Bee Wrangler

Tony Ellis · 30 Aug 2006, 23:27 · from 2006-August.txt.gz

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From: tonyellis69 at btopenworld.com (Tony Ellis)
Date: Thu, 31 Aug 2006 00:27:25 +0100
Subject: (urth) Bee Wrangler
Message-ID: <000001c6cc8b$d9efce10$6401a8c0@cthulhu>

Dan'l wrote:
>It ain't necessarily so, Roy. In fact ... I think you've just pried
open
>an important argument for the pro-Appian camp.

Rex
(http://listserver.dreamhost.com/pipermail/urth-urth.net/2006-August/002
622.html) and Roy
(http://listserver.dreamhost.com/pipermail/urth-urth.net/2006-August/002
629.html) have already touched on this, I think.

>How long was the Predecessor gone?
>
>More accurately: how much time passed for him, and how much
>time passed on Urth, between his departure and his return? We
>know that Severian's journey didn't take too much subjective time,
>but he returned years after his departure.

Years *before*, surely?

In any case, as Roy says, the penultimate Autarch needn't have been gone
any time at all. Why should Tzadkiel and co risk the Commonwealth
falling to the armies of Erebus in his absence when they are masters of
time travel, and can bring him back the day after he left?

My own problem with the old Autarch going to Yesod and coming back 20
years later or 20 years younger is that there's just no support for it
in the text. If the old Autarch really has been in power for *at least*
the last 62 years, why doesn't Severian comment on how implausibly
youthful he looks?

If someone wants to argue that evidence isn't required, that this
slight-of-time could have happened regardless of the fact that Wolfe
doesn't say anything about it, I can just as easily argue the reverse.
Who's to say the Autarch didn't come back from Yesod significantly older
than when he left, as Gunnie says happen to some people who travel on
the Ship?

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