Urth Net
Flight of the Whorl
↰ answers Michael Straight
· by quotation
2 quoted lines
Rostrum wrote:
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.
IIRC, both the numbers "around 300 years" and "around 1000 years" are from the text of TBOTLS (the calendar gives the former in precise detail, and a comment by a god gives the latter). TBOTNS made it seem pretty clear (to me, at least) that Typhon was about a thousand years before Severian (but some folks prefer Agia's 30,000 year figure, or whatever it was, for the Conciliator).
But yes, IGJ gave a hefty bit of validation/confirmation of all this, as the two timelines begin to dovetail.
And yes, there are more details now available that can be plugged into the Flight Profile model, which will help refine estimates on average velocity and distance from Urth. We have more factoids about how long the Whorl may have been just hanging around in the system, for example (years not spent travelling between stars).
Now please, please go read RTTW.
=mantis=
*This is WHORL, for discussion of Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun.