Subject: (whorl) Best Before 250 & Mamelta's memories

From: Kieran Cleary <kcleary at tinet.ie>
Date: Tue, 18 Mar 1997 17:20:46 +0000

[Posted from Whorl, the mailing list for Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun]

Just a couple of quick questions:
 I was reminded by J's mention of "30th Nemesis 
332" of the list of numbers of Pas's seal above the "SEALED FOR THE 
MONARCH" lettering. Does anyone have any plausible idea 
what they mean? I had initially thought they might represent a 
sealing date and an opening date...a sort of "best before" warning, 
but couldn't come up with a convincing explanation to match the 
numbers without degenerating into dodgy numerology. (Sorry I can't 
reproduce them here, but I don't have a copy of tBotLS III handy).

Also, has anyone explained why the sleepers (according to Mamelta) 
had their memories wiped, yet Mamelta remembers, albeit fuzzily, some 
incidents from her childhood while with Silk, and also being told 
that she and the other sleepers-to-be were being taken to some sort 
of land-of-plenty. It seems a bit of a red 
herring to me: I don't accept Mamelta's explanation for the Whorl 
religion and deification of the royal family. She seemed to think that 
the memory wipe couldn't completely eradicate all memories of the strong 
personalities of the Typhon clan, so an artificial religion was 
created to give erroneous substance to these vague recollections. 
This seems an unlikely and drastic solution and it's not clear what 
it accomplishes. Any comments gratefully received.

FWIW, I'd also like to see a separate mailing list for other Wolfe 
works, that is, unless a stronger plot link between tBotLS & tBotNS
becomes apparent <grin>.

Lasrach
____________________________________________________________
Kieran Cleary
Senior Research Engineer
North West Labs
Finisklin Industrial Estate
Sligo
Republic of Ireland

Tel. +353 71 69441
Fax. +353 71 69451
email kcleary at tinet.ie
___________________________________________________________

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