM waves/radiation through the hole while cycling the power back through himself (?)
"I was looking at the code, I knew why I hadn't been able to see anything.” Radio waves would cause a lot of interference, yeah?
Random additional thoughts:
Wherefore the missing people? Well, per John, he “snapped up” a large percentage of humanity before the nuclear warheads hit, although he phrases it as a kindness. I don't know if that means he claims some kind of ownership over those souls. This is a wobbly guess from me.
The reason the Houses don't have much in the way of technology is because the radiation renders it null. Otherwise they'd definitely have SOMETHING after 10,000 years. You can't just kill everyone who ever had the idea for an internet.
Again, WHERE IS THE MOON. We see no references to it at all.
Y'all are bringing up some great points, keep 'em coming! My original Megatheorum included most of this, but I had no scientific explanation that fit the clues. So far Electromagnetic Radiation is the *best* fit I've found that explains Tor's Scifi designation while matching the text provided.
FYI, my knowledge of EMR is based in astronomy, one of my finest hyperfixations. However I have no schooling in such and am going largely by Wikipedia articles and sheer determination.
