Chapter I

Severian watches the fight between Vodalus and the volunteers over the shoulder of a "chalcedony angel." Chalcedony is typically a lustrous white quartz. Vodalus lives and two volunteers die. Later, in Urth of the New Sun, Sev makes love with Apheta, a lustrous silver angel, and the new sun is created. The fight in the graveyard may foreshadow the creation of the new sun.

If so, it's a sort of ex post facto foreshadowing (oy, what a concept); Wolfe almost certainly didn't invent Apheta or that particular way of creating a star until Hartwell prevailed upon him to write the sequel.

As a writer myself, who's discussed this point with a lot of other writers, I can tell you that this sort of "ex post facto foreshadowing" happens quite often. It's a result of what Steven King calls "the boys in the basement" going about their work and producing what the author needs not only in the current chapter or book, but beyond what he or she has consciously planned for the future of the project. The wondrous feeling, "So that's what I was up to!" is one of the real delights of writing fiction. Paul http://www.sff.net/people/stilskin

I guess this process is the opposite of retconning (retroactively creating / changing historical continuity, as is popular in the comics world). "Foreconning" maybe? Mo

"motif"