From: "Kevin J. Maroney" <kmaroney@crossover.com>
Subject: Re: (whorl) Blue's Races; etc.
Date: Tue, 12 Oct 1999 13:23:30 

At 11:53 AM 10/12/99 -0700, Nutria wrote:
>That's the problem. Urth is not our Earth, but part of a previous
>universe. Thus, everything is being "translated" by Wolfe, who somehow has
>gotten hold of these manuscripts. 

It was my understanding--and it's possible that something has superceded
this--that Urth *is* our Earth, so far in the future that languages which
haven't even been born are now ancient (as in the language which is
inscribed on the sword Terminus Est). There are specific artifacts of our
Earth which surface in _BotNS_, most notably the photograph of Buzz Aldrin
on the moon mentioned (though not that clearly, obviously) in _Shadow_. 

Severian pitched his manuscript, in its lead coffer, back into a
time-vortex; it could have gone anywhere. 

The language spoken in Viron is not Spanish or any variant of it; it's a
language which hasn't been born yet. 

Wombat, a.k.a. Kevin Maroney kmaroney@crossover.com
Kitchen Staff Supervisor, New York Review of Science Fiction
http://ebbs.english.vt.edu/olp/nyrsf/nyrsf.html

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