Subject: (urth) Ship Citadel

From: b sharp <bsharporflat at hotmail.com>
Date: Sat, 06 May 2006 04:16:34 +0000

Well, interesting.  Roy's reference to Urth XXXV was illuminating actually 
in that an officer tells Severian he is being taken, "To the old port.  One 
of the hulks there has been fitted up to hold prisoners". So perhaps the 
Citadel is constructed of more than one old ship.  But spaceship it is, as 
evidence by these other passages:

Shadow III: Description of the Matachin Tower- "(for the examination room 
was the propulsive chamber of the original structure)".

Shadow XI: Description of Severian's new room after elevation-  "because I 
was the most junior of the journeymen, the least desirable in the tower, a 
portless cubbyhole".

Urth XXXVII: Description of the port in Severian's cell (Roche's future 
bedchamber)- "its broad, smooth flanges, of a shaped I had never considered, 
had clearly been intended to hold the void at bay"

I think there are one or two more I can't find scattered in the text.  I 
wonder if perhaps the many towers of the citadel were made from the former 
giant masts. Just speculation there.

-Bsharp

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From: thalassocrat at nym.hush.com <thalassocrat at nym.hush.com>
Date: Sat, 06 May 2006 06:11:40 +0000

On Sat, 06 May 2006 14:16:34 +1000 b sharp 
>evidence by these other passages:
<snippety>

Actually, I think it is very clear that the individual "towers" in 
the Citadel are spaceships. The Citadel itself isn't.

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From: Duncan Truter <dtruter at gmail.com>
Date: Sat, 06 May 2006 11:59:47 +0000

there's a part where he compares his tower to other structures that
were not meant to fly (to paraphrase) in one of the first four
books... I can't remember :)

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From: Rex Racer <rex.racerx at gmail.com>
Date: Sat, 06 May 2006 13:09:05 +0000

Yes. The supporting evidence after the bit you quite applies to individual
"landers" that have been converted to towers, landers/spaceships that were
at rest on a regular old space port. The Citadel is a collection of towers
and walls, not a monolithic construct studded with other ships.

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From: Macronaut <macronaut at yahoo.com>
Date: Sat, 06 May 2006 18:18:38 +0000

There's also a reference in UOTNS to the Beast Tower having originally been a "Zoetic Transport."

Macronaut

Duncan Truter <dtruter at gmail.com> wrote: there's a part where he compares his tower to other structures that
were not meant to fly (to paraphrase) in one of the first four
books... I can't remember :)

On 5/6/06, thalassocrat at nym.hush.com  wrote:
>  wrote:

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From: Roy C. Lackey <rclackey at stic.net>
Date: Sat, 06 May 2006 18:40:03 +0000

>had clearly been intended to hold the void at bay"

The above passages prove only that the Matachin Tower was a spaceship. More
than once in the Urth cycle Severian dreams/imagines the old spaceships
blasting off into space. Somewhere he speculates that, ancient as the
Citadel may be, the tunnels beneath it antedate it. There is no doubt about
it; most of the "towers" in the Citadel are individual spaceships.

But if you want more direct proof:

"The Citadel itself was visible now as a whole, and for all its vastness
seemed a glittering flock fluttering upon the hill, its thousand metal
towers ready to leap into the air at a word." CITADEL, chapter XXXVII

And in the next chapter he went looking for Valeria from above.

"I asked the castellan for a map. After much searching he produced one,
large and old, cracked in many places. It showed the curtain wall whole, but
the names of the towers were not the names I knew - or that the castellan
knew, for that matter - and there were towers on that map that are not in
the Citadel, and towers in the Citadel that were not on that map.
"    I ordered a flier then, and for half a day soared among the towers. No
doubt I saw the place I sought many times, but if so I did not recognize
it."

The map obviously dated to a time when the Citadel was still being used as a
spaceport.

-Roy

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From: b sharp <bsharporflat at hotmail.com>
Date: Sun, 07 May 2006 03:09:21 +0000

Okay, some misunderstanding. I thought it was being argued that no part of 
the citadel was a spaceship. It seems the concensus is that only parts of it 
were spaceships (especially if Duncan Truter's citation can be found and it 
does sound familiar to me).

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From: Roy C. Lackey <rclackey at stic.net>
Date: Sun, 07 May 2006 06:11:39 +0000

>does sound familiar to me).

He must be thinking of a long paragraph in chapter XXX of CLAW, when
Severian was thinking of his childhood visit to the witches' tower, where he
first saw Merryn. His description of that tower shows it to be merely a tall
building, after the fashion of modern skyscrapers. It lacked the solidity he
was used to in his old spaceship home.

-Roy