# The Mystery of Malrubius's Ghost, SOLVED! *The Whorl list — 1 messages, 1 voices, 29 Mar 2001* > 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. --- ### William Ansley *29 Mar 2001, 23:00* I thought I would take the liberty of assembling the appropriate portions of the relevant posts. > At 7:53 PM +0000 2/6/01, Ian Smith wrote: > and another from cephelothorax: > > "Persnickety: Are we really meant to believe that > Severian, who writes about Master Ash, and the Green > Man, and being a white fountain hundreds of years > before he's born is going to consider "Horn" too much > of a stretch for his readers to believe because he's > got the love-vibe and walks through walls?" > > On this I'm no more certain, but I got the distinct impression that the > apprentice Severian was under the impression that Horn / Silk's spirit was > actually Malrubius' ghost (hence his comment to Gurloes about Oreb), which > of course does get mentioned frequently throughout TBOTNS( & he certainly > pairs Malrubius with Triskele a fair bit). Whether Wolfe has managed the > phenomenal task of tying the ends up, we won't know until someone has the > energy to re-read TBOTNS looking for them. Surely such a thing is > impossible, but I'm trying not to make the mistake of under-estimating > Wolfe... > At 1:35 PM +0000 2/9/01, Spectacled Bear wrote: > At 07:30 2001-02-09 EST, BMeyer7 at aol.com wrote: > ... ... > 3. Are we to believe that Horn/Silk is Malrubius? > > <<<< > It's an interesting idea, and quite plausible. > At 6:39 PM -0500 3/29/01, BraveSaintCroix at aol.com wrote: > Whoo-pee, I finally feel like I have something worthwhile to contribute > to this group- unless, of course, someone beats me to it. I got the April > catalogue of the Science Fiction Book Club today, and it has a one-page > article/advertisement for the Book of the Short Sun. Of course, as is the > way of the SFBC, it makes the book sound terribly pulp-sci-fi-ish. (. . . > the inhumi, blood drinking aliens who take human form. . . ) It even seems > to give away quiet a bit. The last paragraph reads: "As his inability to > find Silk weights heavily on his mind, Horn if further tormented by the fact > that his new body bears a striking resemblance to the lost Calde. In the > end, he will have to answer a troubling question: has he truly failed in his > sworn task, or has he become the very man he sought?" > I'm not complaining though, because it also includes a "note from the > author". Gene Wolfe writes: "At the end of the 18th Century, serious > scientists denied that stones could fall from the sky. At the end of this > one, very few still insist that phenomena incapable of proof are beyond the > realm of possibility. We may doubt telepathy, ghost, and precognition- > indeed, we should doubt them. But we cannot rule them out altogether. That > phenomenon most often called astral projection plays a part in these books. > (So does space travel, which most adults derided as utterly impossible not so > long ago.)" And here's what really got me: "Accept it for the sake of the > story, and you may learn the identity of Master Malrubius's ghost." (My > emphasis.) Wow. That makes my head spin. I didn't even think of that, and > if I remember, no one on here has discussed it much. Who then, was Master > Malrubius's ghost? Apparently the the astral projection of Hornsilk was. Well, well. Congratulations, Ian. Confirmation from the horse's mouth. Gene Wolfe seems to have at least a mild case of Asimov's syndrome. I hope he recovers before his next book. William Ansley *This is WHORL, for discussion of Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun. ---