Seal of Pas

Lee Berman · 28 Oct 2011, 17:03 · from 2011-October.txt.gz

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From: severiansola at hotmail.com (Lee Berman)
Date: Fri, 28 Oct 2011 13:03:58 -0400
Subject: (urth) Seal of Pas
Message-ID: <SNT123-W99E0EFE2B0ACD905B6B0FCFD30 at phx.gbl>

>Gerry Quinn: How could they *not* be in a unique arrangement?

>Gerry Quinn: I agree that Wolfe had the option of not citing specific numbers

Yes, you have answered your own question. And Wolfe most often takes that route
relying on a description of "gnostic" or "teratoid" symbols non-specific adjectives
to convey to his readers that the protagonist is seeing symbols he (and we) are 
not expected to understand the specifics of, only the nature of.

>the citing of numbers opens the possibility that they have some secret extra-narrative 
>significance.  But they don?t have to be significant.

Well, this is literature. Nothing *has* to be anything. But Wolfe's departure from his
usual way of describing alien symbols seems pretty significant to me.

>If they have a deeper significance, it is a game that Wolfe is playing with his readers, 
>and he hasn?t set it up very well.

This wouldn't be the first example of that. UotNS was not planned when Wolfe wrote BotNS.
Therefore Wolfe expected all the mystery solutions revealed in UotNS to be soluble without
that book. But they aren't. At least not by the readers who have published their interpretations
in books or online. Plus we have the example of whether VRT replaced Dr. Marsch.  Hotly debated
until Gene Wolfe set the record straight in two separate interviews.

>Gwern Branwen: It has been a while, but wasn't there just one sequence of numbers
>which made up a Seal of Pas?

Yes. But there was mention by Hammerstone of many other seals which had already been
broken. A random serial number doesn't make sense for Wolfe to devote this much attention
to. I think it has some sort of Earthly or perhaps Urthly significance that we are supposed
to figure out. I still think the Bible and the Seventh Seal and the 12 x 12,0000 Tribes of
Israel is a likely suspect. Perhaps not to be ignored is that there are words also.

5553 8783 4223 9700 34
2221 0401 1101 7276 56
SEALED FOR THE MONARCH

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