# Do the Hierogrammates *care* about the Megatherians *The Urth list — 1 messages, 1 voices, 19 May 2011* > 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. --- ### Andrew Mason *19 May 2011, 22:16* > David Stockhoff wrote: > -I didn't know to take Dr Talos' play seriously the first time I read > TBOTNS. No, I don't think anyone did. But we may wonder whether this represents actual concealment within the world of BOTNS, or whether it's just Wolfe's tendency to make things less clear than they might be (and then be surprised when people don't get it). We know, now, that Dr Talos's play was based on Canog's book, which was based on Severian's own testimony. So he, at least, was not trying to conceal anything. There's also another passage in _Urth_ that bears on this. Apheta says that the people of Urth have a choice between slow death, and death followed by rebirth. Severian says that he has known this since childhood. Gunnie says 'We didn't', but then adds 'In religion - but no one took any notice of that' (or words to that effect). So I think the destructive effect of the New Sun was known, in the sense that it was not deliberately concealed, but, as with many things, people at large took no notice of it. (One might also mention the Conciliator's title of 'Black Sun', and Dorcas's saying she has read some terrible things about him.) ---