From: Michael Richman <mrichman@cybernex.net>
Subject: (whorl) Silk Stalking
Date: Thu, 5 Jun 1997 20:45:44 


[Posted from WHORL, the mailing list for Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun]


>[paste, re Short Sun trilogy]
>It will deal with the colonists, and will take up about twenty
>years after the ending of "Book of the Long Sun," when
>Horn is asked to return to the Whorl to bring Silk to the
>colonized world of Blue.
>
>I read that not as starting 20 years later but as the story of the next 20
>years, during which Silk presumably stays aboard the Whorl, or at least the
>colonists think he does.
>

I was rather surprised with this announcement because I got the impression
at the end of Exodus that the Outsider had abandoned Silk.  I don't think
Silk would have survived to the end of the series without the active help of
the Outsider, and I pictured him dying a few minutes after Horn last saw him.

I fould the ending to Long Sun very disturbing (even more than Urth) in that
it seemed that Silk had been betrayed by everything he'd believed in, and
that all he had left was Oreb.


Michael Richman
380 Homans Av
Closter, NJ  07624
mrichman@bc.cybernex.net