From: m.driussi@genie.geis.com
Subject: (urth) Mts. Carved & Not
Date: Sat,  7 Feb 98 05:00:00 GMT


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

Reply:  Item #2637374 from URTH@LISTS.BEST.COM@INTERNET#

viz,

Right, that's the scene: Typhon carves the first and biggest; the
autarchs that come after him, from Ymar to somebody-who-died-long-
before-living-memory (i.e., what with falling technology it is even
=less= than the 1,000 years of carving we've been talking about) make
theirs in (diminishing?) immitation.

And though you didn't say it, I was probably wrong to write that we
couldn't count the mountains in Ascia, because (little known fact
here) after he became autarch Severian spent a year as a slave in
Ascia, where he would have much more opportunity to see an Ascian
mountain than he would in the Commonwealth.  OTOH, the war between
Ascia and Commonwealth seems to have been going on nearly as long as
the Commonwealth has been around--hard to carve mountains in
contested territory.

Finally, regarding your speculation on who put the black hole in Ol
Sol.  It felt heretical to me when I stumbled upon the possibility
that it was done by Severian and/or the forces of light; your
version, that it was a necessary evil to check Typhon from recreating
the horrors of the First Empire, make it much more palatable!

However, just to keep things tangled, the rebels against Typhon whom
you mentioned?  That would be Scylla, at least, and probably Abaia and
Erebus (eventually if not from the start).

(I wonder how the mere mortal autarchs managed to emerge from such a
clash of the titans?  Aside from making the covenant with the guys
from Yesod, of course.<g>)

=mantis=