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Andrew says: And if my theory is correct and Sev is the product of a time-traveler he has an even stronger motive for reticence: self-preservation. He doesn't want to give his e…
30 Jun 2008, 12:49
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You're assuming that all corpses that Voldalus took were like Thecla's and used for the same purpose. His grave-robbing was more general than that. The citizen volunteers were co…
30 Jun 2008, 11:57
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Catherine might not have sufficient knowledge of the exact history of the Vodalarii to give Vodalus forewarning about Agia. Vodalus might learn that he didn't become autarch and …
30 Jun 2008, 08:42
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In the BotLS, people and animals are frequently "possessed" by the gods. The technology to do this existed in Typhon's time. In the BotNS, there are hints that the something simi…
30 Jun 2008, 08:18
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Since UotNS was an afterthought, Wolfe must have expected us to be able to construct the loggia scene from the play alone. What is the Contessa doing in the play? She seems like …
30 Jun 2008, 07:35
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Usually Wolfe tries to provide a family resemblance between related characters. Fechin was "a tall, wild boy with red hair on his hands, his arms." Dorcas is gold-blonde, with no…
29 Jun 2008, 12:56
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I found an additional metaphorical clue in the play to strengthen this theory: Contessa: ... I was to look like a post decked with morning-glories, it would seem. Meschia: Brat!…
29 Jun 2008, 05:24
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I take the original cell donor to be an exultant from the House Absolute. From the play: "The Contessa waits outside, and as she is of exalted blood, and a favorite of our sovere…
28 Jun 2008, 07:17
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We can also look with fresh eyes at the lines in the play that predict the Contessa's fate: Contessa: If my body held a part of yours -- drops of liquescent tissue locked in my …
27 Jun 2008, 13:04
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In Eschatology and Genesis, the Contessa Carina has three maids. She calls on Solange and Kyneburga. Her maid Lybe is present with her. I found their saint's legends on the net. …
27 Jun 2008, 06:04
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That's an interesting reference -- until you pointed that out I regarded the grave-robbery corpse as a red herring. There's no reason for that body to be any relation to Sev. If …
26 Jun 2008, 10:08
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I still think there's something funny going on in that scene. Sev says "...I took up the sword. It was vary heavy," A little later he says "I remember that for a moment I feared…
25 Jun 2008, 09:52
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I think this could be one of the guild's secrets. They tell the young apprentices that it will all be faked, but at the last minute the initiate is told to carry it out for real. T…
24 Jun 2008, 21:28
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It might help to revive another Robert Borski theory: that Catherine was Valeria's daughter by her second husband. There's another clue I haven't seen mentioned. In Chapter IX Se…
24 Jun 2008, 08:20
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In Shadow X, Thecla quotes: "Here Rose the Graced, not Rose the Chaste, reposes. The scent that rises is no scent of roses." In http://www.bibliomania.com/2/3/255/1183/23925/1.htm…
23 Jun 2008, 05:45
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Are we sure Sev didn't decide to leave well enough alone? He heard from Ouen that a runaway Pelerine named Catherine was very possibly his mother. He was also convinced that his …
21 Jun 2008, 19:40
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Here is my take on the story "The Most Beautiful Woman on the World" from "Endangered Species." The setting seems to be a Mars terraforming mission. A rift and a connected valle…
21 Jun 2008, 12:34
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Before this line, Nod asks "Have you seen Meschia's son?" I believe the "he" in this line refers to the son, not Meschia himself. It's a reference to the old Biblical puzzle of C…
21 Jun 2008, 11:41
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In Shadow XI, it says, "She was tall and slender, though not so tall nor so slender as Thecla, dark of complexion, dark of eye, raven of hair." I don't see that being shorter tha…
19 Jun 2008, 07:20
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Sev only saw three figures, and Hildegrin was the only one who came out of hiding, but the evidence of the Pelerine cloak suggests someone else was there that night. I don't thin…
19 Jun 2008, 06:49
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All right, I'll accept that Jonas knows what he's talking about. The simplest explanation for the conversation the steersman overheard is that the deep voice was a commander subo…
19 Jun 2008, 06:26
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<mailto:urth%40lists.urth.net?Subject=Re%3A%20%28urth%29%20What%27s%20So%20Great%20About%20Ushas%3F&In-Reply-To=%3C4858906F.1060708%40io.com%3E>Jeff That's a clever work-around, …
18 Jun 2008, 11:55
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We've looked at Dorcas, but we shouldn't skip the next generation. Catherine seems to have considerable powers herself. She appears the same year after year at the Feast of St. K…
18 Jun 2008, 04:57
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I'm not sure Abaia is that much larger than the undines. In Citadel XXXVII, the steersman said he heard the voices of undines coming up the Gyoll, along with a deeper voice that …
18 Jun 2008, 04:07
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I think Dorcas was put into the time-statis water alive (possibly because she fell into a coma and was thought dead). Her dream in Claw XXII seems to be not about her initial buri…
16 Jun 2008, 16:24
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On the other hand, every citizen in the Commonwealth is named for a saint, and the legend of the martyrdom of St. Catherine is essentially the same. I'm convinced it's a post-…
16 Jun 2008, 15:30
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How many people who read this story thought of "Alice in Wonderland"? In particular, the Cheshire Cat? 1) The cat is gray with stripes of darker gray, like Teniel's illustration o…
16 Jun 2008, 05:07
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Interesting. This very theory is referred to in "Seven American Nights." The narrator takes it as an established fact in his contemporary physics (about a century in our future).…
15 Jun 2008, 20:10
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This is the core point. I believe many readers do find this cosmology has a certain epic beauty. "We shall not go to the stars again until we go as a divinity" reminds me of the …
15 Jun 2008, 09:24
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I'll accept this as the new thread even though the first theory is a joke. I'll try to propose a self-consistent set of rewrites of Sev's life around the drowning incident. Sev1…
14 Jun 2008, 17:32
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I prefer to call him "SevN" instead of Sev2. It is clear that his life was rewritten multiple times. I think Wolfe tries to avoid time paradoxes. He usually thinks through the wa…
14 Jun 2008, 13:56
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The phrase is in parallel to "He's tried to tame you instead," so I take it as a poetic expansion of the same concept. Abaia wants to rule humanity, and cast out their contation …
14 Jun 2008, 13:08
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The Ushas upheavals probably didn't destroy Abaia. Juturna, speaking as the White Fountain arrives, says he is still planning to "tame" (enslave) the human race (Urth XLIII). The…
13 Jun 2008, 11:07
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All right, how about this explanation? The old man in Casdoe's house (Sword XV) says "That was the brightest day I've ever seen. The sun had new life to him, the way a man will w…
11 Jun 2008, 18:19
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Severian went back several years before the time when the light of the White Fountain would reach Urth. His power was weakened; we know he couldn't time-travel, though he could do …
11 Jun 2008, 17:26
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The sky is cloudy on their arrival, but I notice quite a few descriptions that show a brighter sun: XXVIII: "We had come to Urth through clouds, as I have said: but the tender f…
11 Jun 2008, 09:22
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You make a good point about the sudden ending of the eclipse, which also coincided with exactly when Sev needed it. I was doubtful that the Ship would come that far into the sola…
11 Jun 2008, 00:09
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I have another possible explanation for the eclipse. The exact dimensions of the Ship aren't given, but could it really be large enough to shadow the Sun and let the stars be see…
10 Jun 2008, 11:43
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I have two issues with this idea; one is practical and the other artistic. On the practical side, the Sev who brings about the New Sun is an aquastor. The aquastor Malrubius acts…
09 Jun 2008, 08:24
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I think you present a compelling case that the Hierogrammates are responsible for the black hole. The reasons are not spelled out in detail, but we do have this: "I tried to tell…
08 Jun 2008, 08:40
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Let's look at the alternative scenario again. Urth gets colder and colder for thousands of years more. Millions die because can't find food, from exposure, or from warring over s…
07 Jun 2008, 13:30
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The teachings of the Conciliator didn't paint a rosy picture at all: Declan wished to know how Urth would fare when the New Sun came; and I, understanding little more than he did…
07 Jun 2008, 07:16
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I'm sorry I mentioned environmentalism -- I thought their term "anthropocentrism" shed an interesting light on the debate. My point remains whether you believe in environmentalis…
07 Jun 2008, 07:00
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* Both of these moral arguments are missing something, in my view. They are only concerned with what happens to the human race. Environmentalists call this anthropocentrism, and t…
05 Jun 2008, 19:03
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Sev was raised to kill without pity, so this is not surprising. Probably if he had not helped Voldalus that night he would have been mistaken for a grave robber and killed himsel…
05 Jun 2008, 12:03
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I don't think so. Unless he closed that loophole as part of the bargain, the King would be within his rights to leave Tim dying of old age at the end of his service. I noticed t…
05 Jun 2008, 05:12
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If Peter Palmieri is Peter Pan, where's Captain Hook? Not far away -- the narrator, Peter Palmer, has plenty of Hook imagery about him: 1) "great, stone-beaked, hook-billed snapp…
05 Jun 2008, 04:10
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There in a line in Claw which helps clarify matters: "But I can remember more than many would credit: the position of each object on a table I walked past when I was a child, and …
04 Jun 2008, 11:02
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Perhaps I am making an unjustified assumption, but I thought it was a given that the copy made on the time-traveling Ship was the only copy that Wolfe could have obtained and "tr…
02 Jun 2008, 05:35
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The feat of reconstructing the entire "Book of the New Sun" from memory is sufficient to prove to me that Severian had a photographic memory as he claimed. Nobody would even atte…
31 May 2008, 23:55
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