From: CRCulver@aol.com
Subject: Re:  (urth) Severian's Slivers
Date: Sat, 31 Jan 1998 21:22:21 


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

Mantis said:
>The Claw is also a sliver, or semi-sliver since it doesn't have much
of a body.  But it is quite independent.<

     Who's to say that the Claw isn't simply a device made by Tzadkiel to
help Severian bring the New Sun? I'm pretty much ruled out the idea that it
is an invention of the Hierodules due to the nonchalant response given it by
Famulimus, Barbatus, and Ossipago.

>it ultimately leads back into the Ragnarok future: the future that had
Baldanders on the Phoenix Throne rather than Severian.<

I would like page references for this, if you wouldn't mind. Incidentally,
Baldanders would most certainly fail the test, because he seemed to think of
the New Sun, the Claw, and the BotNS lore as superstition. So, Baldanders as
Autarch would = Ragnarok. 


>So there are =literally= more than one Severian scattered in our
narrator's wake.<

     So, can I explain this away by hypothesizing that there were, in fact,
iterations of Briah before Apu-Punchau1's? I don't know about slivers, as
that would suggest more Severians than I am prepared to account for.

Christopher R. Culver <crculver@aol.com>
http://members.aol.com/crculver/index.html
------------------------------------------------
"Ignorance, that light of fools steers a wayward path"
-Brendan Perry