Posted from 2 addresses as Jeff Wilson, Jeffery Wilson clueland.com, Jeffery Wilson
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Gunnie (the elder) had some of Agia's gumption as well, even if she let herself be turned about morally as thoroughly as she was temporally. There may be some kind of temporal gr…
09 Aug 2010, 07:28
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There's a sister somewhere, but that doesn't mean the clues to her identity have to be where Severian can find them, just where the *reader* can find them. He was probably being…
09 Aug 2010, 01:24
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This might be extended indefinitely upward to the Increate's plan.…
08 Aug 2010, 13:38
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That's.....quite a presumption. Textev?…
08 Aug 2010, 05:41
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Let us think what information that the guild would have retained. We could expect them to have: * the official documentation commanding Catharine's imprisonment and her torture …
07 Aug 2010, 11:18
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Tzadkiel overtly changes shape, and the armigette becomes a bird in one of the lazarette stories. Can you refresh my memory about where else shapeshifting is referenced? And do …
07 Aug 2010, 11:15
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That's not much of a restriction given Severian's gift of rationalization. Of course Severian is mostly obedient to the written and unwritten rules of his society, but is also ke…
06 Aug 2010, 20:00
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I think the fulgurator uses electronic technology to determine if the client is speaking truthfully. They probably monitor and discretely relay the level of verity to the examine…
06 Aug 2010, 05:35
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Alpheta, Tzadkiel, Famulimus, Barbatus, and Inire are all alien creatures from beyond time and space whose existence follows physical laws foreign to all urthly experience. They …
06 Aug 2010, 05:06
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We already know that the torturers supply medical attention to clients, so that would not be a separate specialty. There is also an association of electrical gear with lightning …
06 Aug 2010, 04:50
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Dude, are we reading the same books? Sev says multiple times he's broken every oath he's ever made, every guild stricture, ...he breaks rules left and right, starting with treaso…
06 Aug 2010, 04:08
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I believe he does open the records, which is how he knows his mother's name and hair color, which Ouen confirms, and that he does it almost immediately upon his ascension, before…
06 Aug 2010, 03:45
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My guess would be that the examiner is the crown's representative, the way medical examiners / coroners determine the cause of death, and that a fulgurator who uses "lightning" f…
06 Aug 2010, 03:36
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SHADOW, VII: "At last the time would come, to men and women alike, when instead of a journeyman with food, Master Gurloes would appear trailing three or four journeymen and perha…
06 Aug 2010, 01:03
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The initial population would involve such extreme artificial selection from across a huge pool that I would hesitate to call it Darwinian evolution alone. you'd also need genetic…
05 Aug 2010, 15:51
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The Commonwealth has poor nutrition and health care by our standards, and Master Gurloes remarks on how this affects the growth of the apprentices in SHADOW. The autocthons (nativ…
05 Aug 2010, 15:35
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This may or may not be an "acquired" trait so much as a flexible phenotype. There's also jazz like epigenetics and reversion that can effectively undo the adaptation in a small num…
05 Aug 2010, 15:22
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Yes, but "Lamarckism" is not a product of Lamarck himself. Inheritance of acquired characteristics is an ancient idea in one form or another, and Darwin allowed something like it…
05 Aug 2010, 08:11
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I don't believe that this is the whole story. They are still the Seekers of Truth as well as Penitence, and some interrogation takes place, if I remember correctly, including the o…
05 Aug 2010, 00:09
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Like a ship running aground, sure. His desperation of his existence as the destroyer of Urth may have given him some extra heedless speed until he overshoots the early end of the…
04 Aug 2010, 17:10
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We don't know for sure. The business about moving in a direction not seen before suggests that movement om higher spatial dimension is involved. The power of the New Sun may not b…
04 Aug 2010, 01:09
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...and it explains some of Inire's interest in young people, mwah-hahaha!…
03 Aug 2010, 23:35
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Another possibility is that the Autarchs add memories of freshly dead Commonwealthers of some merit or useful perspective. As memories fade with succession, they may feel the nee…
03 Aug 2010, 02:49
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Where do the children and farmwives come in?…
02 Aug 2010, 21:37
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I've been pondering that hazard of succession. If Vodalus can keep Thecla's body fresh for days in an ice cave, and the mandragora remains even slightly animated after centuries un…
