From: maa32 <maa32@dana.ucc.nau.edu>
Subject: more on time
Date: Sun, 06 Jan 2002 16:08:49 -0700

Michael Andre-Druissi states

>But this isn't time travel: it is instantaneous travel across hundreds of
        light years of space. It is "real time" on Urth, just as it is on 
Blue.

        The Claw bends time in THE BOOK OF THE NEW SUN, and Severian travels
        through time in URTH OF THE NEW SUN, yes. But Silkhorn's trip to Urth 
is
        not a form of time travel (except in the completely different sense 
that
        time has been negated from the time/space matrix, and the party 
astrally
        crosses vast space in zero time).
>

What I am saying is that it IS time travel and that Urth IS Blue (or rather, 
that Ushas is Blue) and that the new sun has melted the polar ice caps and 
caused the sea to be less salty, that the orbit of Lune (called "Green" by 
Hoof) has been altered, and that the vanished people are the remnants of a 
vegetable/human civilization.  (Hoof goes at great length to say that the 
differences in the ocean are its color from the sun and stars, its saltiness, 
and the closeness of "green".  All of these changes can be accounted for by 
the coming of the New Sun - I just can't figure out why that particular time 
is the one that draws Silk.  In addition, he says that the narrator's voice 
sounds as if it was spoken long ago in a place far away.  I don't think they 
travel anywhere - in addition, Juganu says that Inhumu are everywhere (and 
Jahlee casts suspicions on Merryn), whereas the narrator previously said that 
only three whorls needed to be considered when thinking of the inhumu.) The 
anchor that allows the travel to that particular point is unclear to me if 
Urth and Blue are one location (but I think it might be the Malrubius/Silk 
connection - would a cloned embryo have an affinity for the soul of another 
cloned embryo? Or perhaps it is close to the last time that Cillinia can be 
lain to rest by a human being, since humans can't normally survive underwater 
- I can't figure it out, but there are a lot of clues in that chapter that 
point to Urth being blue that I think would be imprudent to ignore).  There 
are too many weird bits of contiguity between the Blue of the new Short Sun 
whorl (like that big wall underwater that Seawrack talks about) for the 
possibility that the two planets are not the same to be dismissed out of hand.
 I fully understand that it SEEMS that they are two different planets in the 
same continuum and that the only reason Silk can go there is because Rigoglio 
wants to be home, but I think there is more going on with that.  Also, as I've 
said before, the narrator says the only return to the past is through dreams, 
talks of reaching through the past to grab a man with two heads in a dream, he 
talks about his astral travel as a dream, and the greater Scylla might be the 
same as the mother - in fact, Silk asks the greater Scylla about Seawrack, 
then seems to find Seawrack without consulting the Mother when he returns to 
Blue.
Hoof also talks about constructing a sea anchor at some length in chapter 17 
of Return to the Whorl.  An anchor keeps you in one place. My theory here 
touches on the idea that Blue and Urth do not exist at the same time, and the 
vast distance that separates the red sun whorl from Blue is one of time 
INSTEAD of space (except for the space that the planets have traveled through 
the universe in that great expanse of time).
Marc Aramini