Lune & Urth

This has been discussed on the Whorl list. It doesn't really hold up. How could they travel to Urth if they were already there? Also, the gravity on Green seems similar to that of Blue.

What seems odd to me is that the Old Sun is so obviously dim and red, but conditions on Urth are more or less normal. I thought that even a change in the Sun's output too small to notice by eye would lead to catastrophic changes on Earth/Urth. And while we're at it... is the White Fountain inside the Old Sun, orbiting Urth, or just hanging around?

Urth-normal gravity is would be expected if Lune's atmosphere was to be retained without some sort of container. The current moon's gravity is not strong enough to retain air. BOTNS includes several examples of gravity-altering technology, and a force powerful enough to move the moon from today's 250,000 miles distance to 150,000 in the Autarchy could also add extra mass to it, increasing gravity "naturally." As for how the Whorl can leave Urth and travel to Urth, it could be a cosmic accident like in Planet Of The Apes (unlikely), or it could be a plot by the duplicitous Typhon. Typhon could have planned the Whorl as a contingency to restore his dynasty if were to have been deposed before it's arrival at the end of its circular course.

There may well have been, but the various other world-altering changes may have countered some of the effect and left the Commonwealth with no obvious differences that show in the text. There are so many oddities that Severian does not remark upon directly but only emerge by close reading that any number of others could be accommodated. For example, crop yields could be horribly low, vitamin deficiencies rampant, etc. but Sev does not mention them since from his POV that's the way things are. The vastly dwindling number of apprentices near his age might be a clue, though.

It's my opinion that it likely plunged into the sun, revitalizing it before it and the black beans cancel out.

Pedant that I am, I have to point out that the black beans don't equate to the black hole gnawing away at the sun. The story of the black beans is the story of how Erebus and co. came to Urth.

Then again, can we be sure that's all they represent? Who is responsible for putting the black hole in the sun?

Then again, can we be sure that's all they represent? Who is responsible for putting the black hole in the sun?

More thinking reveals what might be a sort of inverted literary allusion in the black beans/black hole matter. (I've pointed out numerous examples of inverted parallels and analogies in GW's work in times previous to the Wolfe fans on GEnie.) In a reversal of the Jack and the Beanstalk story, the black beans/hole grow a vinculum not up into the clouds, but "down" to the Abbadon universe, allowing the bad creatures there to make off with the earth's gold, i.e. the energy output required for the sun to show its natural yellow color when warming the earth. I suppose that the other treasures that Jack makes off with in the original tale could be the other lost assets of the earth, like the supposed shortage of metal, but I haven't had to time to take it much farther, if I haven't stretched the comparison too far already.