02 Aug 2010, 19:31
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For such a prominent feature of the book, there's so little said about the succession of Autarchs that any detail we can glean is important to solving any number of attendant mys…
02 Aug 2010, 16:28
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Which imperial dynasties did you have in mind? Holy Roman? Austro-Hungarian? Egyptian? There's a few more, but my Lexicon may have drifted into the Void. There's Ymar, Sulpicius…
02 Aug 2010, 10:10
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Giant. Robot. Warriors.…
02 Aug 2010, 09:53
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I doubt there is a close analog, because rather than God's representative on earth of course the Autarch's highest calling is the epitome, to be Urth's representative in heaven (…
01 Aug 2010, 21:38
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That's not unusual for popes or kings either. John-Paul I reigned a month, Jane Grey for 9 days, and IIRC the Hawaiian Kamehameha dynasty ended with the last couple of heirs reig…
01 Aug 2010, 20:36
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The old Autarch does claim he will live, and re-reading reveals his mention of cells that will take up residence in Severian's body. So technically, some living tissue may surviv…
01 Aug 2010, 18:15
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Some of the figurative comments about the Autarch who this is that and so forth and the lack of any particularl clerical figures suggests to me that they have a more Anglican or …
01 Aug 2010, 13:50
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I'm not sure what you are getting at. If Vodalus wanted to be Autarch then he certainly fails, being dead and still not Autarch. It can be said that Severian is his servant and h…
01 Aug 2010, 13:34
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He's no dummy or simpleton, but I get the sense he has a problem accepting inconvenient facts.…
01 Aug 2010, 09:29
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I'm sorry, the shaman shows up in chapter XXVII.…
01 Aug 2010, 09:14
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In URTH XXXVIII, while Severian is also a seer imprisoned by the authorities, there is a literal biblical reference to it, immediately followed by a dream with Revelations imager…
01 Aug 2010, 09:13
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The brain-eating thing seems to be a secret, and as Vodalus says, they may reign a half century or a fortnight. But what story is told to the Commonwealth? What keeps people seek…
01 Aug 2010, 08:58
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That's still subject to Severian's bias. Beccan's lingering imprint was also happy at being reunited with his daughter, and was eager to have the rest of the family join them in …
01 Aug 2010, 04:09
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They are but two steps on the same stairway to damnation, one a bit further from the end, or even the same step if you believe the Autarchy is divinely ordained; by presuming to …
01 Aug 2010, 03:49
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Vodalus fails in his ambition to upset the rule of the Autarch and put the Exultants in charge. The rest of the counter-changed patchwork of good deeds by evil forces and misfort…
01 Aug 2010, 03:42
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His healing and resurective ability is supposed to work via short-term bending back time, isn't it? He meditates on the limits it might have over the carnage at the final battle …
01 Aug 2010, 03:21
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I agree, the horror of not-rightness is very strong when the beast firs speaks in the little girl's voice. But horror eventually gives way to reasoning that it must be that way, …
31 Jul 2010, 09:41
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Of course it's satanic, Vodalus is a satanic figure and he's twisting any virtue the analept might have into part of his mockery of communion. But the Increate may validate even a …
30 Jul 2010, 22:23
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"It's like Bubba Hotep, but instead of a mummy, think ginormous wolf-man with those weird black eyes"…
30 Jul 2010, 18:31
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High concept: "He's torturer with multiple personalities, it's a talking bear; they're cops!"…
30 Jul 2010, 18:15
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Whatever the mechanism, the reference to Joseph's dream makes it pretty clear to me that he is correct in his feeling that it comes from the Increate, like Joseph always claims o…
30 Jul 2010, 18:09
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If there was a right to life from the Increate, it wouldn't be a gift, and there would be no grace in it. No one's life is being artificially extended by the alzabo; the memory …
30 Jul 2010, 18:07
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I get the sense that the author is trying to convey that the various "kinds of resurrection" are a mortal projection; there is only one source of the gift of life and that is the…
30 Jul 2010, 16:08
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I think it's a mistake to strongly link the Cumaean to the leech or Ceryx on the basis of their resurrection fixation - essentially *everyone* and *everything* in the BOTNS - inc…
30 Jul 2010, 11:46
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I didn't think it was necessary for them to become mortal to partake of the plenary indulgence, but it would have been kind of futile trying to stop transcendent spirits. And there…
30 Jul 2010, 01:12
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