{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/4725",
    "note": "Exported from an unofficial mirror of a public mailing list. Copyright in each message remains with the person who wrote it.  Email addresses are obscured as `user at host`, the form the original archive published. This file was rebuilt from parsed fields rather than retained headers, so it is faithful in content but not byte-exact.",
    "addresses": "obscured as 'user at host'"
  },
  "archive": "urth",
  "thread": {
    "id": 4725,
    "subject": "urth Digest, Vol 25, Issue 25",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "2006-10-01T14:59:20+00:00",
    "last": "2006-10-01T14:59:20+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<2e6fee3b0610010759y7b51a9c0h2b7a26060e5abe15@mail.gmail.com>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Josh Young",
        "address": "greatoaktree at gmail.com"
      },
      "date": "2006-10-01T14:59:20+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) urth Digest, Vol 25, Issue 25",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "One place where this is evident is the last line of CITADEL. Severian,\njust\nbefore leaving Urth for Yesod, wrote that he was writing in what would be\n\"the last year of the old sun.\" That turned out not to be true. For\nwhatever\nreason, in URTH Wolfe made life go on on Urth for another forty years\nbefore\nthe coming of the New Sun and the flood."
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Sev thinks it is the last year. That doesn't mean it is. Characters as\nnarrators are not to be trusted implicitly.\n\nAnother change seems to concern the author of one of the four books Thecla"
        },
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 1,
          "text": "requested from the library, the book we are told the least about. That\nbook\nis never named in NEW SUN, but it is named in the last paragraph of the\nessay \"Books in _The Book of the New Sun_\" in PLAN[E]T ENGINEERING. It is\n_The Book of the New Sun_. That essay concludes: \"For the library of\nMaster\nUltan is in _The Book of the New Sun_, and _The Book of the New Sun_ is in\nhis library. And you are the readers of that book.\"\n\nNot really. That essay was written in 1984, after the publication of NEW\nSUN\nbut before URTH was written. Evidently Wolfe found reason to change his\nmind. A paradox doesn't bother Wolfe, judging from the flippant definition\nof the word he gave in OTTER, but maybe he had second thoughts about\nThecla\n(and Severian) reading and studying a book that had not yet been written,\nSeverian's own _The Book of the New Sun_. Ultan and his library are indeed\nin Severian's book -- but so are the chapters dealing with Thecla sitting\nin\na cell studying that book, which also relates her torture and death and\nSeverian's complicity in same. The book also affords Severian a blueprint\nof\nhis near future. We have been \"the readers of that book.\"\n\nWhatever Wolfe's motive, in URTH he created a new character who is the\nauthor of a second book with the same title as Severian's original book.\nAfter being sent from Yesod to Typhon's era to establish the Conciliator\nlegend, Severian entertained some of his followers in his cell:\n\"Declan wished to know how Urth would fare when the\nNew Sun came; and I, understanding little more than he\ndid himself, drew upon Dr. Talos's play, never thinking\nthat in a time yet to come Dr. Talos's play would be drawn\nfrom my words.\" (URTH, 266)\n\nCanog, in the next cell, overheard this speech, took notes and eventually\nwrote a little book he called _The Book of the New Sun_. That is the book\nof\nthat title that Thecla read in her cell. Neither Ultan nor his library\nwere\nmentioned in Severian's little sermon. They were not mentioned in Canog's\nbook. None of us have read that book and I don't expect we ever will.\n\nMany centuries later, Talos read Canog's book and based his play on it. We\nhave a closed circle of causality in which none of the three men involved\nwere the original source, each citing one of the others as his source.\nSeverian's words were based on Talos's play; the play was based on Canog's\nbook and the book was based on Severian's words.\n\nAnd the mysterious woman on the Path of Air was outside that loop.\nSeverian\nsaw her only after returning from Typhon's era to his own on the last day\nof\nUrth. She wasn't in either Severian's or Canog's _The Book of the New\nSun_.\n\nWolfe could easily have avoided this situation by simply omitting the Path\nof Air scene in URTH. After all, there is a lot of other nonsense in the\nplay that does not correspond to what actually happened just before the\narrival of the New Sun. I'm missing something here."
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "I don't think there is a paradox here. I seem to remember Sev setting a\ncopy of his memoirs \"Adrift on the sea of time.\" in UotNS. I always assumed\nthat it wound up, either by coincidence or providence in Urth of the past\nand was found and subsequently read.\n\n~Joshua Young\n_____________________________________\n\"Fear is the mind killer\" - Frank Herbert's Dune\n\"If you want to get warm, you must stand near the fire. If you want to be\nwet, you must get into the water. If you want joy, power, peace, eternal\nlife, you must get close to... the thing that has them. They are not the\nsort of prize that God....[would].... just hand out to anyone.\" - CS Lewis,\nMere Christianity\n\"Mortal love is merely our introduction to the immortal\" - Margaret Weis &\nTracy Hickman's The Seventh Gate"
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}