Gene Wolfe's New Sun stuff

Ethan Merritt · 03 Oct 1992, 04:37 · from sf-lovers.1992.mbox

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From: merritt at milton.u.washington.edu (Ethan Merritt)
Subject: Re: Gene Wolfe's New Sun stuff
Date: 3 Oct 92 04:37:23 GMT
Message-ID: <sflovers-v17-521-1 at digest.sf-lovers>
X-Digest-Issue: SF-LOVERS Digest V17 #521
X-Urthmirror-Source: https://archive.org/details/sf-lovers-digest-vol-17b

joak at ocf.berkeley.edu (Jonathan A. Kung) writes:
>Don't understand the question?  No problem; neither do I.  I guess I
>thought that the Hierogrammates (is that them, the trio with names like
>Ossiforous or whatever) were from the next universe, come back to help
>Severian because of something he did in his "first", original non-NewSun
>incarnation that passed Zak's test and asked that an alternate Severian be
>created that would become the New Sun.  (Ow.  Sharp pains in my head.)  If
>they are indeed from Severian's birth-universe (what's the name, Briah? or
>is that the other one?), then I was in error.

   I haven't read the Sun books for a while, so I may misremeber, but...  I
believe that Ossipago, Familulus, and Bar???  were busy living backwards in
time (like Merlin in TH White's Once and Future King?).  I.e. their future
was Severian's past.  Now as I recall the explanation for the
heirogrammates' interest in humanity it goes something like this: humanity
created and/or evolved into the heirogrammates. The heirogrammates in turn,
so as to ensure their own future existence, wish to evolve/create humanity
so that humanity is in a position to return the favor again.  As usual the
tenses and time directions are all messed up.  Wolfe does not, that I
picked up anyway, develop the backwards-in-time notion very well.  One
possible vision is of a univerese shared by humanity evolving in one
time/direction towards the heirogrammates; with the heirogrammates working
backwards through the same events to the the beginnings of humanity.

   Anyone want to take a stab at explaining this better?

>19.  Was the jungle area in the Garden with the three people, one woman, a
>     man, and a naked man, in the hut an instance of time-travel?  I
>     remember reading that Severian noticed that those people seemed to be
>     ignoring or at least trying not to notice himself and Agia.

   I could never tie up the loose threads in this one.  I half suspect that
Wolfe was originally heading in another direction in his conception of the
panoramas, but changed his mind.  For what it's worth I think that the
reason that the inhabitants were semi-oblivious to Severian and company was
that (1) each panorama sort of exuded a proper mind-set for its setting (2)
susceptible passers-by were taken up by this and became effectively part of
the stage set. I.e. I don't think the people were true originals seen via
time travel, I think they were contemporaries of Severian who had gotten
caught up in an Ernest Hemmingway look-alike contest imposed by the stage
set.

   Here's a question in return: At least one of the stories which Severian
relates from his little brown book is recognizable - that of Theseus
returning without changing his sails.  Can the other stories be matched up
with tales we already know?

Ethan A Merritt

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