From: "Dan'l Danehy-Oakes" 
Subject: (urth) Time, Briah, 5HC, and other things
Date: Fri, 19 Apr 2002 12:55:36 -0700

Rostrum asks:

>Which raises the question again, are there no more rainbows on
>Urth?

And Nutria responds:

> Is history running backwards on Urth, so that we are moving back
> toward a Garden of Eden with a Green Man? 

I wonder about this also ... In my favorite passage in SHADOW, the
conversation with Dorcas in the boat on the lake, is the interesting
remark that "I, like you, would turn back time if I could..." (note
that this is quoted from memory and somewhat-inaccurate. I am beginning
to think I'm going to have to type the whole Lupiverse cycle into my
computer!) Aside from the dramatic irony of the situation (Severian
_has_ just turned back time and brought Dorcas to life, though neither
of them knows it), it seems somehow relevant, though I'll have to post
the whole quote (unless someone else gets to it first) to explain 
why.

>          Hey, I do have an answer, though it may be more than Wolfe 
> intends. The rainbow is generated by the sun. If the Old Sun winks
> out for an instant before the New Sun kicks in, then briefly there
> is no rainbow, so there can be another Flood. Can't recall if this
> is so, though.

It shouldn't. The White Fountain just drops into the Old Sun; it 
shouldn't snuff it out or anything.

* * * * * *

Now...

Does anyone else beside me remember a comment in an early interview
or something in which Wolfe suggested that these books may be taking
place, not in our far future, but in our distant past? This is a
remarkably relevant question, for a number of reasons, among them the
nature of the Severian/Christ relationship...

If this is true, then it offers a new and peculiar way to fit 5HC 
into the Lupiverse, by asking and answering the question: "Where did
the Shadow Children come from?" They are clearly not natives of 
Ste-Anne; they have clearly been on Ste-Anne for a long time, and they
have been keeping humans away by use of the "song of bending the sky" 
or whatever it's called. Who are they, when did they come, and why do
they do this? Possibly-plausible answer: they are (descended from) 
humans from the pre-Autarchial Age of Empire.

Obviously this would be a massive retcon; Wolfe surely didn't have
the whole story of Severian wandering in his head when he wrote 5HC.
But it's an intriguing possibility... Wolfe seems to like finding new
possibilities in old things (which is why I haven't totally abandoned
the idea that he might have retconned the Cumaean into an inhuma). It
would also allow for the possibility that there are no rainbows in the
time of the Autarchs...

--Blattid


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