From: David_Lebling@avid.com
Subject: (urth) q: "How Old Mount Typhon?" a: "Old Mount Typhon fine!"
Date: Fri, 30 Jan 98 16:34:04 


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

> Vizcacha said:
> >How much time elapsed between Typhon's reign and Severian's?
> 
>      Mantis has said that about a chiliad (1000 Urth years) passed
between
> the reign of Ymar and the Reign of Severian. Typhon was the last of
the
> Monarchs, Ymar was one of the first, or the first, of the autarchs.
Thus,
> about 1000 (Urth) years have passed between Typhon's reign and Sev's
reign.

This is a mantic or even lupine opinion have a lot of trouble with.
Primarily, I look at the mountains, all or most of which have been
carved in the likenesses of rulers.  In _Sword_, we are told (as a guess
by Severian) that Mount Typhon must have been the first of them, and (I
think) this is confirmed in _Urth_, when Severian-as-Conciliator meets
Typhon. So we have a space of 1000 years in which the entire
future-Andes have been carved. Every ruler post-Typhon is an autarch:
did they each carve a mountain? If each reigned 10 years, we only have
time for 100 mountains, assuming that they _all_ did one...

My suspicion is that there is either more time between Typhon and
Severian than 1000 years (more like 10,000?), or there's an
inconsistency between _TBONS_ and _Urth_.

     -vizcacha
     (david_lebling@avid.com)