Subject: (urth) Re: Fate, undines and Autarc

From: Tony Ellis <tellis at futurenet.co.uk>
Date: Thu, 29 Jan 1998 10:13:13 +0000

[Posted from URTH, a mailing list about Gene Wolfe's New Sun and other works]

                                                                      29/01/98
                                                                      09:37
 RE>Fate, undines and Autarchs

CRCulver (et al):
>     The undines did not bring their own destruction, they survived the
>coming of the New Sun and Urth's transformation into Ushas, as Mr. Driussi
>explains. However, I wonder why the undine would have saved him if it led to
>the destruction of Erebus, who was an ally of Abaia.

Don't forget that TBOTNS is set in a universe of multiple possible futures.
In some futures, no doubt, saving Severian leads to him becoming Autarch
and satrap of Erebus, in others it just leads to him failing further down the
line - remember the chilly future seen from Master Ash's tower? Saving
him is a gamble, and it just happens that in the time-strand the novels
follow it's a gamble that fails.

Having said that, I'm not sure that it's correct even to say that saving
Severian "led to the destruction of Erebus". Erebus lives under the sea
just like the undines, so presumably he survives too.

>Is the copy of the BOTNS which is given to Thecla in her cell Severian's
>first manuscript, or a copy? (I don't know if we have a definite answer to
>this).

Personally I'm still reeling from the bombshell that Thecla is able to
order the "lost" BOTNS from her local library in the first place. I think it
must be not only a copy, but a major rewrite of the manuscript Severian
pens. How else could he fail to recognise the New Sun as himself, or
walk blindly into the various dangers he encounters, if he's read the 
narrative we have?

I would be interested to know just how many versions of the BOTNS
are actually out there, and how they differ. Any educated guesses?

---

From: Kieran Cleary <kierannwn at tinet.ie>
Date: Thu, 29 Jan 1998 14:55:45 +0000

>are actually out there, and how they differ.

I would imagine that the version that Thecla & Sev read is similar to the
one Dr. Talos claims to have based his play on. That is, a colourful, mythic
reworking of the "facts", which are more likely to be found in the Brown
Book, purporting as it does to contain accounts of the original historical
events upon which the mythological corpus of the time was based. I seem to
remember Severian commenting that Thecla & himself were about to commence
reading the section on the Conciliator in the Brown Book, but never get
around to it. Now *that* could possibly have contained a closer
approximation of the events as they happen in our BotNS.

In any case, coming as it did from Ultan's library, which appears to extend
in space and time beyond the boundaries of the citadel, it is perhaps not
unreasonable to allow the possibility that the version of tBotNS which
Thecla gets from the library relates an account from a parallel Urth, but
one in which the New Sun also appears (Eata as New Sun? not sure of the
spelling: Severian's old apprentice friend who he meets again in Citadel &
features in his musings on alternative workings out of the story).

lasrach

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