Time

On the illness of the sun: It is stated in several places that the sun is being devoured by a black hole. That much is impossible to argue with. The debatable point is whether it's natural causes or murder.

From: David_Lebling at avid.com <David_Lebling at avid.com> To: urth at lists.best.com <urth at lists.best.com> Date: Sunday, February 01, 1998 8:10 PM Subject: (urth) Time [Posted from URTH, a mailing list about Gene Wolfe's New Sun and other works] What a great flurry of new activity! And some new blood as well. Yumbo! On the illness of the sun: It is stated in several places that the sun is being devoured by a black hole. That much is impossible to argue with. The debatable point is whether it's natural causes or murder. It seems pretty clear to me that it was done on purpose to weaken Typhon's empire. The coincidence is too unlikely otherwise. Who dunnit? The obvious SFnal idea is that it's "the rebels," whomever they might be. The unobvious idea is that it's Severian himself, or more generally the forces of good. It's pretty clear that the sort of empire Typhon was ruling is one you don't want as a neighbor, so... On the mountains: This may just be me reading things into the text that aren't there (what! never!), but the mountains are clearly "all" carved in the shape of people. And it isn't just autarchs, either. You could look it up. On geography, to CRCulver: The action of the tetralogy takes place in South America, and yet there is a great river that flows southwestward over a plain, and great mountains to the north and east of the plain. This isn't our South America. Either lots of time has passed (and getting serious mountains in that end of SA is going to take a lot of time -- the plate tectonics are all going the wrong way), or someone has been fiddling. On the other hand, the statement that such stuff has stopped is a pretty strong argument for Deep Time. Perhaps the same technology that reshaped the continents froze them as well -- what a nuisance if you get the continents where you want them and they start drifting off again! Tzadkiel and Severian: Recall that Tzadziel can send slivers of itself off as independent beings. Now we have the suggestion that Severian can do the same. Perhaps Severian is Tzadziel, in that sense? Deep Time: The hardest thing to believe about TBOTNS taking place 50 million years in the future is that so little has changed. People are still people, exactly as they are now. The average species lasts on the order of three million years. Even with all sorts of advanced technology, would 50 million years have changed so little? Wolfe is a master at making things simultaneously not be what they seem and giving clues to the truth. It's perfectly appropriate that it should seem like millions (or even billions) of years have passed, just as it seems that we're reading a sword & sorcery story at first. After all, one of many things the book is is an homage to The Dying Earth, which is pretty clearly science fantasy. One of Wolfe's goals was to make the science fantasy into science fiction. Vance's book doesn't make sense as science fiction, so Wolfe spent a great deal of effort to make sense of it. -viz (david_lebling at avid.com)

On the illness of the sun: It is stated in several places that the sun is being devoured by a black hole. That much is impossible to argue with. The debatable point is whether it's natural causes or murder.

From: Kieran Cleary <kierannwn at tinet.ie> To: urth at lists.best.com <urth at lists.best.com> Date: Monday, February 02, 1998 11:14 AM Subject: Re: (urth) Time On the illness of the sun: It is stated in several places that the sun is being devoured by a black hole. That much is impossible to argue with. The debatable point is whether it's natural causes or murder.

How about this then: Item: The Conciliator is sometimes referred to as "Dark Sun" (or "Dark Star" can't remember which.) Item: The New Sun itself is a White Fountain. This is described in the text as being the opposite of a black hole, i.e. an erruption of matter from one (lower) universe to another (higher) universe. Item: There is a black hole in the Old Sun Item: The White Fountain that is the New Sun was not born in the same universe as Urth. (shaky here, but I thought that was mentioned in tUotNS) So, speculation follows: the black hole that is destroying the Old Sun is merely the necessary complement to the New Sun. One has caused the other, and are both different sides of the same coin that is Severian. North West Labs Finisklin Industrial Estate Sligo Republic of Ireland Tel. +353 71 69441 Fax. +353 71 69451 email: kierannwn at tinet.ie -----Original Message----- From: David_Lebling at avid.com <David_Lebling at avid.com> To: urth at lists.best.com <urth at lists.best.com> Date: Sunday, February 01, 1998 8:10 PM Subject: (urth) Time

[Posted from URTH, a mailing list about Gene Wolfe's New Sun and other works] What a great flurry of new activity! And some new blood as well. Yumbo! On the illness of the sun: It is stated in several places that the sun is being devoured by a black hole. That much is impossible to argue with. The debatable point is whether it's natural causes or murder. It seems pretty clear to me that it was done on purpose to weaken Typhon's empire. The coincidence is too unlikely otherwise. Who dunnit? The obvious SFnal idea is that it's "the rebels," whomever they might be. The unobvious idea is that it's Severian himself, or more generally the forces of good. It's pretty clear that the sort of empire Typhon was ruling is one you don't want as a neighbor, so... On the mountains: This may just be me reading things into the text that aren't there (what! never!), but the mountains are clearly "all" carved in the shape of people. And it isn't just autarchs, either. You could look it up. On geography, to CRCulver: The action of the tetralogy takes place in South America, and yet there is a great river that flows southwestward over a plain, and great mountains to the north and east of the plain. This isn't our South America. Either lots of time has passed (and getting serious mountains in that end of SA is going to take a lot of time -- the plate tectonics are all going the wrong way), or someone has been fiddling. On the other hand, the statement that such stuff has stopped is a pretty strong argument for Deep Time. Perhaps the same technology that reshaped the continents froze them as well -- what a nuisance if you get the continents where you want them and they start drifting off again! Tzadkiel and Severian: Recall that Tzadziel can send slivers of itself off as independent beings. Now we have the suggestion that Severian can do the same. Perhaps Severian is Tzadziel, in that sense? Deep Time: The hardest thing to believe about TBOTNS taking place 50 million years in the future is that so little has changed. People are still people, exactly as they are now. The average species lasts on the order of three million years. Even with all sorts of advanced technology, would 50 million years have changed so little? Wolfe is a master at making things simultaneously not be what they seem and giving clues to the truth. It's perfectly appropriate that it should seem like millions (or even billions) of years have passed, just as it seems that we're reading a sword & sorcery story at first. After all, one of many things the book is is an homage to The Dying Earth, which is pretty clearly science fantasy. One of Wolfe's goals was to make the science fantasy into science fiction. Vance's book doesn't make sense as science fiction, so Wolfe spent a great deal of effort to make sense of it. -viz (david_lebling at avid.com)

works

vizcacha wrote: Deep Time: The hardest thing to believe about TBOTNS taking place 50 million years in the future is that so little has changed. People are still people, exactly as they are now. The average species lasts on the order of three million years. Even with all sorts of advanced technology, would 50 million years have changed so little?

On Mon, 2 Feb 1998, Jim Jordan wrote: </excerpt> While I don't recall any particular reference, the ability of these people to sustain pain under torture implied to me, in my first reading, that they had developed beyond where people are today in some regards.