From: Dan Parmenter <dan@lec.com>
Subject: (urth) Heliotropic Plants
Date: Thu, 9 Jul 1998 11:09:28 

From: m.driussi@genie.com

>Re: Atrium of Time as a time travelling structure.  The usual
>disclaimers apply: your mileage may very, etc.  John Clute mentions it
>glancingly in one essay on Wolfe (1983) and directly in the famed
>Catherine essay (1986).  Others have mentioned it, I'm fairly certain.
>The clues are: Valeria's clothing seems out of time; her lineage is so
>ancient that it may stretch back to Ymar; the place she lives in does
>not exist on any maps, nor can it be found from aerial survey or
>reached in any other way than by the one true path through the maze
>(exactly like the trail to Last House); and not the least, we know that
>the Atrium is not named for the sundials--the sundials where put there
>=because= it is the Atrium of Time.

The only map we hear about is the one at the end of CITADEL.  I always
assumed that the fact that it isn't there was due to the fact that the
map probably dated from a time when the citadel was still a spaceport.

"...and there were towers on that map that are not in the Citadel, and
towers in the citadel that were not on that map."

So it's not just the Atrium of Time that's missing.  But that's only
the explanation for the purposes of plot, it doesn't necessarily
invalidate what you say.

Of course as far as I know, we never get a clear picture of how big
the Citadel is.  It's interesting to note that Valeria herself doesn't
know about the Matachin Tower except as a legend ("the Tower of
Torment" she calls it).

D


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