Date: Fri, 03 May 2002 09:13:18 -0500
Subject: Re: (urth) 5HC Strong Evidence of Telepathy?
From: Adam Stephanides 

on 4/26/02 6:15 PM, Michael Andre-Driussi at mantis@siriusfiction.com wrote:

> Furthermore, this detail adds to the other strange confusions between
> V.R.T. and Number 5: two others include the fact that Number 5 sees robot
> guards gone berserk, killing prisoners in the third year of his sentence
> (Ace pb p. 70), and V.R.T. had a dream of robots going berserk, killing him
> (210); Number 5 has dream of court fenced with pillars, which echoes the
> woodhenge observatory on Sainte Anne seen by Marsch, shown by V.R.T.
> 
> One brother who dreams the life and trials of the other brother, this is a
> big element of "A Story."  And when they finally meet, one brother kills
> the other; and Number 5 may have set in motion V.R.T.'s arrest when he
> denounced him as an abo spy (that is: what if "A Story" is retelling
> V.R.T.'s life prior to prison).

There is another possible explanation for the strange echoes between V.R.T.
and Number Five: that Number Five has written all three parts, not just the
first part.  He wrote his autobiography "to disclose myself to myself"; he
might very well have retold his story in fictional guise for the same
reason.  (And if one Gene Wolfe can write fiction, so can another.)  And it
would no doubt have amused him to portray Marsch as being in reality what he
had accused him of being to insult him and drive him away; to show the Port
Mimizon beauracracy as slipshod and inefficient; and to show the museum at
Roncevaux, and by extension the library at Port Mimizon, as gullible
(Trenchard's fake artifacts).

I don't really believe this theory, but I don't think it can be disproven
either, at least not through internal evidence.

--Adam


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