Thecla/Hethor

Matthew, thanks for the correct text submission. I should have waited until my books were in front of me before posting. And I had considered your interpretation of "no shipmates" to mean "they are not my mates". By interesting coincidence I was just discussing with a friend about how Americans don't use the word "mate" by itself to mean friend, usually. So I still consider the phrase "no shipmates" to be a bit cryptic. Perhaps somewhere in the archives it was suggested that it meant Hethor killed his shipmates (and ate them or fed them to his pets?) Either way, I'll still stick to my interpretation on the Thecla, Hethor and maybe Appian connection, for now.

Hethor wouldn't need special powers to move backward in time if he had been a crewman on Tzadkiel's ship, a la Gunnie/Burgundofara. Speaking of which, where is the little gray man on the ship mentioned? I don't know about shapeshifting, but the Hethor-Purn connection is hard to ignore -- Hethor's talk about feeding the "dying pets," and Purn feeding the apports and noting that most of them die. So Purn seems a likely candidate to me. Unless the gray man was working in the apport zoo too. This wiki thing is sounding better all the time, especially if entries included page citations. Macronaut

This raises an interesting question. What do y'all consider to be the canonical editions of the books? The original Timescape paperbacks? Deluxe hc editions? The 2-in-1 Shadow/Claw Sword/Citadel trade paperbacks? The 4-in-1 SF Book club edition (my personal reading fave for convenience's sake alone, but probably too obscure to be useful in citations)? P.S. Don't know if it's still the case, but even just a couple years ago you could still sign up for the SF Book club and pick multiple copies of the 4-in-1 Urth volume as your 6 free books. Great for St. Katharine's Day gifts!

URTH, Chapter XIII, "The Battles," paragraph 3: "Again my semblance stepped forward. Having relieved myself of something of the contempt I felt for him, I was able to note his dragging foot and the arrogant angle at which he poised his head. The leader spoke again, and a little man with dirty gray hair like Hethor's told me, 'He desires you to do likewise. If you do not, we will kill you.'"

Excellent point, and one that I don't believe has been mentioned before. EmSG

More evidence that we need a wiki. Bless Google, but I can't find things in the archive when I need them.

The paracoita does seem more important than a mere fembot, if only because she is introduced in our introduction to Hethor. His immediate assumption of familiarity with Severian in that scene struck me today. Is it possible that Hethor lives backward in time? Does this mesh with the theory of a fallen counterpart to Tzadkiel? I can't remember what happened at Severian's last encounter with Hethor, which by this conjecture would be Hethor's first. Matthew

With the right information for each version, it shouldn't be too hard to put together an approximate-page-reference-translator. Does anyone know of a convenient compilation of edition information? For the omnibus editions, breakdown into pages by section would be necessary.

Hmm. I don't really know. Does it actually matter? I mean, they are simply different physical editions, and so far as I know, the actual text doesn't vary (and varying texts, in the abstract sense, is the usual bone of contention), which would seem to be more important. It doesn't seem to matter even for citations, since everybody in the list seems to go Book, Chapter, and verse, rather than page numbers. ~maru