{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/sflovers/100",
    "note": "Exported from an unofficial mirror of a public mailing list. Copyright in each message remains with the person who wrote it.  Email addresses are obscured as `user at host`, the form the original archive published. This file was rebuilt from parsed fields rather than retained headers, so it is faithful in content but not byte-exact.",
    "addresses": "obscured as 'user at host'"
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  "archive": "sflovers",
  "thread": {
    "id": 100,
    "subject": "More about Wolfe / Book of the New Sun",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "1992-08-15T05:42:14+00:00",
    "last": "1992-08-15T05:42:14+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<sflovers-v17-426-7@digest.sf-lovers>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Stef Jones",
        "address": "stef at apple.com"
      },
      "date": "1992-08-15T05:42:14+00:00",
      "subject": "More about Wolfe / Book of the New Sun",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "I'm posting this on behalf of someone without Usenet access. Please send a\ncopy of any replies via email to Don (0004371469 at mcimail.com).\n\nAuthor Gene Wolfe commented on his \"Urth\" books in an interview by Darrell\nSchweitzer in \"Weird Tales\" Vol. 50 No. 1 (Spring, 1988) Here are some\nexcerpts:\n\nSchweitzer: Could you tell us something about \"The Urth of the New Sun\"?\n\nWolfe: It begins ten years after Severian's story in \n\"The Book of the New Sun.\"*... \n\n*(in referring to \"The Book of the New Sun\", Wolfe means, \ncollectively, the \"Shadow of the Torturer\", \"The Claw of the\nConciliator\", \"The Sword of the Lictor\", and \"The Citadel of the Autarch\").\n\nWolfe (continuing): ...If you've read \"The Book of the New Sun\" carefully,\nyou know that it's being written just before he (Sevarian) leaves to go and\nbring the New Sun. This is his last act on Earth before he boards the ship\nand takes off to leave our universe, which is Briah, and enter the universe\nof the Hierogrimates, which is Yesod.  So \"The Urth of the New Sun \"is the\nstory of what happens to him immediately after he has finished writing The\nBook of the New Sun, in the time-frame of the novel, if you see what I\nmean.  Now what we're skipping is about ten years in which Severian was the\nAutarch of the Commonwealth - and also Autarch of Earth in the sense that\nhis title give him a titular rulership over the planet, which he cannot\nactually exercise.\n\nSchweitzer: It seems to me that the document Severian has produced will be\nremembered in his world not as an autobiography or historical memoir but as\na great myth. It will become like Homer's works and might even be the basis\nfor a religion. Is there any sense of this in the sequel?\n\nWolfe: Oh, yes. First of all, what you say is absolutely true, and that's\nwhy, Dr. Talos's play, \"Eschatology and Genesis,\" deals with this sort of\nthing. For example, if you'll look at the beginning of the play (in Chapter\nXXIV of \"The Claw of the Conciliator), you'll see that the New Sun is\nlisted as one of the characters in the cast.  And of course you never get\nthe complete play because Baldanders goes wild and terrifies the audience\nand gets shot a little bit and breaks up the show. But what you say has\nhappened, and there's a great deal more in \"The Urth of the New Sun\" of how\nit happens and why it happens. You see Severian not only as the New Sun but\nalso as the Conciliator.\n\nSchweitzer: I am fascinated by the vaguely historical models in the series.\nThe Commonwealth, for all that it's set in the Southern Hemisphere, reminds\nme somewhat of Byzantium during one of its four-hundred-year declines,\nmaybe toward the end of the Comnenus period. That is, it is clearly\ndeclining and will continue to do so, but it will just as clearly go on\nwell beyond any one's life-time. Did you have any on this specifically in\nmind?\n\nWolfe: Yes, absolutely. I was very happy to hear you say that, because\npeople look at \"The Shadow of the Torturer\" and they say, \"The Torturers'\nGuild - Ah, this is Medieval Europe.\" And it isn't. It's Byzantium, and\nthat's where the model for it comes from. \" ...\n\n(There follows a discussion Wolfe's specific use of Byzantine Latin in the\nbooks, as opposed to classical Latin) ...\n\nWolfe  (continuing):\n\" We tend to think of the classical world as ending with the sack of Rome,\nand it simply didn't. It continued in the eastern Mediterranean for\nhundreds and hundreds of years after that. As you've just said yourself,\nDarrell, it went on lifetime after lifetime. People lived their entire\nlives in the Byzantine Empire, and their great-grandchildren lived their\nentire lives in the Byzantine Empire and t h e i r great-grandchildren\nlived their entire lives in the Byzantine Empire.\n It was only when Constantinople fell to the Turks that the ancient world\ncame to an end.\n\nEnd of excerpt."
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}