From: m.driussi@genie.com
Subject: (urth) Thecla of Urth
Date: Wed, 23 Apr 97 15:21:00 GMT


[Posted from URTH, a mailing list about Gene Wolfe's New Sun and other works]

Reply:  Item #6034925 from URTH@LISTS.BEST.COM@INET02#

Nutria,

Whoops!  I just realized that you (probably) logically suppose that I
think that Thecla was born offworld, hence her exotic zodiac sign.

No, I don't think that.  I agree with you that Thecla and Thea and
all the other exultants we see are born on Urth.  Their ancestors
were invaders from "other shores" as the brown book would put it;
like towering Vikings or Normans; perhaps closer to the US
occupational forces in Japan at the end of WWII--there's the
"alien-ness," the stature, the frightful alien technology, the
devastated local economy.

My thinking re: the Swan sign is that it is part of a sacred calendar
used by the exultants, a remnant of the other place they were before
(fairyland, planet x).  Like other sacred calendars (the Aztecs had an
elaborate one), it clashes with the civic calendar.

Let me be the first to admit that there is nothing in the text to
support this particular reading.  Except that it doesn't try to
juryrig the Swan into the Urth zodiac. <g>

But all this is very fine detail work.

=mantis=