Date: Mon, 4 Mar 2002 08:02:34 -0500 (EST)
From: Michael Straight 
Subject: Re: (urth) Re: The irrigation of Lune

On Mon, 4 Mar 2002, Roy C. Lackey wrote:

> >> The bit in SOTL where Typhon and Severian are speaking.   "My astronomers
> >> had told me that this sun's activity would decay slowly . .   They were
> >> wrong . . . "   clearly implies that the astronomers and Typhon knew what
> >> was going on at the sun's core and therefore had a part in it.

I read this to mean that Typhon's astronomers hadn't even detected the
black hole's effects, that they were telling him about the sun's normal
life-cycle as a star, until it was too late.

> Who is responsible for the black hole in the sun is an important plot point,
> it seems to me, because it bears directly on the ultimate goal of the Urth
> Cycle; the pretext for, and the coming of, the New Sun. If Man, in his
> presumptive arrogance, caused the wounding of the sun, that is one thing. If
> agents of the Increate caused it, as retribution, that is something else
> entirely. I have always adhered to the latter view, and I think the weight
> of evidence from the fifth volume of the series supports that view.

You've left out the third option, which I think is the correct one, that
the wounding of the sun was caused by extraterrestrial enemies of Man,
Abaia and Erebus, who swim between the stars (and whose sister, I believe,
is the Mother on Blue).

-Rostrum


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