Gene Wolfe's New Sun stuff

Thomas Duffey · 05 Oct 1992, 16:20 · from sf-lovers.1992.mbox

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From: duffey at uxh.cso.uiuc.edu (Thomas Duffey)
Subject: Re: Gene Wolfe's New Sun stuff
Date: 5 Oct 92 16:20:44 GMT
Message-ID: <sflovers-v17-522-14 at digest.sf-lovers>
X-Digest-Issue: SF-LOVERS Digest V17 #522
X-Urthmirror-Source: https://archive.org/details/sf-lovers-digest-vol-17b

steyn at cs.rochester.edu (Gavin Steyn) writes:
>>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?
>
>Except that the sources are more complicated than that...
>
>  I don't remember that much of that sequence, but one thing I do remember
>(partly because Wolfe confirmed it when I talked to him) was that the
>battle between the giant and the scholar is not straight out of the
>mionotaur legend - it also comes from the battle of the Monitor and the
>Merrimack.  There are other sources in there too, but that's the main one
>I recall.

   Another part of this tale is taken from the idea of doing an academic
thesis (apparently "thesis" and "Theseus" got mixed together): the part
about the students in the city having to create a son magically in order to
earn a tasseled hood.  I suppose the Minotaur and Monitor represents
another such mixture of stories due to similar sounding names.

   Also, the idea of magically fleshing out a human appears in a Borges
short story, though I don't remember the title.  Borges is a strong
influence on Wolfe's writing, and I'd be willing to bet that the blind
master librarian of the Citadel (Ullan?)is a tribute by Wolfe to Borges.

>  One of the stories comes from Kipling, I think, (_The Jungle Book_), but
>I don't remember where it is.

   This is the story that Severian (the torturer) reads to the orphaned boy
Severian while they are together.  It is a mix of the Jungle Book, the
Romulus and Remus story, and a bit of the Plymouth colony founding (I
suppose here, the two types of "Indians" led to the confusion).

Tom Duffey
mebsunll.me.uiuc.edu

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