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At 11:48 PM 11/15/2002, you wrote:
Remember that David Hartwell apparently thought that the original four volumes of the NS needed some sort of coda, which led Wolfe to write URTH. I don't know, but I suspect, that Wolfe felt some obligation to tie the LS and SS series to NS. Wolfe corresponds with various members of this list, has answered questions submitted by list members about the LS books, and was probably aware before he wrote it that many of his most faithful readers
wanted Sev to make an appearance in SS. I feel almost certain that the business about Sev's "sister" in SS was a direct bow in this general direction.
-Roy
Along these lines, for fun: A pastor friend of mine, praising Long Sun, told me that while reading those books he found himself asking himself "what would Silk say" when he was doing pastoral counselling. I passed this on to Gene as high praise. Then my friend and I both noticed Horn saying just this same thing to himself somewhere in the Short Sun books! (Horn, Silkhorn, Hornsilk, Whoever....)
I'm satisfied with "sticking Severian in for fun" as an explanation. Maybe there's more to it, but that's enough. Maybe some of those on this list have not read all of Wolfe, but he has plenty of humorous and fun short stories (think of the story about the headless people), and doing things "just for fun" is completely Wolfean.
Nutria