TEOTNS

I finally bought Urth o' the New Sun, and have been carefully re-reading it. Aside from the murky issues of just what Severian is at this point or what's up with the time travelling or the Increate, or how the whole Kabbalistic scheme works, I want to clear something up: Sev, at the begining, tosses his Book of the New Sun (our BOTNS as well) toward a 'new universe', when the ship is apparently floating on the stream betwixt Briah and Yesod. Is that the explanation for the 'translator's notes' in our BOTNS? Cause they always confused me otherwise. Another thing: It seems clear to me, from what Apheta says about how there were two possibilites for Urth/Ushas (another thing: Is there a special significance to that name? I do not recognize it at all.), with each having a certain possibility/ chance-of-coming-into-being, but each nevertheless reachs back into the fixed past whether through Sev's premature access to New Sun powers, or Master Ash. So, in 4-d space, each future exists. We know further that the ship can navigate not just in 3-d, nor in universe-d, but it also moves about in time, which suggests that it should 'land' in multiple future universes. But, as far as I can tell, it never does. Why not? or what did I miss? ~Maru

That was my understanding of it. I don't know whether Wolfe was operating under the conceit that he was the one who found the book (like Eco did in the opening of The Name of the Rose) but it'd be neat if he was.

My understanding was that the ship can only move backwards through time. I understood it as this - when the ship accelerates beyond light speed, the effect of relativity means that it incurs a time "debt", and thus it can arrive at its destination before it has left its point of origin. So, does Yesod exist separate to Briah's time-continum, or did Sev. arrive there before he left Urth?

As I recall you recently (and rather snottily) instructed another new list member, why don't you "check the f'in archives." Not as pleasant when you're on the receiving end, huh. Aq

No, it isn't pleasant when you are on the receiving end; I quite agree. Makes me glad I was at the other end. (To be less oblique, I did, in fact, check the archives and while I found considerable interesting speculation on whether Blue could be Ushas, and an answer as to what the 'sister list' was that some had alluded to, I found zilch in the way of semantic meaning of Ushas, or its etymology.) ~Maru

Ushas = Sanskrit for "dawn" I was sure I'd learned that from an old post, but you are correct that it does not appear in the archives. My apologies for leading with a nose out of joint rather than pure information.

Merci. 'Dawn' makes perfect sense since it is a new Urth and new Sun. ~Maru

Absolutely, and rather neatly (although that is no surprise, given that it's Wolfe <g>). As a personal aside, I have met more than one 60s survivor out here in California whose near-obligatory 70s name-change was to "Ushas." Gave me a chill the first time I was introduced to an Ushas, particularly since I'd only recently completed my first reading of UOTNS.

I had a similar exeperience after reading "The Boy Who Hooked the Sun" and then suffering through a Hawaiin vacation slideshow, only to be presented with a mural of a boy netting the sun and hearing the eerily similar tale related.