Chronology

Gerry Quinn · 26 May 2011, 15:12 · from 2011-May.txt.gz

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From: gerryq at indigo.ie (Gerry Quinn)
Date: Thu, 26 May 2011 16:12:57 +0100
Subject: (urth) Chronology
References: <SNT123-W4324BB24C7A5AEB30CB4CCF770 at phx.gbl>
Message-ID: <CBB9F7B1E6F145438A11C4FC756D5528@jill>

From: "Lee Berman" <severiansola at hotmail.com>
>>Antonio Pedro Marques:

>>I find the chronology overall very confusing but I'm certain
>>it is just as GW intended it, because he didn't have any gun to his head 
>>not to make
>>it correct....No, I don't think he would introduce brutal incoherence into 
>>latter works
>>just because it would be cool to have this or that episode happen. And I 
>>don't find the
>>'it's all different universes' theory satisfying.

The incoherence of introducing Ymar is not all that brutal if one does not 
try to closely analyse the story as a realistic history.  Perhaps Wolfe 
underestimated how hard readers would pluck at the threads.  The Ymar 
episode is a cool story, and it may be that Wolfe thought its coolness would 
outweigh the questions raised by the quick succession of Ymar.  Or perhaps 
he felt that the rapid succession of Ymar was plausible.  After all, it 
might not have been all that rapid.  Perhaps Ymar only attained the Autarchy 
in his fifties, after decades of chaos.

> I admit that mapping timelines is of far less interest to me than to many 
> other Wolfe fans.
> To borrow a Gerry line, I'd rather just read the story Gene Wolfe wrote. 
> But I am glad
> some people take the trouble to do it. It can be helpful. But I am willing 
> to accept that
> some story elements won't jibe perfectly with others.

By that line I did not mean to mock your intelligence.  But ideas like 
"Ceryx is Inire" do read to me like notions that are transplanted from some 
completely other book.  Ceryx is a clearly human necromancer who appears 
briefly to challenge Severian the Conciliator in UotNS.  At the end of the 
chapter he appears in, he is killed by a mob.  Inire is a clearly alien 
vizier who works for many autarchs including Severian at a later time; he is 
overtly present only in BotNS and while he presumably knows many 
magics/technologies, he is not observed to delve in necromancy. When Wolfe 
wrote Inire, we can be certain that Ceryx was not in his mind, or it would 
truly have been a different book!  Really, an idea like this needs a lot of 
justification.  Instead, it comes in the very next paragraph after a theory 
that the Cumaean is Ymar's never-mentioned twin sister is refuted!

>>How come Scylla sounds so childish in comparison to Tartaros if she was 
>>older and they were
>>scanned at the same time?
>
> As the girl with snake-arms on the ship in RttW? Or when Scylla possesses 
> Chenille in LotLS? I think
> in Chenille she sounds like a haughty young woman, roughly of Chenille's 
> age. She certainly
> doesn't sound as young as Cilinia to me. Tartaros does sound older, wiser 
> and world-weary. Maybe,
> even in scanned form, he has experienced more pain and sorrow than Scylla. 
> Perhaps one can mature
> as a computer program?

That is a strange point about Scylla, certainly.  In her Window she appears 
as a young girl on the cusp of womanhood, and Tartaros tells us that the 
gods appear to us as they see themselves.  I lean to the view that Tartaros 
matured, while Scylla did not, before or after scanning, or both.

I don't see why one should not mature as a computer program.  Most of 
Wolfe's computerised people are embodied in humanoid androids of some kind, 
and I think there is considerable evidence that they are similar to people 
in most ways including the ability to change.  It is probably more difficult 
for disembodied programs, and also for god-like rulers, and Scylla and 
Tartaros were both - but I would not say it is impossible.

- Gerry Quinn

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