{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/1931",
    "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": 1931,
    "subject": "The Urth of the New Sun",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "1999-11-06T19:09:42+00:00",
    "last": "1999-11-06T19:09:42+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0028-0410@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Daniel Fusch",
        "address": "dfusch at hotmail.com"
      },
      "date": "1999-11-06T19:09:42+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) The Urth of the New Sun",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Tim,\n\nI don't think The Urth of the New Sun is a mistake, but it is clearly not to \nbe taken as a sequel to The Book of the New Sun. (Now I know somebody is \ngoing to say--But Severian says its a sequel!--but that's not good enough.)\n\nThe Urth of the New Sun is not a sequel; it is a parallel narrative. The \nBook is a cyclical narrative; The Urth is a fixed and linear narrative, with \na precise beginning and a precise ending. The ending does not flow back to \nthe beginning, and vice versa.\n\nThe Urth of the New Sun also has a different narrator. Oh, he has the same \nname--Severian--but he can not be treated as the same character. First, he \nregresses in his character development back to the Severian of volume III of \nThe Book of the New Sun. In the fourth volume, he had developed in terms of \nhis morality (see his confrontation with Vodalus, his reaction to Dr. Talos' \ncounterfeit coin, and his union with Valeria), his sense of justice (see his \nreunion with Palaemon), and indeed his entire philosophy of life (see the \nscene by the sea). When we get to The Urth of the New Sun, we find a \nSeverian who is morally and philosophically the Severian of two books past.\n\nThe scope and scale of the narratives is also sharply different. The Book of \nthe New Sun has an epic structure paired with an odd form of bildungsroman, \nbeginning in media res. The Urth of the New Sun is a more straightforward \nheroic romance.\n\nI don't have the time to expand this further, but it is something I've been \nthinking about. Consider that The Urth of the New Sun is to The Book of the \nNew Sun what Paradise Regained is to Paradise Lost--a shorter, parallel work \n(not a sequel) with a smaller scale and scope. All of Paradise Regained is \nalready contained in Paradise Lost, which spans all creation from its \nbeginning (indeed, from before that dawn of time) to the final redemption of \nhumanity. All of the Urth of the New Sun is already contained in The Book of \nthe New Sun, which is not a linear narrative, but rather one which reaches \nback both into the past and forward into the future.\n\nSo The Urth of the New Sun should really be treated as a separate narrative. \nAnd it may be that you will enjoy it more in light of that."
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}