Digest whorl.v010.n033
The Whorl list — 2 messages, 2 voices, 14 Oct 1999
https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/whorl/690

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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.

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Alastair Reynolds — 15 Oct 1999, 07:09
  follows, by subject match 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.

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