# Wolfe as crypto-Mormon *The Urth list — 1 messages, 1 voices, 25 Jun 1997* > 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. --- ### m.driussi *25 Jun 1997, 21:09* Without much effort we might see TBOTNS as containing strong elements of Mormonism. If we take Severian as Christ-like; if we assume Apu-Punchau (Severian in a different time frame) to be the authentic Apu-Punchau of Earth's Inca peoples (begining, shall we say, circa AD 1000); if we note the widespread Christian European belief that Jesus would return to Earth in the year AD 1000, and subsequent confusion when He did not; if we recall the Aztec belief that a white guy from the east would come visit, which made it easier for Cortez; and cap it off with the Mormon belief that Jesus visited the New World sometime after the Old World tour. I'm not claiming Gene Wolfe is Mormon or crypto-Mormon, yet I hope it is quite easy to see how such inferences could be legitimately made from a close reading of the text (and ignorance of Wolfe's stated religious belief). (I'm only bringing it up because we always seem to run around the two bushes of Is it Christian and Is it Gnostic.) =mantis= ---