Gene Wolfe Solar Cycle/Shadow of the Torturer/Book of the New Sun thread continuation from
>>24461672

I just finished Short Sun (absolutely amazing.) the reveal with the inhumi was wonderful and sad and tragic the whole mating ritual being a dance pretending to be human was wonderful and I am convinced that they are the race which will become the Hierograms in later divine years

Was the severian in Short Sun the same sevarian? Or was that an earlier iteration? Does Severian just write himself up to be a monster out of guilt when he’s in reality just an emotionally scarred boy who loves his dog?

>Sad experience teaches me
I just found out it's an actual song. Wtf

>>24485213
Yeah Silk knew it because it was in the Chasmological writings

>>24485116 (OP)
Severian is just a professional torturer, he's used to violence including towards women and only had sex once before he met Thea

I just finished claw, when does it get good?

>>24485224
Filtered

>>24485213
What's the song?

About to start Sword and Citadel (bought the combo). Just finished Claw. Admiring the series so far. Dig the first person perspective. Does the second half maintain the quality?

>>24485116 (OP)
>Was the severian in Short Sun the same sevarian?
There's only one Severian across all timelines. He's bound only by his own ignorance, not by the trivialities of time.

>>24485116 (OP)
Name a detail or interpretation about BOTNS that's not obvious and not often mentioned

>>24485736
This is how I first felt about the series first reading it.

Your path may differ.

>>24485736
Slightly adjusted my image. This is how I felt about the series in the first readthrough.

Your path may differ.

>>24485810
That low point in Citadel had better not be the stories.

>>24485116 (OP)
>Was the severian in Short Sun the same sevarian? Or was that an earlier iteration? Does Severian just write himself up to be a monster out of guilt when he’s in reality just an emotionally scarred boy who loves his dog?
Yeah, I kinda mentioned that in a thread a few months ago (I think). I have to think it is some mix of Severian being submerged in the Thecla & 100 Autarchs personality. The voice we get from Severian feels so different in Short Sun than in BOTNS.

Either that, or Severian couldn't control the testosterone after puberty lol.

>>24485815
It's not. The stories + Miles + Master Ash are all 10/10 material. The drop off is the war, which isn't bad per se, but it just does nothing for me. Things begin to recover when the Autarch (who I think is a really cool dude btw) saves Severian the first time, although it never reaches the heights of the beginning again imo.

The only thing that may beat early Citadel for me is the Typhon confrontation, adventuring with Little Severian, and the Alzabo encounter.

>>24485220
Severian meets Thea before Thecla, and meets Thecla before he's sent to have sex for his first time with a prostitute.

>>24485785
Severian's name is not really Severian. He does not have a sister.

>>24486124

>>24486128
>

>>24486132

>>24486124
These are all terrible
What a shame

>>24486275
Well, thanks for the feedback. I won't post them again.

>>24486124
>>24486128
>>24486132
>>24486135
All the covers suck.

Does castrating an adult male really make him look more androgynous?

The best story is the Ascian's.

>>24486318
It's Inclinto's actually.

Dr. Talos play is undistilled schizophrenia. There is no way Wolfe actually expected anyone to understand that.

>>24486391
>t. midwit

>>24486395
Cope.

If Silk had been more careful, what then?

>>24486461
What things happened as a result of Silk being careless? Presumably, those things wouldn't have happened.

Well, what do I read now?

>>24486544
Fifth Head of Cerberus

>>24486544
Peace

>>24486461
he would have lost the manteion and probably would have been moved somewhere else to serve a dying religion to a spiritually dying civilization absent of a moral center, get old and die alone. sure, plenty of suffering occurred as a result of his actions following the day on the ball court but a supreme good was accomplished.

>>24486318
>>24486324
It's the Tale of the Student and his Son.

>finish Long Sun
>Horn tells Silk about Hyacinth cheating on him
>Silk gives a big speech about how love forgives everything so actually its okay
>holy shit what a bunch of retarded cope
>finish Short Sun
>realize Silk was 100% right and love is going to redeem the world

>>24488010
And there's still retards who think Silk murdered Hyacinth because she was cheating on him.

>>24488010
>>realize Silk was 100% right and love is going to redeem the world
Why do you think that? The world was only saved because a bad man, Horn, decided to do one act of good in his life.

Finished the Solar Cycle this week after a whole year since I started Shadow of the Torturer. Read BotNS twice but Long and Short Sun only once. Feel kinda empty now. What a series.

>>24489020
In case you haven't heard, there are some short stories. One featuring an adult Eata, one about Odilo and Inire, and one featuring Oreb and Scylla. Plus, some that are supposed to be from the Book of Wonders of Urth and Sky.

>>24485785
Valeria is from a different time than Severian. He can only find his way to her courtyard through the tunnels and can't see it from the air because the courtyard doesn't exist in his time; the tunnels are somehow the Corridors of Time. At one point he hears footsteps and those are his own past self going the same way.

Triskele is the first creature Severian resurrects.

The woman that Severian sees running down a hallway in the House Absolute and who corresponds to the woman in the play

>>24489425
when severian first finds the claw in his bag and him and dorcas look up to see
>Hanging over the city like a flying mountain in a dream was an enormous building—a building with towers and buttresses and an arched roof. Crimson light poured from its windows. I tried to speak, to deny the miracle even as I saw it; but before I could frame a syllable, the building had vanished like a bubble in a fountain, leaving only a cascade of sparks.

literally the pelerine's tent on fire floating through the sky. lol

>>24485785
I feel like it's obvious that Silk is Master Malrubius but when I search for that connection there's not a lot about it on the various forums.

>>24489425
>Valeria is from a different time than Severian.
Literally who is rom the same time even? Archon of Thrax?

>>24489425
>Valeria is from a different time than Severian. He can only find his way to her courtyard through the tunnels and can't see it from the air because the courtyard doesn't exist in his time; the tunnels are somehow the Corridors of Time. At one point he hears footsteps and those are his own past self going the same way.
I thought it was just the bridge of the giant structure that was the Wall, just like the Citadel was its space port.

Someone help me understand little severian

>>24489988
see >>24485957

>>24490012
My brain... is so small...

>>24485957
can you elaborate more about this.

>>24489681
People don't talk much about short sun to begin with. These last threads have been an anomoly.

Starting urth of the new sun now

>>24490125
You know how the universe is said to loop endlessly, changing slightly with each cycle? At some point during one of these infinite loops, Severian encountered Little Severian. Deeply affected by the boy's death, he may have adopted his name in his memory. This act—perhaps influenced or amplified by the hierogrammates—echoed across other versions of the universe.

The entire cosmic system seems engineered to produce a specific outcome: a timeline in which Severian becomes the New Sun and humanity evolves to create the hierogrammates. These beings actively interfere with time to ensure this outcome unfolds correctly. I say “timeline” because, as Tzadkiel revealed, she was once Severian’s apprentice—implying that the entire cycle of existence is fundamentally tied to time.

For that anon that was asking about Horn's height compared to Silk's in the last thread, Fava's second story describes them compared to each other. I'm listening on audio so I won't type it all out.

>>24489681
I think Severian would have recognized Typhon if that was true.

>>24490147
I think most people burn out in Long Sun.

Also, Mucore visits in Blanko and greets both Horn and Silk, so the anon that thinks Horn leaves Silk at the end of Waters is wrong.

>>24485116 (OP)
Short Sun has really grown on me, I'm glad you enjoyed it. That detail about the mating ritual stuck with me as well. The fact that the inhumi pretend to be human even at their most vulnerable, with no humans to perform for, is such a tragic detail.

Was it implied that Silk committed suicide after Hyacinth's death in Book of the Short Sun? It's been a while since I've read it, but I remember the details being mysterious.

>>24490608
Short Sun has changed the way i view parasites. I will still pull a tick off of me or slap a mosquito, but when I do I find myself remembering that that tick probably loves me, and I try to find some love for it in return.

