The Apu-Punchau Eclipse

Roy C. Lackey · 12 Jun 2008, 07:25 · from 2008-June.txt.gz

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From: rclackey at stic.net (Roy C. Lackey)
Date: Thu, 12 Jun 2008 02:25:22 -0500
Subject: (urth) The Apu-Punchau Eclipse
Message-ID: <001b01c8cc5d$7da2b860$0dcd4a0c at rclackey.stic.net>

Andrew wrote:
>> compared to which the mighty Wall of
>>Nessus, a few leagues in height and a few thousand long,
>>might have been the tumbledown fence of a sheepfold),[...]
>>(XIV, 103)
>
>So the wall of Nessus is more than 4,000 miles long (if "a few" =
>"three or more" & we're talking about Roman-style leagues).
>
>Not really related to the eclipse issue, but how seriously are we
>supposed to take Sev and other characters' sizing estimates?

A league is set at "about three miles" in an appendix to CLAW, and even if
you set "a few"  to equal the more conservative three, you get some pretty
wild figures. Frankly, when you look at all the scattered comments about the
Wall and apply pencil and paper to the numbers, nothing works out right, no
matter how you look at it. Believe me, it's been tried!

Even just looking at its height, nine miles is absurd. For instance, the
Wall is not supposed to be visible from Citadel Hill (unless you climb a
tower), but the distance from the river (further upstream) to the Inn near
the Sanguinary Field, which is near the Wall, was easily walked by Autarch
Severian and his buddies, there and back, in much less than a day. If the
Wall was really that tall, there would have been nowhere in the city that it
couldn't be seen from even ground level, much less a hill.

>More likely, I suppose, it encloses an area along the length of
>Gyoll? Say a rough rectangle about 2,000 miles long and 100 miles
>wide.  That gives an area about the size of Spain.

The city followed the river upstream for hundreds, if not thousands, of
years, so if the Wall encloses it, it has to be much longer than it is wide.

-Roy

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