{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/1095",
    "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'"
  },
  "archive": "urth",
  "thread": {
    "id": 1095,
    "subject": "ding ding! Adam & Eve, round two",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "1998-09-05T16:22:47+00:00",
    "last": "1998-09-05T16:22:47+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0018-0112@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Tony Ellis",
        "address": "tony.ellis at futurenet.co.uk"
      },
      "date": "1998-09-05T16:22:47+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) ding ding! Adam & Eve, round two",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "For starters, can we throw this curious suggestion that the naked couple\nare the descendants of the sailors right out of the ring, please? If the\nsailors had -won- the battle with Severian's memories their children\nwould have inherited the future. They didn't win. They lost.\n\nIt is the essence of the new world Severian represents that it can only\nbe born out of the death of the old one. It makes no sense that this new\nworld should be populated by the very people who fought to prevent it,\nand every sense that it should be populated by the one man who is\nsupposed to be the avatar of humanity's hope for the future.\n\nWhere exactly does Severian say, or even suggest, that the sailors got\nto populate the new world? When he says \"it was simple enough to guess\nwho my priest's forbears had been - the sailors routed by my memories\"\nthe sentence doesn't stop there, folks. It carries on without so much as\na comma to say that the sailors \"...had paid for their defeat with their\npasts\". So who were the forbears? Well, Sev's not done yet, he's just\nbuilding up a little suspense. He goes on to run the words \"my\ndescendants\" past us to see if anyone notices, and I repeat my point\nthat \"my descendants\" really doesn't admit of that many interpretations.\nIt certainly doesn't mean \"all the creatures of Ushas\", as has been\nsuggested (apart from anything else, that would make the whole sentence\nnonsensical)."
        },
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "Jon Camfield wrote:\nHowever, Sev never mentioned having any children, By Valeria or otherwise,\nand as Apheta wasn't human I doubt that that would be the source"
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "I'm not so sure. Until they attain the exalted state of their creators,\nApheta tells Severian, she and her kind must go masked \"with the\nappearance of your own race\". They are, therefore, as human as the\nHierogrammates want them to be, and there is no reason why that\nshouldn't include the ability to conceive human children. Her\nexplanation to Gunnie that \"your race and ours are, perhaps, no more\nthan each other's reproductive mechanisms\" might even be said to\nreinforce this. She's speaking metaphorically, of course, but sometimes\nwith Wolfe what is true metaphorically is also true actually."
        },
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "Mantis wrote:\nI thought the \"thing born\" was something larger, more obvious, with a\nmore direct/literal connection to Severian in the text (i.e., another\n\"myself\"), and with more presence throughout the five books . . . the\nwhite fountain."
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "J. Schutlz concurs: "
        },
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "...Sev always refers to the white fountain\ncoursing through space as a second and sentient self."
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "And I don't disagree with either of them. I think the \"thing born\" is\nthe White Fountain too. I just don't think that's -all- it is. \n\nThe White Fountain is the New Sun is the meta-symbol of TBOTNS, and it\nhas many different and simultaneous layers of meaning. It's a star, it's\nthe person who's going to bring the star, and among other things it's a\nsymbol for the birth of a new world and a new people. It seems to me\nthat if Wolfe had wanted to suggest the creation of the white fountain\n-without- also suggesting the physical creation of a new race, there\nwere any number of ways he could have done it.\n\nThen again, there are several moments in the books where Severian muses\nthat the literal meaning of a thing, rather than the metaphorical\nmeaning, is the most important - or even that they are one and the same.\nWe shouldn't just look at this union symbolically. Stars are not\nactually made by two people screwing. On the other, it is how babies get\nmade. Yes, Severian has had sex before, but this is the -only- time\nwhere we're also told that the woman is \"ready to mate\". Now, why prime\nus with that particular piece of information, I wonder?\n\nI'm also struck by what Apheta tells Severian just before the battle.\n\"You and your world are of importance to no one here.\" <long pause>\n\"Except to me. ...and that only since you have come.\" Maybe it's just\nbecause she likes him, but this could also be interpreted as meaning\nthat she now has a very personal stake in Severian's success."
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}