From: Peter Westlake <peter@harlequin.co.uk>
Subject: Re: (urth) The Green Man and Agia
Date: Wed, 02 Jun 1999 11:50:56 +0100

At 09:46 1999-06-02 +0200, you wrote:
...
>I don't want to drag this out into a pointless argument over points of view
>(viewless argument over views of points?) [I was arguing the green man,
>although he comes from the future, is a fraud when it comes to `predicting'
>people's personal histories], but... are there really genuine prophets in
>the Book?  There are people who've seen the future, and can report on their
>own experience there; there are even beings who live backward in time;
>there are people with magic mirrors who can see things which may or not be
>there.  But it doesn't seem to me there is anyone with supernatural sight.
>It would seem to violate the `no magic' rule.  I'd be fascinated to hear a
>counterexample.

Not a person, but what about the Vatic Fountain? It shows Severian all sorts
of things from his future. How does it work? Does it just show lots of things
and let you interpret them after the fact, or can it really prophesy? Would
it work for anyone else? If not, how does it know who's looking at it? Or is
Severian projecting his own foreknowledge of the future (if any) onto it?

SBear.


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