>>24485785
The reason Horn and Krait hate each other and fight so much is because Krait is essentially Sinew.

>>24490625
Yes, the neighbor says that Silk's body isn't dead yet but his spirit is dying, and if he does nothing then both will die. He then transfers Horn's spirit into Silk's body, and he finds himself bent over Hyacinth's body holding a knife and with his wrists slashed.

I haven't gotten to RTTW in my reread yet, but my recollection is that there was a mention of gangs looking for Silk that blame him for the current state of Viron and the Whorl. The implication as I read it was that they found him, there was an altercation in which Hyacinth was killed, and then Silk tried to kill himself in his grief.

What's the in-universe explanation of Seawrack? What's the ring, why is it so important to the Neighbors?

>>24490761
I feel like that one's pretty obvious, it's spelled out explicitly in the same book. Why does Horn hate Sinew, though? He copes and seethes about him constantly but never admits the truth. Does he blame Sinew for how hard things were at the start with Nettle being pregnant when they landed?

>>24490858
Horn is generally unhappy with his life. He wanted to be special, like Silk, he wanted to have beautiful women, be rich, etc. Remember when Hornsilk says he had been happy twice? Once sharing Silk's glory; once possesing Seawrack; never with Nettle. He was a deeply selfish man. This is one of the few male teaching Wolfe never gives us directly, but the truth is women love their children more than anything, more than their husbands even. Pay attention how Seawrack says Horn doesn't think of anyone as people; she was in truth talking about the way Horn sees Sinew. Sinew is at the same time the final nail in the coffin of his mediocre life and the one who stole the only thing Horn had, Nettle, from him. Sinew's barely a person to Horn.

>>24490908
Yeah, but shouldn't all that apply to the twins as well? He never hates them the way he hates Sinew.

>>24490908
Also, Sinew complains that Horn doesn't see him as a person and Seawrack calls him a dumbass and says that he's one of the only things Horn considers a person. Which makes sense, you can be afraid of or frustrated with an object, but you can't hate one like you can a person.

>>24490915
>>24490937
Horn doesn't really meet the twins after leaving. Only Hornsilk does, who's more Silk than Horn at that point. But there's something else that adds to his hatred for Sinew. Like all egocentric people, Horn held himself up to impossible standards (to Silk, in truth). He hated Sinew also because he hated himself. Among his sons, Sinew was the most similar to Horn. Neither of them measured up. They were so similar, in fact, that Sinew followed his path of violence and married a chubby woman too.

>>24489681
Silk and Malrubius are just made from the same clone stock.

>>24485785
Silk, as confirmed by Wolfe, is psychic to a degree.

>>24490830
I think you're confusing the gangs from Gaon who were looking for Silk to bring him to Gaon to rule. Hyacinth was said to be sick by the farmer couple in the beginning of RttW. Silk-Horn has a dream of him and Hyacinth doing some garden/farm work. So, I think his life after the events of Long Sun was basically: ruling Viron for a while and directing people to the landers, leaving office and living in the manse in the countryside with Hyacinth and possibly farming, caring for Hyacinth after she gets sick and dies, and finally attempting suicide.

>>24490908
I can swear that Horn says his happy time with Nettle was when they were teenagers living together in the Calde's palace briefly.

>>24489681
>>24490552
>>24491056
See pic. Taken from two interviews with Wolfe.

>>24491101
Bad post! No pic!

>>24490965
>Horn doesn't really meet the twins after leaving. Only Hornsilk does, who's more Silk than Horn at that point.
Horn knows them before leaving though, and I get the impression that Horn hated Sinew since he was younger than the twins. I doubt he woke up on Sinew's 15th birthday and decided he really fucking hated him.
>Like all egocentric people, Horn held himself up to impossible standards (to Silk, in truth). He hated Sinew also because he hated himself. Among his sons, Sinew was the most similar to Horn. Neither of them measured up. They were so similar, in fact, that Sinew followed his path of violence and married a chubby woman too.
That's a good point. I had been assuming that the reason Sinew was so like Horn was because Sinew was subconsciously modelling himself on his father *because of* Horn's hatred, trying to become someone that he could be proud of. Maybe I was reading too much into their relationship and it was just a matter of the apple falling too near the tree. I guess that ties into Inclito's mother's story and way we never see other people as being like us even when it's obvious to everyone else.

