Wall of Nessus

Ryan Dunn · 17 Jun 2010, 06:06 · from 2010-June.txt.gz

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From: ryan at liftingfaces.com (Ryan Dunn)
Date: Thu, 17 Jun 2010 02:06:19 -0400
Subject: (urth) Wall of Nessus
In-Reply-To: <6b956c659275aac884daa13fbdf08c96.squirrel at brunians.org>
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I think we should assume Gene Wolfe has considered this, as the Wall is quite a present part of the text, no?

Or perhaps I'm reading you wrong. Could be a bit of n00b-itis on my part.

...ryan


On Jun 17, 2010, at 2:03 AM, brunians at brunians.org wrote:

> This is like pretend for you people?
> 
> I don't understand this phenomenon.
> 
> .
> 
> 
>> On 6/16/2010 6:24 AM, Jeff Wilson wrote:
>>> On 6/16/2010 12:47 AM, Ryan Dunn wrote:
>>>> And here's the quote, which was referenced earlier...
>>>> 
>>>> "...just as that smallest and uppermost sail was an entire continent
>>>> of silver, 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..." (Urth of the New Sun, Chap. XIV "The End of
>>>> the Universe")
>>> 
>>> And yet, Severian was able to cross this continent within a shift worth
>>> of air, as I said to IIRC Roy the last time this came around. There's
>>> just no consistent detail on the size of the Wall.
>> 
>> 
>> I recall that the green Lune is said to be 50,000 leagues away, which we
>> have generally taken to mean 150,000 miles and indicate that it has
>> moved closer somehow. Maybe instead, the units conversion error is in
>> the past of urth, in all or in part, so that learned people of
>> Severian's time are parroting an error made popular by some respected
>> historian and "G.W." is caught up in it as well.
>> 
>> This could mean that the Wall's dimensions are overestimated by a factor
>> of 5:3, which is still pretty big, or it could mean that a measurement
>> that G.W. has chosen to translate as "league" has different meanings or
>> different idioms for measurements in space than for measurements on the
>> ground, or for vertical height vs length.
>> 
>> (It also occurs to me that if the moon's orbit hasn't changed, it's
>> gravity and natural lack of atmosphere probably haven't either. In fact,
>> the low gravity and lack of weather make it an ideal candidate for being
>> largely domed over, similar to the Botanical Gardens.)
>> 
>> --
>> Jeff Wilson - jwilson at io.com
>> IEEE Student Chapter Blog at
>> < http://ieeetamut.org >
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> 
> 
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