Subject: (urth) Juturna and the skull

From: maa32 <maa32 at dana.ucc.nau.edu>
Date: Tue, 08 Jul 2003 20:21:45 +0000

One thing has always bothered me about Sev's meeting with Juturna in Urth of 
the New Sun: she doesn't know about saving him, but indicates that now that 
she has been told, she will save him in the past and not allow him to drown.  
Does this imply that the Urth Severian is on at the conclusion of Urth of the 
New Sun is a different iteration, a different timeline?  Has he traveled even 
further back into the previous cycle of existence?

If Juturna never saved him in that past timeline could the skull be his?  Then 
how was he alive to wed Valeria?  The multiple lifelines are disturbing.  Is 
there any way that Ash and the Green Man aren't mutually exclusive?  If the 
future Urth is dragged into a past cycle, then one planet can have the green 
man and the other can have master ash. It is quite clear that in some 
time-lines Severian is not the New Sun, right?  The timelines in which he died 
as a child?  Or is that inconsequential?

Marc Aramini

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From: Chris <rasputin_ at hotmail.com>
Date: Tue, 08 Jul 2003 20:47:51 +0000

Ash and the Green Man are only mutually exclusive beyond a certain critical 
point of... for lack of something better to call it, the "event tree". The 
discussion Severian has with him indicates some kind of "many worlds" 
cosmology. Ash comes from an eventual branch of the tree where things do not 
go well. He is able to travel back anywhere along the path from his eventual 
end to the beginning, but winks out of existence when he enters any branch 
of the tree which is not along his world's line.

I think this is independent of the question of whether there are multiple 
iterations of Severian (though as I said I don't think there really are).

Chris

>as a child?  Or is that inconsequential?

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