Subject: (urth) Witches & eclipse-maker

From: Kieran Cleary <kcleary at tinet.ie>
Date: Mon, 14 Apr 1997 18:28:30 +0000

[Posted from URTH, a mailing list about Gene Wolfe's New Sun and other works]

As someone who is eagerly awaiting a copy of the Lexicon, I have a 
rag-tag bundle of questions which I remember being puzzled about during my last 
read of New Sun:

- what is the appropriate technological analogue of the device (?) 
the witches were looking at on Severian's visit to their tower. I 
remember it being described a a table-like object with a glass 
surface, through which small hairless animals were visible on some 
sort of miniature landscape. A holographic remote-viewing device? 
Were they watching the eclectics? And just what kind of "magic" do the 
witches practice?

-what was the enigmatic large object teasingly referred to in Wolfe's 
translator's notes at the end of Citadel which caused the eclipse?

-are the corridors that Severian wandered through en route to the 
atrium of time just metaphors for the Corridors of Time or is there 
some type of literal connection?

-why did the green man not know of the New Sun if he came from the 
future most likely after the New Sun?

-Jonas & Miles: what's the connection? Is Miles the personality from whose 
biological spare parts Jonas was reconstructed after his ship 
crashed?

Lasrach

____________________________________________________________
Kieran Cleary
Senior Research Engineer
North West Labs
Finisklin Industrial Estate
Sligo
Republic of Ireland

Tel. +353 71 69441
Fax. +353 71 69451
email kcleary at nwlabs.com
___________________________________________________________