The Ship

Lee Berman · 06 Jan 2012, 19:52 · from 2012-January.txt.gz

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From: severiansola at hotmail.com (Lee Berman)
Date: Fri, 6 Jan 2012 14:52:23 -0500
Subject: (urth) The Ship
Message-ID: <SNT123-W5954B77E57A12210A246C5CF950 at phx.gbl>

>Dan'l Danehy-Oakes: It seems to me that Apu-Punchau's eclipse might 
>well be local, even more local than a solar eclipse normally is. In 
>that case, a smaller object than Lune will do.

Yep, a regular solar eclipse is fairly local as seen here:
http://mail.colonial.net/~hkaiter/Aaa_web_images2012/SolarEclipse.jpg

Are you thinking it is even more local because other tribes don't initially
recognize Severian as Apu Punchau, and remain hostile?

Well, anyway, the moon still makes more sense to me as a hiero-ship doesn't
seem to have any business there at the time. Plus, like the storm, the eclipse
seems to begin and end with Severian's emotional state.

>Sometimes I think we try to hard to connect everything in tBotNS to
>everything else in tBotNS.

It still makes sense to me. More than one person views the story as a
"labryinth" and it seems constructed that way to me. It isn't really linear.
When you turn a corner in this story you are as likely to find something 
already encountered as something new.

>Gerry Quinn: Doesn?t the bean story indicate they started in the seas of Urth?

The beans are from the stars. This is part of the basis by which I associate
Inire and the Cumaean, acknowledged aliens, with the megatherians, not to 
mention the hiero-types.

>Larry Miller: I always assumed a connection between the beans and the Megatherians
>because Jonas tells the story (which remains unfinished) in the same chapter as the 
>disturbance at the gate, which IIRC was the attempt by the Undines swimming through 
>the opening in the wall that the Gyoll flows through, which also ends quite suddenly.  
>In otherwords Wolfe gives us two unfinished stories about the Megatherions at the 
>same time.

That's a pretty outlandish theory, Larry. One that generated a lot of heat in here a
number of years ago. I like it!

What the heck did happen at the Piteous Gate? Something significant enough to be
mentioned by Hildegrin in the next book. The parsimonious argue it was just a road-
block and people in fear of soldiers turning back into a narrow tunnel. The outlandish 
argue that there are hints of an undine swimming upstream and causing a disturbance there. 
(I think Borski postulates that shape-changing Hethor accidentally became a monster there
and caused the disturbance; Hethor is acting pretty weird before the fact)

I think there is a semi-consensus that Severian is being tracked in his travels but in
this case, would the undine be tracking Severian, Baldanders or both?

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