Typhon's nature

Lee Berman · 14 Oct 2011, 12:29 · from 2011-October.txt.gz

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From: severiansola at hotmail.com (Lee Berman)
Date: Fri, 14 Oct 2011 08:29:59 -0400
Subject: (urth) Typhon's nature
Message-ID: <SNT123-W59E4ED0343216AC82C6D7FCFE10 at phx.gbl>

>Jerry Friedman: The mandragora tells Severian that Sev's continued psychic shrieking 
>from being abandoned as an infant inhibits his telepathy, which is along the same lines 
>but not the same.)  Maybe someone did a little surgery on Mucor's embryo to disable the 
>part of the brain that would have inhibited her powers. Anyway, I don't see that it matters 
>to the story.

I think the best answer is whatever gives you that "click" sense of just feeling right. If 
the surgery hypothesis does that, you should go with that.

For me, the seeds of the entire Sun series can be found in Fifth Head of Cerberus: the 
uploading of human intelligence to machines, the dead end nature of cloning, the 
mystery of identity and family, the origin of myth, the relationship of the faerie/divine
world with our "reality" etc.

Of the three sections of the Sun series I am least familiar with Long Sun. But given the 
themes I think Wolfe established in 5HoC, I tend to gravitate toward genetics and cloning
as explanations which tie into the larger picture Wolfe is trying to paint. I get the 
impression Wolfe is trying to make philosophical points with all that he writes, though I'm 
not sure all his fans would agree.

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