>>24491101
>I think you're confusing the gangs from Gaon who were looking for Silk to bring him to Gaon to rule.
My recollection was that the group from Gaon was implied at first to be one of the gangs of malcontents and that's why it was important for Silk to avoid them, but like I said I haven't gotten there yet.

>>24490552
I can think of multiple plausible reasons for Narrator Severian either not recognizing, or not mentioning, that Typhon looked like Malrubius.

>>24491121
Malrubius is possibly the person that Severian cares the most for in all his life apart from Valeria. I'll admit that he can be quite oblivious, like never noticing that Jolenta was the waitress even after she mentioned it to him, but I'm confident that he would absolutely mention it if he met a giant with Master Malrubius's head.

>>24485518
Wheel of fortune. Old british folk song

>>24490858
Because Sinews continued survival represents his failure to protect his family. it would have unironically been easier for Horn if Sinew had died when attacked by Kraits mother. Horn didn’t hate Sinew before the attack.

>>24485957
I would love to know more

>>24486324
BASED.

>>24491183
I think there may be a couple details to consider:
1. Nobody seems to recognize that Pas and Silk (besides Silk himself later on) are the same person in Long Sun even after he shows himself in a holy window.
2. There is probably an age difference in how Malrubius and Typhon look that could be throwing Severian off.

>>24489103
Which one has Eata in it? I’s love to read about the continuing adventures of shirtless dickheads torturing people

>>24491209
I think it's called 'The Map." He's not a torturer anymore, he's looking for treasure.

>>24490295
This was written by chatgpt, nobody uses that many M-dashes organically

>>24491101
I always took it to mean that Hyacinth had picked up on some nasty STDs while being a prostitute, which Silk was spared due to his primarch-tier clone genes (he survived a needler-round through the heart and several other fatal injuries. Hell even bleeding out from the wrist arteries couldnt kill him)

>>24491105
Hi Oreb! Good bird!

>>24491208
Pas hasn't shown himself in Viron in decades before the events of Long Sun. He shows himself to the populace once in one of the later books and as I recall Silk isn't there at the time. The parishioners would be too overcome to realize it, and neither Quetzal nor Remora are the type to just volunteer information like that.

>>24491183
The most plausible is that "Malrubius" doesn't look like Silk because people look different when they astral project.

>>24491251
Auk, Mayerta Mint, and some soldiers that interacted with Silk were all present when Pas revealed himself after Sergeant Sand's sacrifice and there is no indication from any of them given in the book that they recognized Pas and Silk's similarity.

>>24491226
Fish heads?

>>24491215
Touch grass

>>24485116 (OP)
Do people really dislike the whole "I will ask you three questions first" thing? I really liked it.

>>24491101
>I can swear that Horn says his happy time with Nettle was when they were teenagers living together in the Calde's palace briefly.
Yes but because he was at the palace, after having defeated the Ayuntamento, it wasn't because of Nettle.

>>24491215
I had chatGPT rewritten my text in more concise and easy to understand manner. I do that a lot now.

>>24491435

>>24491445
Genius, I know.

>>24491433
And because the only "problem" he has to deal with is Hyacinth flashing her huge mommy milkers at him every time she sees Nettle watching.

>>24485785
Horn is cheating on Nettle with Tamarind and the whole town knows it.

>>24491664
Where is this implied actually?

>>24485785
It was mentioned in this thread and the last, but I really do think Severian's authorial voice is significantly affected by the Autarchs and Thecla.

>>24485785
Silk is bisexual. He was super flustered when he first saw Musk in Auk's mirror and found himself staring at his lips. Typhon tells Severian he wants women and boys sent to him. Ganymedia and Catamitus are minor gods on the Whorl. It's all there.

>>24491693
>Horn only mentions her once in passing
>Horn tells Seawrack about her multiple times in the same context as telling her about Nettle, but doesn't record it
>Sinew mentions that Horn went to visit Mucor "like you always used to go see Tamarind" (clueless, he was a kid at the time), Horn gives a monosyllabic answer and moves on

I'm a little into Long Sun. Not as good as New Sun. The whole seeing advanced science as some magic mystical thing doesn't hit as well in third person omniscient narration as it does from first person perspective.

>>24491901
It gets a little better, but then it drags on for 2 books longer than it should have. But once you're done with it, you get to read the very best of all of Wolfe's book series.

>>24491925
That's good I guess. Some Remora character recently showed up and I really really hate the way he talks and he is bringing things down.

>>24492181
ENTER

>>24485838
>Second spoiler
That was the highlight of the series for me

>>24491860
I don't see how any of this implies anything.

>>24492181
That stupid cat thing, Tick, is even more annoying, it should have been sacrificed. But, ah, at least its lines, were, um, short, whereas, hmm, Remora is... rambling? Rambling, in every, um, chapter.

>>24491262
But that's the one thing we do know for a fact. All the torturers are freaking out when they see astral projecting Hornsilk because he looks like the dead Malrubius.

There's no actual evidence that Silk looks like Typhon though and people need to let go of it.

>>24492181
Remora is, uh, and uh, the undisputed - and not opinion, yes? The undisputed uh, best, character in the solar cycle, hey? Undisputed, uh, Anon, hmm?

>>24491263
Auk wasn't a virgin, he would only be able to see the Holy Hues, not the face of Pas

>>24492858
I don't even understand where the Typhon meme comes from, desu.

>>24485785
Hyacinth was possessed by Kypris when Silk first met her. This is why Silk falls in love with her, not just because he's a virgin seeing a naked woman for the first time, but because the two of them are reenacting the love affair between Typhon and his favorite prostitute

>>24485224
When you grow a brain.

>>24486303
It nukes his testosterone production, so yes, of course.
He will lose muscle and gain fat. Fat around the face will soften the jawline and cheekbones. He will get man-boobs and a fat arse.
Troons take note: cut off your balls if you want to pass. Do it right now.

>>24486318
The Ascian is so retarded that the other characters do most of the work.

>>24486391
muy filtrado

>>24493018
Behind our efforts let there be found our efforts.

>>24492883
Looking over the chapter again, Auk isn't there, but it says, "'I see him!' From the voice she thought it must be Spider, although she could not be sure," and "Spider and Maytera Mint, Eland and Remora, Slate, Shale, and Schist saw the agonized face of Echidna." Is there a good reason to think Spider and Eland are virgins, too? I doubt it. I wouldn't surprise me if Pas can undo the whole virginity-visibility thing. It was Echidna's demand and he's in the midst of deleting her. But anyways, we still don't get any sense of recognition between Pas and Silk from Mint.

>>24492858
>There's no actual evidence that Silk looks like Typhon though and people need to let go of it.
...
1. Severian says one of the Typhon-Piaton heads is blond.
2. Silk is blond and has blue eyes.
3. Typhon has psychic abilities.
4. Silk has psychic abilities.
5. The characters speculate on how the gods would be able to leave the Whorl and rule the colonists outside of it. Possessing a clone of yourself is one way, and it especially lines up with Typhon's interest in keeping his face.
6. Silk is one of the special embryos and is described by Wolfe as a "born leader" as one of his abilities.
7. Silk sees his own face when looking at Pas.
8. Kypris is Pas/Typhon's mistress, and she has been watching Silk, reminisces about Typhon when talking to him, seems infatuated with him, and asks him to merge with Pas after he tries to reassemble his "pieces."
9. When Echidna possesses Marble and is glitching out she says to Silk, "Why should we let you … ? My husband …”

As for the Malrubius connection, we of course get Severian recognizing it as well as Master Gurloes when he shits a brick and runs away. And then there's Wolfe in interviews >>24491105.

