Career of Severian as Conciliator

Jeff Wilson · 26 Oct 2006, 04:25 · from 2006-October.txt.gz

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From: jwilson at io.com (Jeff Wilson)
Date: Wed, 25 Oct 2006 23:25:37 -0500
Subject: (urth) Career of Severian as Conciliator
In-Reply-To: <1f7617370610251530m238971b9of62062ed371c46b5 at mail.gmail.com>
References: <p06230903c1658b0cd59b at 209.157.132.35>
	<1f7617370610251530m238971b9of62062ed371c46b5 at mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <454038C1.7000108 at io.com>

Dan'l Danehy-Oakes wrote:
> On 10/25/06, Dan Rabin <wolfe-lists at danrabin.com> wrote:
> 
>> Could we have the opinions of our knowledgeable Christian
>> contributors on how these two details might reflect religious themes?
> 
> Well, the first thing that comes to my mind is the 'miracle of bilocation,'
> whereby various Catholic saints have been known to appear in two or
> more places at the same time. (The first example I can think of is is
> Padre Pio.)
> 
> Also, Jesus was known to mysteriously disappear from amongst
> crowds and show up somewhere else.
> 
> You've also made me to wonder whether Wolfe, or you, were making
> a slight Heinlein reference:
>> 2. In _Urth_, Severian wonders how many of the guests at the inn
>> where he fights the zombie are him.
> 
> Somehow this made me think of RAH's time-travel classic,
> "All You Zombies--"

There's never more than two of the protagonist at once in "Zombies", and 
"By His Bootstraps" only gets up to three. The earliest mention of mass 
time duplicates I've found so far was a Poul Anderson short.

-- 
Jeff Wilson - jwilson at io.com
< http://www.io.com/~jwilson >

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