"Eschatology and Genesis"
The Urth list — 3 messages, 2 voices, 29 Mar 1999
https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/1453

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Roy C. Lackey — 29 Mar 1999, 04:13

    When, in chapter XXXVII of _Urth_, Herena, Declan, the mate, and the
cook visit Sev in his cell and ask him to relate to them how old Urth will
fare when the New Sun comes, he knows scarcely more than they. He therefore
draws upon his knowledge of Dr. Talos's play for the information. Dr.
Talos's play, many centuries later, is based upon the myths and legends
extant from the time of the Conciliator, that is, from Sev himself as he
relates it in his cell. Never mind Canog, who also wrote the story down; he
was just a scribe.
    My question is this: Whence the story? What is its genesis? Who was the
original author in this chain of story tellers?

Roy

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Tony Ellis — 29 Mar 1999, 12:25
  follows, by subject match Roy C. Lackey

> Roy wrote:
>     My question is this: Whence the story? What is its genesis? Who was the
> original author in this chain of story tellers?

Well, like the note the protagonist gives to himself in "The
Technicolour Time Machine", or the poems of William Ashbless in "The
Anubis Gates", the joke here may be that no one quite originates the
story, that it's a closed loop.

But the "original" author is Severian himself. He's the one who actually
witnesses the end of Urth and lives to write about it. Sev witnesses
Urth's last day, Sev writes about it, Sev presumably casts his narrative
into the seas of Time. (I say "presumably" because I can't remember if
he ever actually says he is going to do this or not - but surely the
implication is there.) If you can accept that Severian's narrative
constitutes, either wholly or in part, the "lost" Book of the New Sun on
which Dr Talos says his play is based, rather than Canog's text, then no
paradox exists.

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Tony Ellis — 29 Mar 1999, 12:52
  follows, by subject match Tony Ellis

> Roy wrote:
> My question is this: Whence the story? What is its genesis? Who was the
> original author in this chain of story tellers?

Well, like the note the protagonist gives to himself in "The
Technicolour Time Machine", or the poems of William Ashbless in "The
Anubis Gates", the joke here may be that no one quite originates the
story, that it's a closed loop.

But the "original" author is Severian himself. He's the one who actually
witnesses the end of Urth and lives to write about it. Sev witnesses
Urth's last day, Sev writes about it, Sev presumably casts his narrative
into the seas of Time. (I say "presumably" because I can't remember if
he ever actually says he is going to do this or not - but surely the
implication is there.) If you can accept that Severian's narrative
constitutes, either wholly or in part, the "lost" Book of the New Sun on
which Dr Talos says his play is based, rather than Canog's text, then no
paradox exists.

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