From: "Kieran Cleary" <kierannwn@tinet.ie>
Subject: Re: (urth) Re: Fate, undines and Autarc
Date: Thu, 29 Jan 1998 14:55:45 


[Posted from URTH, a mailing list about Gene Wolfe's New Sun and other works]

>I would be interested to know just how many versions of the BOTNS
>are actually out there, and how they differ.

I would imagine that the version that Thecla & Sev read is similar to the
one Dr. Talos claims to have based his play on. That is, a colourful, mythic
reworking of the "facts", which are more likely to be found in the Brown
Book, purporting as it does to contain accounts of the original historical
events upon which the mythological corpus of the time was based. I seem to
remember Severian commenting that Thecla & himself were about to commence
reading the section on the Conciliator in the Brown Book, but never get
around to it. Now *that* could possibly have contained a closer
approximation of the events as they happen in our BotNS.

In any case, coming as it did from Ultan's library, which appears to extend
in space and time beyond the boundaries of the citadel, it is perhaps not
unreasonable to allow the possibility that the version of tBotNS which
Thecla gets from the library relates an account from a parallel Urth, but
one in which the New Sun also appears (Eata as New Sun? not sure of the
spelling: Severian's old apprentice friend who he meets again in Citadel &
features in his musings on alternative workings out of the story).


lasrach


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