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--- Michael Straight <straight at email.unc.edu> wrote:
On Wed, 12 Jun 2002, Dan'l Danehy-Oakes wrote:
Rostrum saith:
If you're going to count the intros/appendix where Wolfe talks about translating Severian's manuscript, Wolfe directly refers to all the stuff of Severian's time being in the future, or "futurity."
Yes. But on the other hand, he also writes of having been allowed
to tour and photograph the "surviving" buildings of that distant future period. Which seems to put the distant future into the distant past and make the whole thing cyclic after all, dunnit?
I took "surviving" to mean from now till then.
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To me, at that point it became obvious the whole thing was a joke and not meant to have any real bearing on Severian's story.
I thought it was more wit than a joke, and in either case quite possibly meant to have a bearing on the story.
One possible advantage of having all this stuff be in a previous cycle is that Silhorn's polygamy in Gaon becomes as sinless as that of the Hebrew Bible. But maybe a better reading is that it is sinful?
Nonetheless, I really dislike the idea, and I hope Jeff Wilson is right and Wolfe thought he was answering a question about Yesod rather than Briah.
Jerry Friedman