Subject: (urth) Jonas in the Antechamber

From: David_Lebling <david_lebling at avid.com>
Date: Tue, 01 Jun 1999 09:22:34 +0000

mantis asks:
> ... the
> central mystery seems to me to be: what is so upsetting to Jonas?  It seems
> to be something(s) that the prisoners told him, rather than just an
> upwelling of empathy for their terrible situation.

My take on this, ever since first reading _New Sun_, is that a major part of
Jonas' distress is the realization of how much time has passed on Urth since his
departure. He tells the fairly straightforward story of the _Fortunate Cloud's_
return, remarking that the spaceport wasn't where they expected it to be (bad
info, continental drift, or what?). Then on hearing Severian's tale of the
Magician and his son, he realizes that the story of Theseus has mutated almost
beyond recognition (his remark about the black sails). Then he discovers that
the prisoners may be the descendants of people from his ship or another like it
which crashed generations before (the Kim Lee Soong stuff).  All three of these
shocks have in common the apprehension of long spans of time.

Finally, of course, he fears that he may be imprisoned for a long time, and will
never see Jolenta again.

So, we have a span of tens of thousands of years back to the loss of knowledge
about the spaceport; a span of thousands of years in which the culture of his
age was lost or changed; a span of hundreds of years in which the prisoners have
lost the common culture of humanity; and a span of decades of possible
imprisonment in which Jonas will lose Jolenta.

Last there is the span of seconds in the room of mirrors in which he regains the
stars (or does he?).

     Dave Lebling
     (aka vizcacha)

*More Wolfe info & archive of this list at http://www.urth.net/urth/

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From: Peter Stephenson <pws at ibmth.df.unipi.it>
Date: Tue, 01 Jun 1999 14:05:43 +0000

David_Lebling at avid.com wrote:
> info, continental drift, or what?).

What, presumably: it's turned into a citadel, with torturers, witches,
magic atria, homunculi, the works.  Nowhere a hard-working sailor can land
a spaceship any more.  (Borskian exercise: now prove that the Matachin
tower is part of Jonas' ship having passed through a time-warp.  Way beyond
my competence, but maybe someone out there...)

corncrake

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From: Kieran Cleary <kierannwn at tinet.ie>
Date: Tue, 01 Jun 1999 13:39:09 +0000

>>My take on this, ever since first reading _New Sun_, is that a major part
of
Jonas' distress is the realization of how much time has passed on Urth since
his
departure. <<

True, and I suppose this was a dawning realisation as there probably isn't
an easy way to find out how much time the average relativistic space
traveller has been away simply by looking around, particularly as the
Autarchs have been trying to keep society in stasis until the New Sun comes
ever since the time of Ymar (as Palaemon remarks to Severian at the
beginning of his journey).

Excellent work Ranjit, thank you!

Kieran C.

North West Labs
Stephen St. Court
Sligo
Republic of Ireland

Tel. +353 71 69441
Fax. +353 71 69451
email: kierannwn at tinet.ie