Severian's Mother and _Castle of the Otter_

Kevin Maroney · 03 Apr 1987, 17:03 · from sf-lovers.1987.mbox

This is the message as the crawl holds it, before anything here touched it. What the conversation shows has been through ingest: transfer encodings decoded, attachments dropped, quote markers repaired, and the archiver’s ? resolved into quotation marks and dashes. Those repairs are judgements and some of them are wrong, which is what this page is for. Email addresses are obscured here as they are everywhere else on the site, so it is before our repairs rather than byte for byte.

From: dg_rtp!kjm at rutgers.edu (Kevin Maroney)
Subject: Severian's Mother and _Castle of the Otter_
Date: 3 Apr 87 17:03:12 GMT
Message-ID: <sflovers-v12-135-11 at digest.sf-lovers>
X-Digest-Issue: SF-LOVERS Digest V12 #135
X-Urthmirror-Source: https://archive.org/details/sf-lovers-digest-vol-12a

In response to an earlier posting of mine:

In _Castle of the Otter_, a 1982 volume concerning _The Book of the
New Sun_, Wolfe does indeed state that Holy Katherine, the patron of
the guild of torturers (note that this in not capitalized, as it is
not the proper name of the Order), is Saint Catherine of Alexandria.
Catherine was tried and put to death for criticizing the treatment
of Christians at the hands of Maxentius, a Roman Emperor. (Time
frame: fourth century.)  She was placed on the wheel, but it broke
down, and she was then decapitated. She forgave her executioner.

That chapter of _Castle_ goes on to describe the evolution of the
story "The Feast of Saint Catherine", which Wolfe originally saw as
a novella, into the tetralogy it is today.

I found _Castle_ to be a delightful and fascinating book. It
contains a great deal of information on the _BoTNS_, including a
glossary of _Shadow of the Torturer_, discussions of futuristic
cavalry, advice to beginning writers, a description of Wolfe's (then
current, only recently abdicated) position as a senior editor of
_Plant Engineering_ magazine, and a chapter of jokes told by the
characters of the _Book_. Most importantly, it contains a
chronological bibliography of Wolfe's spec-fic works. It is
available as a limited edition (signed and numbered, I believe)
published by Zeisling Bros, and also in an edition from the Science
Fiction Book Club. I don't know how to order it from the SFBC; I got
my copy from an ad in _Locus_.

I will share with you my favorite joke from _Castle_. It is told by
Master Ash, the Last Man.

"Once a man such as I, a man who walks the corridors of time, was
approached by a rich woman. "I wish to see the end of the world,"
she said. "Show it to me, and I will double your fortune."

"Doubled, my fortune would remain but small," said the scholar.

"Tripled, if you like," said the woman.

Then the rich woman told him all her riches should do to him and his
children if he did not obey her.

"Very well then," said the scholar. "Would you like to see the time
when the sun swells and Urth falls thereto like a cinder in a
grate?"

"No," said the rich woman. "That is only a larger fire, and I have
seen many fires."

"Then would you see the Grand Gnab, when the universe shall fall
into itself?"

"No," said the rich woman. "For that is not the end of anything, but
the beginning of a new universe."

"Then tell me what I must show you," said the scholar.

The rich woman took thought with herself, and at last she said,
"Show me the end of life. I would see the last agonies of the last
creature to live upon Urth."

"Very well," said the scholar; and they stood upon a plain of ice,
with the red sun no brighter than the moon.

"Where is the last creature?" said the woman. "That is what I wish
to see. Here every thing is already dead." A cold wind scoured the
plain, and she drew her furs more tightly around her.

"Why no," the scholar told her. "You live, and so do I." Handing her
a mirror, he vanished down the corridors of time.

The preceeding joke was Copyright 1982 by Gene Wolfe, and was
included as part of a review of _Castle of the Otter_. This posting
is in no way intended to infringe upon the copyright of Mr. Wolfe.
All rights reserved. It may not be duplicated by any means for any
purposes without written permission of the copyright holder.

Kevin J. Maroney

An unofficial mirror of a public mailing list · about & removal requests · download the archive · before the list · original archive at urth.net