From: Michael Straight <straight@email.unc.edu>
Subject: Re: (urth) Black Sun, White Fountain
Date: Thu, 12 Feb 1998 11:45:50 


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


On Thu, 12 Feb 1998, Kieran Cleary wrote:

> So to be explicit: It seems plausible that the black hole in the Old Sun is
> *directly* connected to the White Fountain. Energy/matter exiting through
> the black hole in the Old Sun appears from the mouth of the White Fountain.
> Which means that its not a Black Hole complete with singularity but instead
> both phenomena represent the two mouths of the same wormhole. This has some
> nice cyclical resonances if we can get over the dualist implications it has
> for Severian's character and nature, and also gives us a way to think about
> the rejuvination of the Old Sun.

Kind of like plugging a hole by putting the other end of the hole in the
original hole?  Or maybe a bathtub drain that leads back to the bathtub,
refilling it?

If so, it might be more accurate to speak of Healing the Wounded Sun
rather than replacing the Old Sun with the New Sun.

Except I still obviously don't understand anything because if the world
Severian returns to is a whole new universe, then the Urth of the first
four books never gets a New Sun, it just dies with the old one.  And the
new world, Ushas, shouldn't need a New Sun.

Time to reread.

-Rostrum