The post-1993 stratum (late-additions) — and the mold scene as late-addition red herring

In plain terms: a large layer of the novel was added after 1993 -- the Year-of-Glad opening, the mold-eating scene, all the Marathe/Steeply dialogues, most of the separatist material, videophony, and about half the endnotes -- and the mold scene in particular may be a late-added red herring.

Where the text lands: that this material was added late is strongly supported; the further inference that the mold scene is therefore a decoy rather than a real cause is unresolved. This is a question about the book's making, so the text-support scale does not apply to the addition facts themselves. Among readers: the addition facts are agreed among the witnesses; the red-herring inference is a minority.

Three independent witnesses converge on the post-1993 layer and nothing on the record disputes it. But lateness alone does not sort decoy from cause -- the record suggests the late frame was engineered precisely to keep several causes live at once. In the archive's practice, composition order caps how high a causal theory can rank but never decides it. Drawn from the composition tested reading.