"Another ancient greek of the same name"

Peter Stephenson · 24 Jun 1999, 09:12 · from urth-v0027.mbox · original

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From: Peter Stephenson <pws at ibmth.df.unipi.it>
Subject: Re: (urth) Re: "Another ancient greek of the same name"
Date: Thu, 24 Jun 1999 11:12:30 +0200
Message-ID: <urth-v0027-0118 at digest.urth.net>
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"Roy C. Lackey" wrote:
> vizcacha wrote:
> Perhaps this is too simplistic a reading, but I have a mental picture of =
the
> software that does his speech having a slot for "the planet I'm on =3D'Ur=
th'",
> "the home world =3D 'Earth'"; but of course, the two are homophones, so
> Severian is a bit confused when Jonas says "On <the home world>." <<
>=20
> Perhaps we can just chalk it up
> to the old saw about great minds thinking alike. <g>

This was going through my mind, too, and it seems to tie up the loose end
in the most plausible.  It's the sort of mistake Severian makes a lot.
Nice way of illustrating that even if (as Thackeray kept insisting) the
narrator is omniscient, he still doesn't know everything :-).

corncrake

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