Appian

Rex Lycanthrosaurus · 29 Aug 2006, 02:08 · from 2006-August.txt.gz

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From: lycanthrosaurus at fastmail.fm (Rex Lycanthrosaurus)
Date: Mon, 28 Aug 2006 21:08:00 -0500
Subject: (urth) Appian
In-Reply-To: <000001c6cafc$03ab11b0$6401a8c0@cthulhu>
References: <000001c6cafc$03ab11b0$6401a8c0@cthulhu>
Message-ID: <1156817280.22130.269627848 at webmail.messagingengine.com>

On Tue, 29 Aug 2006 00:45:16 +0100, "Tony Ellis"
<tonyellis69 at btopenworld.com> said:

> I'm all ears. All Odilo tells us, in The Cat, is that 62 years before
> Severian became Autarch, the Autarch Appian gave his permission for
> Sancha to leave the House Absolute. How long had Appian been Autarch
> then? 

A significant portion of your argument relies on the chronology
presented in "The Cat," which I've now just reread in conjunction with
Roy Lackey's recent post. Using figures from the story Roy calculates
Lomer's age to be 96, and I can see no mistakes in his math. So do
you too contend Lomer is 96? (Ditto for fellow prisoner Nicarete, who
seems "almost equally old"?) And can this actually be right given
conditions in the antechamber, where the prisoner's diet seems to
consist of coffee and sweet rolls, and they're frequently roughed up by
malicious exultant punks? Or is it more likely that Wolfe screwed up his
numbers? Obviously, I think the latter more probable.   

> It was nice of you to go the trouble of digging up an eight-year-old
> post like that; thank you for showing everyone that when someone does
> come up with a good argument, which can be backed-up by the text, I'm
> happy to go along with it. :-)

This was a shameless cheap shot on my part and I apologize for using it,
but I was amused when I read it recently because I generally have been
impressed by the tenor and substance of your postings. Perhaps even now
you're right and the various proponents of the
Appian-as-penultimate-autarch are wrong. But I still distrust 
numbers generated purely by an ancillary story and thus continue to
favor the ap(p)ian-honey steward association. 
-- 
  Rex Lycanthrosaurus
  lycanthrosaurus at fastmail.fm

-- 
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