Who is the Long Sun?

Hey guys. So parallelism has finally led the question "Who are the long and short suns, if Severian is the New sun?" to appear on the list. And strangely enough, we have an answer in the text of Calde of the Long Sun. Auk is the Long Sun. During the tunnel scene (I read it last week - it's just shy of halfway through the book, but I don't have the book with me now) where Auk is down there posessed and having hallucinations and he's looking for Dace, he starts thinking to himself and comes to the conclusion that, of course, he is the long sun. I remember scratching my head at that one. Does that mean that the god that possesses Auk controls the cooling and heating of the Sun, or does it mean that Auk himself is in some way a manifestation of the Long Sun, since he "doesn't have a father or mother" but mysteriously has a brother who is more than happy to show up after his death. Any thoughts on that? Marc Aramini

Marc says,

Crush responds: I'd forgotten about that. Okay. This is the wierdest puzzle I've come across in the whole LS/SS series. Which is, how is Auk Silk? They evenly divide between them the activities of three totally separate mythological archetypes. Yet in one of those archetypal references, Auk is Silk's brother. Before Silk's robbery, Silk shrives Auk. Afterward, Auk shrives Silk insisting he tell him every bit of the act. But Mucor even says that Auk is Silk. In Exodus otLS, Chenille is having Mucor look for Auk. Auk is at Sun Street manteon preaching and sacrificing which he's been doing since Silk stopped doing it (another Silk parallel). Chenilles says "Where is Auk?" and Mucur responds "Where Auk is....Silk?" Long ago I posted that Auk appeared to be the "awk-end" of Silk. But that was before I realized the extent to which Wolfe treats them (thematically) as a single personality. Since we're talking about shared identities, I'll point out that Auk "casts down" Silk (Typhon's clone) into a pit in analogy of Severian casting down Typhon (after Silk is resurrected -- just like Typhon). Now Marc points out that Auk is the Long Sun just as Severian is the New Sun. So a question that's been lurking for some time in my mind has come to fore full-fledged: WHY is Auk (somehow) both Severian and Silk. Preemptively I'll caution that it won't do to say that that these are two unrelated associations that have nothing to do with the narrative. I have become quite convinced that Wolfe doesn't write that way. If there is anything to these references then they are woven tightly into the story and are simultaneously true. I've considered that Auk is a clone of Severian (both are dark featured, sexually attractive, and carrying swords) and that their differences in build are due to differences in upbringing and environment. But how would that explain why Silk and Auk are the same personalities? Silk and Auk are clones? (hence my recent confabulation with Don's theories) But they are as different in appearance as Typhon and Severian. And then there's Auk's brother, Bustard -- a mysterious wildcard whose significance I have yet to divine either to the narrative or to any of the themes I've identified. So Marc, I have lots of thoughts, but no conclusions. -- Crush

There is an obvious analog to Auk in the New Sun books - Hildegrim the badger. Like Auk, Hildegrim is tall, heavy, dark and strong, starts out as our hero's mentor, is morally ambiguous, and comes to a bad end. And there is a near-"twinning" in the scene with Apu-Punchau in the dead town Auk/Hildegrim seems to be the false brother hartshorn ----- Original Message -----

There is Biblical background for this also, with Cain and Abel, and even more, the twins Esau and Jacob. Behind these pairs are Lucifer and the Angel of Yahweh, who wrestle for the soul. There seem to be some differences between Wolfe's two narratives. Severian is a morally ambiguous man who is becoming better; Hildegrim is a morally ambiguous man who becomes worse, iirc. Auk is a bit more like a Peter to Silk's Jesus. If Auk is the LS, perhaps it is because he is "in union with" Silk, and Silk is the more foundational LS. Perhaps it's relevant that Mucor confuses Silk and Auk in Exodus, which is after the resurrection of Silk, when, so to speak, his spirit is going forth to unite others to him. Of course, that does not explain why Auk thinks of himself as the LS in Calde. Of course, in a narrative full of clones, there is probably more to it than that. Hmmm. Speculation: Auk is a clone of the god who controls the LS, who is a son of Typhon/Pas. Silk is a clone of Typhon/Pas. They are son and father, clonely. That would fit with the theme of Silk acting as father (patera) to Auk. This would lead to saying that Pas and Silk are the LS, and the god and Auk are "son of" the LS. Don't know if this advances things any. Nutria Nutria

The most obvious analogy (but one which can't be ignored, given the title word "Exodus"), is with Aaron and Moses.

The Whorl was launched a thousand years before Sev was born. How could Auk be his clone? All this casual talk of cloning that's been going on lately from various quarters strikes me as improbable, given what we know of Typhon. He wanted to live forever--and he wanted to do it with the same face he started out with. If cloning had been a workable option available to Typhon, why didn't he use it, rather than resort to the bizarre choice of having his own head cut off? When the clone was mature enough, he could have had his brain scan downloaded to it, just as was done with "possession" in LS. He had the time; the Whorl had to have taken many years to build and had been launched before he lost his struggle with Piaton for control of the body behind that curtain. -Roy

Another gap between New Sun and SS/LS. IMO it would be odd if the Typhon of SS/LS could not clone huimans, given the apparent level of genetic technology at his command. And as Roy says, if the Typhon of NS could clone, and given that he can download personailites, a head transplant doesn't seem like the best solution to his problem.

We can store egg and sperm. We can perform in vitro fertilisation and store the resulting gamete. However human cloning remains a theoretical proposition and the "success" of animal cloning problematic. If Typhon could do better such technologies would seem to have presented a simpler solution than chems. The personality download is clearly possible but we can't say that it is perfect. Pas is not the Typhon we glimps on Urth. If the dlifferences are deliberate rather than an artifact of an imperfect process we need a motivation for the manipulations. For New, Long and Short suns to be internally consistant Typhon cannot have perfect cloning or more esoteric genetic manipulation at his disposal. If they are not internally conistsant (be that as deliberate policy or from the constraints of retro-fitting Typhon into the more recent story) there can be no coherant solution apt to both stories. For my part I suspect that Typhon was a lot more technologically constrained than he sugegstes to Severain at either of their meetings. Matthew