Looking for an Interview ...

Gerry Quinn · 04 Aug 2011, 14:31 · from 2011-August.txt.gz

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From: gerry at bindweed.com (Gerry Quinn)
Date: Thu, 4 Aug 2011 15:31:51 +0100
Subject: (urth) Looking for an Interview ...
References: <CAM0v-i7n2qGLitJ5d5++j8EY7L7sO58MVMEWBkgFpjhy=g0z0g at mail.gmail.com>
	<4E396A65.9000505 at gmail.com>
Message-ID: <E15617660F7640D1961758C3C74C05C8@jill>

  From: James Wynn 
  . 

  Gevers: [Trying again:] Can your readers usefully view The Fifth Head of Cerberus as being set in the same science-fictional universe as New Sun, Long Sun, and Short Sun? Why does Fifth Head's pattern of blue/green sister worlds recur so tantalizingly in Urth/Lune, Blue/Green? 

  Wolfe: I don't know. 

  When Wolfe says he "doesn't know", he is surely answering the first of Gever's two shot : "Can readers *usefully* view tFHoC as set in the same universe as Severian and Silk." 

I'm not so sure of that.  Perhaps he views the first question as trivial.  After all, even if Fifth Head is set in the same universe as New Sun, the events precede it by an enormous stretch of time.  And the planets don't seem alike at all except for being twins and habitable by humans.  So what would be useful about it?

Wolfe has used human twins in his novels, and also planetary twins.  Perhaps there is some commonality in purpose.  But it may be in part simply a way to have two separate but interacting civilisations which do not need to have a long history of interaction as would two civilisations confined on the same planet if at least one were technologically advanced.

- Gerry Quinn

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