The eyes of a clone

thalassocrat at nym.hush.com · 31 Jul 2005, 02:56 · from 2005-July.txt.gz

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From: thalassocrat at nym.hush.com (thalassocrat at nym.hush.com)
Date: Sun Jul 31 02:56:31 2005
Subject: (urth) The eyes of a clone
Message-ID: <20050731095626.4E48C33C55 at mailserver5.hushmail.com>

Roy wrote:

<Well-argued stuff which I agree with.>

I've long felt that if Wolfe is teasing us with hidden family 
currents, one of them might lead from Sev to Horn. 

There are a bunch of little things you can drag together to make 
this look borderline plausible.

When Sev meets the Autarch on the battlefield towards the end of 
Citadel, the Autarch tells him: "Tou ... have always seemed to me a 

construction of horn and boiled leather." 

On Green, he carries a sword which might suggest Terminus Est. One 
of the first Neighbors he meets refers to him as (something like), 
"You who have been all of your race." He's an ummm severe kind of 
character, resourceful, most happy when apart from the mass of 
humanity, with a strong romantic streak, and certain non-PC 
elements in his approach to sexual relations. 

Their stories have certain parallels: setting out on a lone journey 

into the unknown, melding characters with other parties, enrolled 
by higher powers as an agent of salvation.

Assuming that dark versus light coloring is significant - he, like 
Sev, is dark.

At least this would give some kind of depth to the otherwise 
disappointing Silkhorn-meets-Sev passages in Short Sun.

Maybe there's a wider loop, too, embracing Ymar as well. The 
parallels betwen Ymar and Sev are many & blatant: they must, 
somehow, be the "same". Ymar the Alpha, Sev the Omega. 

On a little tangent, I think Sev's childhood play-tomb must be 
Ymar's. It's surely the tomb of someone who went off in a ship and 
returned. If we are to believe (as we are told) that Sev's 
predecessor was the first Autarch since Ymar to make the journey, 
then whose else could it really be? At the end of New Sun, we are 
left with the suggestion that it was Sev's own tomb, somehow or 
other; I think it must have been both Sev's and Ymar's - again, 
somehow or other.

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