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Jerry Friedman wrote:
This stuff is all very interesting!
I suppose I'm unlikely to look up the references, but what's Thrust and who made the remark?
Thrust was a fanzine, which then was renamed Quantum, and then ceased publication. The remark in question was made by Gene Wolfe himself, as reported in the interview published in Thrust.
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As for the century earlier, I don't follow that. Typhon had two heads when the Whorl was launched, and he still did when he "retired to his blameless couch". Could he have been in that unpleasant state for a century? Or are you suggesting that Typhon has performed the same maneuver more than once?
Talarican is saying, I believe, that the Whorl was launched sometime after Typhon got the two heads, but before Typhon actually died (naturally!); and since Ymar (first autarch) died "a chiliad ago," and Ymar was a boy when Severian met him in URTH, in the same era when Typhon had two heads and control of Urth (although the rebellion is going on at that point, isn't it?) . . . so it seems like the Whorl could not have been launched 1000 years ago (when Ymar the Almost Just died), nor even in the decades before then (since it was Ymar's reign), but in the decades before Ymar's reign. Say 100 years, or 50 years if you like. How long did Ymar's reign last, how old was he when he somehow managed to attain the newly minted throne--who knows?
Because the rebellion is going on when the Conciliator appears, this strongly suggests that the Whorl was launched at some point prior to the arrival of the Conciliator, that is, prior to events in that section of URTH (since the rebellion in Mainframe is the same as what happened on the ground, or so it has always seemed).
=mantis=
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*This is WHORL, for discussion of Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun.