Subject: (whorl) beating a dead horse

From: Joel Priddy <jpriddy at saturn.vcu.edu>
Date: Fri, 09 May 1997 14:08:39 +0000

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

Thanks for the great and thorough answers in response to my
Pas/Typhon questions. Now that the connection between the two
series has been nailed down, I have a slightly stickier question:
why? What is served by the two series being connected? 
  Thematically: There are some similar themes of course, but does
one flesh out or serve the other in any way that requires them to
be connected? New Sun and Long Sun do may be variations on a
theme, but so is a lot of Wolfe's work.
Is there any narrative advantage to the connection? Developed
histories/universes are one of the fun toys of science fiction (I
still recall reading _I,_Robot_ as a kid and being wowed at
following a fictional history over a span of centuries), but New
Sun and Long Sun are so removed from each other in so many
details of history, tech, culture, and scope that I'm not sure
the connection satisfies any shared-history sweet-tooth.
Following with a series taking place on Blue and Green would be a
satisfying connection to Long Sun, but New Sun/ Long Sun strikes
me as saying _The_Last_Temptation_Of_Christ_ takes place in the
same "universe" as _The_Catcher_In_The_Rye_. Sure, that could be
the case, but it doesn't add anything to either story to be
presented with that of information.
I don't see any reason that requires a New Sun/ Long Sun
connection except as a promotional thing, letting Long Sun ride
on New Sun's coattails for a while, but I assume that if Wolfe
bothered to make a connection, there must be a more relevant
purpose behind it...
Of course, I'm making the error of second geussing Wolfe. Who
knows how many books he has planned in the same universe, or how
much both Long Sun and New Sun will inform them. I think I'm
probably just still mad at the publisher for putting that blurb
on the cover of Nightside. It set me up to expect something
different that what I got, and as several other people have
expressed here, it took me awhile to switch gears so that I could
enjoy Long Sun in and of itself. Had I just been reading happily
along what I thought was an unrelated Wolfe book and stumbled
across a reference to Briah, it would have been an exciting
revelation. It all comes down to expectation, I geuss.

JOEL

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From: Scott Dalrymple <scottd at wycol.com>
Date: Fri, 09 May 1997 14:13:59 +0000

>why? What is served by the two series being connected? 

For me, the fact that Typhon launched the Whorl gave me a greater
appreciation of the immensity of both his vision and his supreme arrogance
(especially given the fact that he fashions Pas after himself).  The image
of the Whorl seems to me an extension of the huge statue of Typhon: a
testament to his awesomely-scaled monomaniacal streak.  Is this link
between the series necessary?  Does it offer any particularly important
insights into the _Long Sun_ series?  Probably not.  But it cost Wolfe
nothing to link the two, and it does make me read the Typhon section of the
_Urth_ series differently now.  I think it's a delicious bonus to have the
two linked.

On a somewhat practical level, one might contend that the very strong
similarities between the religion in _Long Sun_ and Catholicism argues for
a somewhat shorter time span than we generally imagine between today's time
and Typhon's; remnants of Catholicism certainly still exist even in
Severian's present, but seem more removed than what Silk practices.

---

From: m.driussi <m.driussi at genie.com>
Date: Fri, 09 May 1997 17:58:00 +0000

Reply:  Item #7420072 from WHORL at LISTS.BEST.COM@INET00#

Joel,

Re: your notes on the mechanics of augury ("ars augurium"?), you've
opened a can of worms--good stuff.  That is, I agree with your
points.  The conclusion would seem to be that prepping an animal (and
getting it to the right? augur?) takes too long; that the point of
information transfer is actually in the interpretation of the animal
guts--just the right moment for a mind-control pink-light laser-beam
to the brain, if such heavy handed manipulation is required.

"The glass is half-em--" <brzzzzt!> "--full; this means that rain will
fall only in the north . . . "

But yeah, the Nine are probably really gods in the Greco-Roman sense
of it.  And that's one of the main points, right?  Putting Father
Brown and the 19th century into a Greco-Roman polytheistic mode.

Re: why a new Briatic series?  Now this is just my opinion and you
don't have to agree with it, but I think it is pretty interesting to
take one of the irredeemable devils of New Sun and at least partially
redeem him in Long Sun.  As if Tolkien wrote a sequel to THE LORD OF
THE RINGS where Sauron the Great took a turn playing do-gooder
"Sauron the Long Suffering"; then through elvish time warping had the
sequel play along simultaneous to the first work.

That is to say: it is clear that being literally dead and then
literally resurrected did nothing to cure Monarch Typhon of his evil
dreams; it is as if he had only gone to sleep then woken up.  But the
process of a waking dream (virtual reality/artificial intelligence)
of being a good god seems to have had some effect.  In the end, Pas
seems to be at peace.

(Of course, in a different light this redemption might just be the same
as the convoluted torture of a Titan in the netherworld; i.e., the
"gooder" he tries the more he suffers because his "true" nature is Evil.)

We might just as well ask, "Why all the sequels to `The Island of
Doctor Death and Other Stories'?"  But the answer to that is more
clear-cut: each story looks at a different angle of the same sort of
puzzle.  For one example, in Long Sun Love looms large; reminding us how
utterly absent Love is (or seems to be) from New Sun.

vizcacha,

Great summation on Mint!  Have a cup of coffee (or two) and keep going!

=mantis=