From: Pedro Jorge Romero <bempjr@redkbs.com>
Subject: Re: (urth) 5th Head Genealogies Redux
Date: Tue, 07 Apr 1998 20:28:02 +0100


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

> I now have a question for Tony: if Phaedria is not Number Five's sister,
> who do you think is? Surely, you don't believe Wolfe is toying with us when
> he has Aunt Jeannine mention her--this type of thinking would also lead us
> to conclude Severian had no sister and we know this to be false.

Well, it could be because Jeannine is a woman and she assumes #5's
sibling must be a girl too. She does not seem aware of David, so she
could be just guessing. After all this is a Gene Wolfe novel and what a
character thinks (in opposition to what he or she knows) could be wrong.

My real problem is: who is Jeannine? Is she the "control" of the
previous experiment?

> Now on to Pedro Romero's post.
> 
> > Here is my theory. The original GW is the baby with the girl in the
> > picture Jeannine shows #5. After all, she says she is the his true
> > mother, so it is easy to figure out the girl is the mother of the
> > original GW and the baby is #1.
> 
>  This theory recapitulates my own and is 100% congruent. To quote myself
> from several posts back (v009,n004), "Gene Wolfe #1 is the original
> patriarch. He is naturally born and it is his parents we see when Aunt
> Jeannine has the sepia photograph fetches for Number Five." Check it out
> and see.

You are right. I did not read your post slowly enough.

Best

Pedro Jorge (out of witty remarks)

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