What's so Green about Ushas?

Tony Ellis · 15 Jul 2008, 18:50 · from 2008-July.txt.gz

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From: tonyellis69 at btopenworld.com (Tony Ellis)
Date: Tue, 15 Jul 2008 19:50:59 +0100
Subject: (urth) What's so Green about Ushas?
Message-ID: <9a33123d0807151150n42fbe8f0re332e48efe641292 at mail.gmail.com>

Roy C Lackey wrote:
>(FWIW, I have a hard time fitting the futuristic Green Man into the
>prospective Hieros line. He seems to be rather a pacific fellow whose kind
>will not even kill to eat. It's hard to imagine his kind will produce the
>cruel men who fashion Hierogrammates in Briah. Maybe he signals the end of
>the senseless cycles.)

I don't think the Green Man future is meant to be the one that
produces the Hierogrammates, because I don't think it's the one to
which Severian returns as a god at the end of UotNS, although that
sometimes seems to be the assumption.

When Severian escapes from Apu-Punchau's tomb in the final chapter of
UotNS and the corridors of time stretch around him, he says:
"Bright-winged, the small Tzadkiel fluttered beside one. The green man
raced beside another. I chose one that ran as lonely as I..." That's
the one he follows back to Ushas.

That seems to suggest that the Green Man future is one that gets the
New Sun but doesn't get Severian the demi-god, and humanity works out
its own arrangement with the universe.

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