Nessus when?Whorl

I think I've made it through all the archives now, having at last finished IGJ (and recovered from my amazement at how good it is), and I can't believe no one has mentioned this solution of how Horn, 300-some-years travel from the Urth of Typhon's time could return and find himself in the much-later time of Severian. Time dialation. The trip took 300-some years in the Whorl's reference frame and thousands of years from Urth's reference frame. -Rostrum *This is WHORL, for discussion of Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun.

I think Michael Andre-Driussi has made a good argument for the time of Typhon being only about 1000 years before the time of Severian. But it's clear that there is some time dilation going on to bridge the remaining 700-year gap.

Well, well, mister slow poke! Better read RTTW asap. I thought we hammered out/nailed down the time dilation angle in "Welcome Wombat" message of 7 Sep 97. =mantis= *This is WHORL, for discussion of Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun.

Yeah, I should have credited you. I was replying to all the more recent posts wondering if Horn was travelling forward/back in time as well as through space (of course a lot of physicists would say instantaneous travel like that ends up being a form of time-travel anyway...). And back then it was just speculation, I didn't see anyone discussing the fact that IGJ not only confirms the time-dialation, but pretty much quantifies it. We get the subjective travel time of the Whorl in years; if you're right about the number of years between Tyhpon and Severian, we should be able to compute the Whorl's speed. -Rostrum *This is WHORL, for discussion of Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun.