# islands *The Urth list — 1 messages, 1 voices, 18 Jun 1998* > 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. --- ### Paul C Duggan *18 Jun 1998, 08:08* > 1) I haven't seen the map in Plan[e]t Engineering, but I've read the > discussion in the archive and accepted that the Commonwealth was South > America, and thought I had a fairly good grasp of the topography. But > then I came across this sentence in Citadel, ch. V: "I did have the > impression (though I could not be sure it was correct) that it [Ascia] was > a single land mass, and not a chain of islands like our south..." Where > does this fit in with what else we know about the Commonwealth's > geography? Of course, maybe Severian just means that the south _contains_ > a chain of islands; but that's not what he says. Maybe this refers to the shape of the commonwealth after the flood, in sort of a prescient glimpse? "I am an impure thinker. I am hurt, swayed, shaken, | paul + | + elated, disillusioned, shocked, comforted, and I | --|-- have to transmit my mental experiences lest I die." | + | + -- Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy | pduggan at world.std.com ---