From: C R Culver <CRCulver@aol.com>
Subject: Re:  (urth) Hethor
Date: Sun, 15 Mar 1998 22:55:20 EST


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

Alga said:
>Jonas is Korean? How so?<

He certainly speaks Korean. See the description of his feverish ramblings in
the Antechamber. Severian notes that Jonas was talking in a nasal,
monosyllabic language. Korean is such a language, almost every word ends in a
nasal consonant or a vowel, and there are no two-syllable words as such.
However, the language could also be Chinese. It's possible.


>Hmmmm. I know you're right, but citation please.<

Well, I pulled out my battered citation-copy of _Shadow_, and it wasn't where
I thought it would be! I assumed Hethor mentioned it in his babblings before
the actors in the last chapter, but it appears I was wrong. I'll go check to
see if it's in some other places soon. However, it comes to me now that,
although Hethor mentioned it, the Quasar might not have been his ship. I
believe he mentioned his ship passed the Quasar in the void, I'll sort it out.

I imagined:
>Are the Quasar and Fortunate Cloud the same?<
Alga retaliated:
>They can't be. Wolfe plays lots of tricks, but not that kind of tricks.<

Well, I could respond that Wolfe has hinted that all interstellar ships are
the Ship of Tzadkiel, but I don't think he had that idea in mind when he
talked of Jonas and Hethor. What would Hethor have done on the SoT anyway?
Perhaps it is there he got his experience with mirrors, if he truly worked on
the Ship.

I hypothesized:
>and then perhaps spent more time in space before coming back to Urth in
Severian's era.<
And Alga responded:
>I am sure this is true.<

Well, I'd love to know who helped him get off the planet after the fall of the
Monarchy and human endeavours in space. I imagine that Abaia might have gotten
him off Urth by the same method he uses to let the undines "swim the void."

Christopher R. Culver <crculver@aol.com>
http://members.aol.com/crculver/index.html

*More Wolfe info & archive of this list at http://www.urth.net/urth/