>>24492915
Typhon the Monarch is Great Pas, the two-headed king of the gods. Silk, who is blonde and blue-eyed just like Typhon, is shown an image of Pas and one of the heads is his own. Silk's paternity is unknown, he was grown from a stored embryo stolen from the Whorl's storage decks, which were originally intended to repopulate Urth after the great flood.

It's becoming increasingly apparent to me though that the image was doctored and Silk doesn't share the likeness of Typhon. The Duko knew both of them personally and doesn't comment on it. Severian meets Silk as a child and Typhon as an adult and doesn't recognize him, despite his perfect memory.

>>24493064
>repopulate Urth after the great flood.

>>24493074
That doesn't contradict me, I never said that Blue was Urth.

>>24493088
So what are you saying then?

>>24493098
I'm saying that the original plan for the Whorl was to repopulate Urth after the great flood.

>>24493232
I'm not really sure where you're getting that idea from. Why not just a generation ship meant to colonize distant planets? Wolfe said one of Typhon's main aims was returning humanity to the stars.

>>24493243
Oh yeah, and he also said that Blue and Green were the intended destinations.

>>24493243
Humanity hadn't left the stars. Typhon says that the only reason he didn't leave Urth personally was that he didn't feel like he could trust anyone else to keep it together.

>>24492879
Remora is great in Long Sun and even better in Short Sun

>>24493285

>>24493349
The author's opinion is relevant where it adds to the text, not where it contradicts it.

>>24493454
It's not a contradiction. Returning to the stars can just mean getting humans from Urth back into the colonization business like in the old days. Typhon wanted to emulate the old empire. And you still have not given any evidence for why we should think that the Whorl was originally meant for re-establishing Urth.

Is there anyone making near as good Sci-fi in this age?

>>24493349
always kinda though the green being urth theory was a little too much.

>>24493874
lol

>>24494146
What killed literature?

>>24485116 (OP)
So was Fava's second story in IGJ made up or did she really encounter Horn on Green when she was young?

>>24494066
Of course Green isn't Urth, they travel to Urth and comment on all the ways in which it's different to the three whorls.

>>24494248
It had only been two years since Horn was to Green. It feels unlikely it was true.

>>24494286
>>24494248
It was a story. The implication is that a story is a living place that Silkhorn's psychic power can transport him to through his connection with Fava, similar to the way that he can transport himself and people around him to Green or Urth.

>>24494236
I killed it with my big cock

>>24494301
I wonder if it is Silk's natural psychic abilities are if there is some connection with the Neighbors via Horn. Since they seem much more capable.

>>24494348
*or, not are

>>24494348
Pretty sure the Neighbors are involved since they seem to do a lot of that sort of thing.

Any other fantasy recommendations if I’ve been bingeing wolfe a ton lately?
Nothing else is as good at all.
Between two fires got the theme but seemed edgy in contrast to Wolfe’s genuine theological knowledge - Asimov’s Foundation got the scale right but felt too episodic. Vance is good but feels more pulpy than Wolfe. Who else is as literary as Wolfe other than Tolkien?

>>24494376
Peake's Gormenghast books are good. They're not a whole lot like Wolfe, but good is good.

>>24494376
I want to recommend Bakker, but he's terribly inconsistent. All of Prince of Nothing is okay but not great, Judging Eye is absolutely amazing and I would proudly put it next to Wolfe, White Luck Warrior is still good but not on the same level, the other two are trash.

Howard, maybe?

>>24494393
Come to think of it, the closest I've read to Wolfe isn't genreslop at all, but Borges. That's where I'd go next.

>>24494391
Steerpike is one of the best villains I've ever read.

If I was only going to read one Wolfe book should it be SotT or is this one of those gay series where it's better to skip ahead. I'm not going to plow through 2 boring books to get to to third "good" one.

The main reason my interest is piqued is I've seen Redditors get banned for even supporting this misogynist book.

