From: m.driussi@genie.com
Subject: (urth) flying a saucer
Date: Fri, 10 Jul 98 22:57:00 GMT

Dan Parmenter,

Re: score of years.  Right, there are all these different races
hinted at, yet so few investigated in any detail, so "20 year
lifespan" might =not= apply to Inire and Cumaean.

O, B, & F seem to burn up perhaps as much as ten years (half
their lives!) at Severian's court before tracking back further.

The saucer, otoh, is just a time rover they are using to explore
Urth.  They came in on the big ship Tzadkiel, after all.  (This idea
of flying saucers as time machines from our future rather than space
machines from alien worlds is straight from Jacques Vallee, I
believe.)

The ship that picked up Severian from the Ascian camp and dropped him
off at the beach with a few aquastors (that could only be sustained
for a few hundred years of distance) was another time rover, I think.
Maybe it looked more like a flier?

=mantis=

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