Short Sun blog review

David Stockhoff · 22 Sep 2010, 02:36 · from 2010-September.txt.gz

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From: dstockhoff at verizon.net (David Stockhoff)
Date: Tue, 21 Sep 2010 22:36:26 -0400
Subject: (urth) Short Sun blog review
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  I guess disagree with the "cool" proposition in the first place. I 
also disagree with Moody in calling the "return" to the Urth-Sun 
universe "nostalgic." Why should Wolfe create a new universe every time 
he writes a novel?

What I find interesting about BotNS in the context of the Urth-Sun 
universe is that we see it all through Severian's telling. It's like 
peeping through a keyhole. But there is a whole universe out there that 
Severian does not know and that does not know Severian. Typhon is one of 
those phenomena, except for a brief time.

So what if there is no legend of the Whorl for Severian to report? It 
had no role in his story, and is merely an inconsequential and 
inevitable part of the backdrop. We know Typhon ruled worlds and wanted 
to rule more. We know there had to be colonists. The universe is vast.

Trying to find concordances between LS/SS and NS is useful and fun if it 
uncovers facts that are useful and fun, but NOT finding concordance is 
evidence of very little by itself. For me, it hardly needs to tie 
together at all, let alone brilliantly.

On 9/21/2010 6:03 PM, Mo Holkar wrote:
> At 19:55 21/09/2010, Dan'l wrote:
>> 4. Wolfe thought, "Wouldn't it be cool if the chief god was 
>> Typhon...?" and thus tied the whole thing to tBotNS.
>
>
> At that point, the answer really could have been "No, maybe it 
> wouldn't actually", imo.
>
> When, on reading the books, it became apparent, my reaction wasn't 
> that delightful feeling of opening up of possibilities and of 
> ideational space, but more a wary sinking feeling. I was slightly 
> mollified by the clever stuff that turned up on revisiting Urth, but 
> even so I feel it would probably have been more conceptually 
> satisfactory to have kept the worldspaces separate.
>
> But is that just me? Do the rest of you feel that it all ties together 
> brilliantly?
>
> Mo
>
>
> # ~ # ~ #
>
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