City on Green

Roy C. Lackey · 02 Jan 2011, 04:43 · from 2011-January.txt.gz

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From: rclackey at stic.net (Roy C. Lackey)
Date: Sat, 1 Jan 2011 22:43:00 -0600
Subject: (urth) City on Green
References: <438225.5720.qm at web58207.mail.re3.yahoo.com>
Message-ID: <001901cbaa37$8d53e580$bacc4a0c@rclackey>

Marc Aramini wrote:
[snip]
>3) The neighbors made the city on Green - I think the people of Urth are
the neighbors, or will become them.<
[snip]
>Saying the neighbors built green or that Silk says they are different
places are not very useful as absolute refutation because he does not even
understand who he is. In RttW I can quote Silk as saying "I am Horn.", but
the end, where "Silk nodded" works against that assertion.<
--------------

As I said when I started this thread, it was a *Neighbor*, not Silkhorn, who
claimed that his race built the City on Green. It was also a Neighbor in the
Land of Fires who told Horn that his race (the Neighbors) originated on
Blue. The Neighbors did not suffer from Silkhorn's identity confusion.

Humans originated on Urth. If Green is Urth, then the Neighbors did not
originate there. The Neighbors did not, could not have built Nessus. There
is no evidence, no suggestion at all that the Neighbors ever existed in
Urth's past, and Severian went all the way back many thousands of years into
the past to the dawn of history in the time of Apu-Punchau, long before
Nessus even existed.

If Green is post-deluge Urth, i.e. Ushas, the Neighbors still did not
originate there; they came from Blue. Further, ignoring that, if you want to
say that the remnants of humanity Severian saw on Ushas somehow evolved or
otherwise changed into the race of double-limbed Neighbors (never mind all
the other creatures), it is very doubtful that the ruins of a drowned Nessus
would still be standing in the time that likely would have taken. Ignoring
that, there is the Green Man from Ushas's future who, apart from being green
and living off of sunlight, looked like a man -- with two arms and two legs.

If you want to argue that the Green Man represented a stage between humans
and Neighbors, then it is even less likely that the ruins of Nessus would
still be standing at the time Horn saw the City on Green.

The Hierogrammates had examined the future of Urth and found it probable
that the humans of Ushas would become the Hieros who would bring about the
race of Hierogrammates. Apheta, a larval-stage Hierogrammate, looked like a
human woman and said that her form was that of the race that had fashioned
hers, the Hieros.

-Roy

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