From: "Tony Ellis" <tony.ellis@futurenet.co.uk>
Subject: re: (urth) "Eschatology and Genesis"
Date: Mon, 29 Mar 1999 13:25:50 +0100

Roy wrote:

>     My question is this: Whence the story? What is its genesis? Who was the
> original author in this chain of story tellers?
>
Well, like the note the protagonist gives to himself in "The
Technicolour Time Machine", or the poems of William Ashbless in "The
Anubis Gates", the joke here may be that no one quite originates the
story, that it's a closed loop.

But the "original" author is Severian himself. He's the one who actually
witnesses the end of Urth and lives to write about it. Sev witnesses
Urth's last day, Sev writes about it, Sev presumably casts his narrative
into the seas of Time. (I say "presumably" because I can't remember if
he ever actually says he is going to do this or not - but surely the
implication is there.) If you can accept that Severian's narrative
constitutes, either wholly or in part, the "lost" Book of the New Sun on
which Dr Talos says his play is based, rather than Canog's text, then no
paradox exists.


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