Science Fiction and Fantasy Question

Sergei SOLOVIEV · 15 Apr 2012, 11:47 · from 2012-April.txt.gz

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From: soloviev at irit.fr (Sergei SOLOVIEV)
Date: Sun, 15 Apr 2012 13:47:21 +0200
Subject: (urth) Science Fiction and Fantasy Question
In-Reply-To: <CAPPJnnYzNfREqmqYxMZTbWuF2WSPv=eg1nc56Gfg+gqYPRsSrQ at mail.gmail.com>
References: <CAPPJnnYzNfREqmqYxMZTbWuF2WSPv=eg1nc56Gfg+gqYPRsSrQ at mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <4F8AB549.8000707 at irit.fr>

IMHO, the answer is "no" -

my reasons

- it seems that there is on this list a (culturally determined) drive to 
identify almost everything with almost everything
else, I do not share it;

- the description - a beautiful spaceship with sails - in case of 
Severian's ship - is very different, the captain is Tsadkiel,
a king of angelic creature, the ship is a sort of messenger of a higher 
world;

- it may be unique, but the story seems to be a sort of persistent 
legend among the sailors, it is presented as such;

- by the way, why should we believe Purn? As far as I remember, she was 
sent by one of the monsters who are
enemies of Severian and tried to kill him;

- last, but not least, the attempt to identify the Whorl with 
Tsadkiel's  ship will destroy one of important dramatic
oppositions in the Solar cycle, where Typhon (Pas) who built it,  is a 
kind of Luciferian or Antichrist figure - it
will destroy the opposition between the ship created by a human ruler 
who wants to be god, and messengers
of higher universes.

One extra remark - to me, from the point of view of literary evolution 
of Gene Wolfe, the
Tsadkiel ship seems a possible development of the idea of the ship in 
"Silhouette".

Regards

Sergei Soloviev



Nathan C. Tresch wrote:
> I posted this question to this site, and I was wondering if anyone 
> here had any input?  
>
> Is the Whorl also the Universal Transport in the Solar Cycle by Gene 
> Wolfe?
> http://scifi.stackexchange.com/q/14856/5828?sem=2
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