# Digest whorl.v010.n033 *The Whorl list — 2 messages, 2 voices, 14 Oct 1999* > 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. --- ### David Langford *14 Oct 1999, 09:11* In-Reply-To: <199910132310.QAA09996 at lists1.best.com> Alastair Reynolds wrote, of Wolfe: > And I believe in one of > q&a sessions I have read, either on this list or on the web somewhere, > he said he envisaged Severian's time as being about a 1000 years from > now (which always struck me as too short a span of time, but never > mind). This has come up before. An on-line chat session included the following: Q: About how far, really, is the New Sun series set in our future (or the future of the previous universe)? How much time elapses between Typhon and Severian? Wolfe: That is never specified in the books. My offhand guess is between 1000 and 2000 years. I would have to reread the books with care to perhaps trim the estimate up a little bit. Wolfe is surely answering the second question rather than the first, since passages in BotNS suggest a serious geological timespan between our age and Severian's (e.g. the fault-cliff in =Sword= which exposes three miles of vertically stacked human relics). Dave David Langford ansible at cix.co.uk | http://www.ansible.demon.co.uk/ *This is WHORL, for discussion of Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun. --- ### Alastair Reynolds *15 Oct 1999, 07:09 · follows David Langford* David, in my reply to my query: > Q: About how far, really, is the New Sun series set in our future (or the > future of the previous universe)? How much time elapses between Typhon > and Severian? > > Wolfe: That is never specified in the books. My offhand guess is between > 1000 and 2000 years. I would have to reread the books with care to > perhaps trim the estimate up a little bit. > > Wolfe is surely answering the second question rather than the first, > since passages in BotNS suggest a serious geological timespan between our > age and Severian's (e.g. the fault-cliff in =Sword= which exposes three > miles of vertically stacked human relics). Many thanks for digging that up. Yes - he's obviously talking about the gap between Severian and Typhon rather than the era of the Urth. I must have skimmed the second part of the question when I read the q&a originally and assumed the answer referred to the first part - which troubled me, because - as you say - the timescale feels so geological. Al *This is WHORL, for discussion of Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun. ---