Subject: (urth) "My father's mounted guard

From: Craig Brewer <cnbrewer at yahoo.com>
Date: Wed, 15 Oct 2008 12:43:42 +0000

Second, regardless of when Severian-the-character becomes threefold,
Severian-the-writer is threefold all along.  Now, presumably, he can
perfectly recall being just one person, or just two, but other
evidence suggests that he doesn't have perfect control of his
personae. Is there a point at which the old Autarch asserts himself?

This is one thing that's always bugged me a bit about New Sun. In Castle of Days, Wolfe mentions (as I recall...please correct me if I'm wrong) that certain things about book 4 came as a bit of a surprise to him. I've always wondered if the Autarch mind-meld was one of them. If it was, it certainly casts some doubt on how much we read in to the Old Autarch's presence in the earlier volumes. That bothers me because so much of our reactions to small hints in the early volumes depends on assuming that Wofle had the full story in view the whole time. But it does make me stop at times when I start to try to put together ingenious readings of Sev's perfect memory combined with Thecla/Autarchs...at least in the early volumes.

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From: Mo Holkar / UKG <lists at ukg.co.uk>
Date: Wed, 15 Oct 2008 13:00:22 +0000

At 13:43 15/10/2008, Craig Brewer wrote:
>This is one thing that's always bugged me a bit about New Sun. In 
>Castle of Days, Wolfe mentions (as I recall...please correct me if 
>I'm wrong) that certain things about book 4 came as a bit of a 
>surprise to him. I've always wondered if the Autarch mind-meld was 
>one of them. If it was, it certainly casts some doubt on how much we 
>read in to the Old Autarch's presence in the earlier volumes. That 
>bothers me because so much of our reactions to small hints in the 
>early volumes depends on assuming that Wofle had the full story in 
>view the whole time. But it does make me stop at times when I start 
>to try to put together ingenious readings of Sev's perfect memory 
>combined with Thecla/Autarchs...at least in the early volumes.

I think though that Wolfe says that he completed the whole thing in 
draft before finalizing any of it, so he had the opportunity to go 
back to the earlier volumes and sow those hints in relation to ideas 
that had only come to him while drafting the later parts.

best wishes,

Mo

Mo Holkar
Undying King Games
mo at ukg.co.uk
http://www.ukg.co.uk