{ "export": { "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/270", "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": 270, "subject": "Yet more playfulness", "messages": 2, "voices": 2, "first": "1997-11-25T10:17:29+00:00", "last": "1997-11-25T16:24:00+00:00" }, "messages": [ { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Tony Ellis", "address": "tellis at futurenet.co.uk" }, "date": "1997-11-25T10:17:29+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Yet more playfulness", "in_reply_to": null, "reply_link": null, "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": " 25/11/97\n 09:46\n Yet more playfulness" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Alga wrote:\nNote that there will be a\nmirror in V, when Odilo, Pega and Thetis take on Meschia, Meschiane and\nJahi." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Hmmm. I can see your point that at the end of Urth of the New Sun the\ndead Odilo, Pega and Thetis have been deified as, loosely speaking, \nEarth Father, Earth Mother and Jahi figures. But are you saying that\nthat Odilo and Pega have actually assumed the Meschia, Meschiane \nroles? In the last minutes of the House Absolute we learn that a naked\nman and woman have been spotted in the gardens: surely these are\nMeschia and Meschiane?\n\nPossibly I'm taking you too literally, in which case - sorry!" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Mantis wrote:\n...If Severian leans too heavily upon the\nplay when he is going through the real thing, then he is just a\npuppet of a pre-determined Fate; if he willfully ignores the play as\nhe transforms the world, then he is a fool of Free Will." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Agreed. This is why I felt (and still feel) that the play ending with\nSeverian battling Baldanders with a flaming torch is highly\nsignificant. Although in one sense Severian's success as\nbringer of the New Sun is pre-determined (hey, it's been on its\nway for the last x thousand years), in another sense it really\nis still in doubt. However the play is supposed to end, the fact\nthat it always breaks off here, at a moment of conflict, reflects\nthis uncertainty." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "The same thing is going on to a much greater extent in a third text\nwhich is shrouded in such crafty silence that most readers do not\nknow that it was read in the cell by Thecla and Severian: the\noriginal, \"long lost\" work (that Dr. Talos has also apparently seen),\n(Canog's) THE BOOK OF THE NEW SUN. (No, I didn't figure this one\nout, dispite the clues--I only learned it in an essay by Wolfe in\nPLAN[E]T ENGINEERING.)" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Now this is interesting! Presumably this is the old theory that\none of the unnamed books Severian brings for Thecla is in fact the\nBook of the New Sun? I've always thought this was daft: why would\nThecla ask for a \"long lost\" book from the library? It's like asking a\ntravel agent for holiday brochures on Atlantis.\n\nHaven't read PLAN[E}T ENGINEERING. Are you saying that in so\nmany words Wolfe actually says that this is the case? What are\nthe \"clues\"? Please elaborate!" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "I think both are important--and often times, in\nWolfe's fiction, things hinted yet =not= said are very important." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Quite right, of course. If I was being over-zealous in championing\nthe Performed Play, it's because of the importance I think the\nbattle it ends upon has, as noted above." } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "m.driussi", "address": "m.driussi at genie.com" }, "date": "1997-11-25T16:24:00+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Yet more playfulness", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Reply: Item #8207739 from URTH at LISTS.BEST.COM@INTERNET#\n\nTony Ellis,\n\nRe: significance of withholding ending. Absolutely--I mean, even\nSeverian might balk if he was told up front he would have to =die= on\nthe ship in order to succeed!\n\nRe: \"holiday brochures on Atlantis,\" well it might be that way, but I\ntook it more as being a case that Thecla, finding herself on death\nrow, suddenly got religious and wanted a copy of the bible in a land\nthat has more or less forgotten the bible. I assume that she had\nreceived a certain amount of instruction from her tutors, and/or\nperhaps her parents (her father died years before, it turns out).\n\n\"Briefly, in the time before Ymar was Autarch, when the sun had begun\nto cool, there appeared on Urth a man now called the Conciliator, an\nintercessor and mediator who healed the sick and attempted to teach\nthe people; his stories form what is now called THE BOOK OF THE NEW\nSUN . . . \"\n\n\"The fourth book [in the cell with Thecla], as the astute reader will\nhave guessed long ago, is THE BOOK OF THE NEW SUN itself\"--Gene\nWolfe, \"Books in THE BOOK OF THE NEW SUN,\" PLAN[E]T ENGINEERING p.\n15.\n\n=mantis=" } ] } ] }