From: "Tony Ellis" <tony.ellis@futurenet.co.uk>
Subject: (urth) Re: A walk on the wild side
Date: Fri, 11 Aug 2000 13:18:24 +0100

I’ve always been intrigued by the way Cyriaca's story seems to
anticipate what Severian is later told in the “Key to the Universe”
chapter of Citadel of the Autarch. In both stories, humanity creates a
race of beings that is more perfect than itself. The Hieros can
transcend time, the machines have the wildness that humanity has lost.
In both stories, the created ultimately remakes, and thereby redeems,
the creator. The machines return to us our wildness, the Heiros make us
into beings as puissant as themselves.

Interestingly, in both stories the act is described as being as much
revenge as it is altruism. Being reborn is painful. (The act, one might
almost say, of a Torturer).

In both stories, the created race is a sort of physical manifestation of
humanity's knowledge, learning made flesh. It seems to me that behind
both, a specific Wolfean principle can be found:

“We believe that we invent symbols. The truth is that they invent us; we
are their creatures, shaped by their hard, defining edges.”

--
Tony Ellis
On-line Editor, PC Format magazine
01225 442244 x2349
http://www.pcformat.co.uk



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