Date: Mon, 2 Dec 2002 14:50:48 -0800 (PST)
From: Jerry Friedman 
Subject: Re: (urth) The Blushas Challenge: Round Two


--- James Jordan  wrote:
>          I should think that everyone admits that Wolfe intends some 
> analogies between the Blue-Green system and the Urth/Ushas-Lune system
> -- 
> maybe particularly Ushas, since we have *On Blue's WATERS* and the Ushan
> 
> Green Man to think about.
...

I don't admit that.  This is from the interview with Nick Gevers:

"[NG] [Trying again:] Can your readers usefully view The Fifth Head of
Cerberus as being set in the same science-fictional universe as New Sun,
Long Sun, and Short Sun? Why does Fifth Head's pattern of blue/green
sister worlds recur so tantalisingly in Urth/Lune, Blue/Green?

"[GW] I don't know."

This was a very good opportunity for Wolfe to say which question he
was answering, or to answer part of the second question--just the
reference to Urth/Lune, Blue/Green.  Regardless of what an answer
would have done to the slope of the playing field, I wish he had.  In
any case, I think it's quite possible that the answer is simply that
Wolfe likes pairs of worlds, and that when they're science-fictional
pairs of planets he likes the blue-and-green color scheme, the two
main colors of Earth.  It's also quite possible that we're to see
them as analogous, as you point out.  And Marc's recent list of
similarities, which I consider inarguable (Finally!  But no doubt
someone will argue.) makes it quite possible that they're the same
planet.

By the way, Dan'l challenged people who believed that Silkhorn's
dreams of Severian crossed time as well as space to explain why he
projected to that particular time.  To me, that's not even an
obstacle.  From Wolfe's point of view, he seems to think that
having Silk and Severian in the same universe was a gun on the wall
that had to go off.  And from the point of view of the fictional
universe (the deictic point of view?), there are powers above the
stage, and they may easily have had some reason for wanting to
arrange a meeting--such as to have Severian resurrect Silk.

I'd still like to see some fingerprints, though.

Jerry Friedman

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