>>24494717
Fifth Head of Cerberus

>>24494717
>gay series where it's better to skip ahead
It is one of those series where it is actually one book being called 5 books. Like how Lord of the Rings is called 3 books but really is just one.

>>24494782
I see the audiobook is posted on YT. Maybe I'll listen while playing vidya, I'm smart enough to follow along paying only 50% attention.

>>24494399
this. borges' short stories are the only thing that makes me feel the same dream like mystifying quality i get from gene's work.

>>24494717
each book in the solar cycle is around 300 pages. long sun, and parts of citadel of the autarch are really the only times i see people comment on it being a bit slow in parts. it's not like having to read several 600-1000 page books like bakker or sanderson. empire of silence is a series by ruochhio i see named alot as a copy cat botns.

Are azoths lightsabers or am I misinterpreting their descriptions?

>>24494717
It’s all one book and was written as one full book. They just split it for publication reasons, but all 5 “books” were written to be read as one work - they were all written concurrently.
If you want to get into the nitty gritty each of the “series” is really just a book - making 3: the Book of the New Sun, The Book of the Long Sun, and the Book of the Short Sun. All are fucking amazing

>>24494795
No you aren’t.
With other media, sure. Not with BoTNS. It genuinely requires a pretty academically rigorous and close reading for it to click. You might not be ready for it if your plan is to “listen to it while playing vidya” and that’s okay. It’s not for everyone. If you’re a plebe it isn’t for you.

>>24494947
More like matter disruptors that fizzle out. They have a lot more range than lightsabers, but clearly not enough to rip through to the skylands or the other side of the whorl. They’re described as ripping holes in the fabric of spacetime, so I think they’re less like swords and more like ranged weapons. They’re very unique.
[spoiler:]General mint straight up slices the in-universe equivalent of an AC-130 gunship in half with one while it’s in the sky and she’s on the ground. [/spoiler]

>>24495118
that's true except for urth. that was written later due to a publishing contract.

>>24494717
Read >>24494771 first. It's a single standalone book with three interrelated but separate stories. If you're not feeling after the first one then just drop it, all of Wolfe's work is just more of the same.

>>24495174
Oh shit yeah you’re right. I’ve never personally considered Urth to be anything more than a Coda though. Completely necessary to read but definitely still stands apart from BotNS

>>24495824
>Completely necessary to read
Not really. I read it and while I'm confused at the fact that some people are apparently offended that it even exists, I don't see it as being necessary at all. It clears a few things up but asks more questions than it answers and doesn't really provide a more satisfying ending than Citadel.

>>24496270
I didn't get the right ending at all before Urth. The way Citadel described it, they were going to open a reverse black hole (white hole?) inside the sun and revitalize it, not that a literal new sun would come flying from the recesses of space since way before humanity even existed. And that the whole humanity in Urth would be wiped out.

what was the point of dorcas being severian's grandma or hinted sexual relationship with jolenta? i feel like the jolenta thing could just be severian, or actually thecla, projecting, but the doras being his grandma feels kinda tacked on to signal oedipus.

>>24496573
>to signal oedipus
Haven't you noticed that the books are replete with mythic tropes? What do you think all the self-contained stories/plays are about?
And Jolenta is very real. She's the waitress who first appears in chapter 16 of "Shadow".

>>24496617
my mistake, i meant dorcas and jolenta's lesbian relationship. and yea, i understand the corruption of memory and blending tales together from the brown book but there didn't seem to be much point to the dorcas as the grandmother reveal.

>>24496640
I think it might be a theme in the books of myth bleeding into reality and vice versa. I think it also links Severian as a kind of mythological hero.

>>24496559
>The way Citadel described it, they were going to open a reverse black hole (white hole?) inside the sun and revitalize it
I didn't get that at all, when is anything like that mentioned?

>>24496640
>i meant dorcas and jolenta's lesbian relationship
There was no such thing. Severian simply could not understand that Dorcas loved him.

>>24490575
>“There you are, Silk. There you are, Horn. I’ve been looking everywhere for you. Babbie came back without you, and Grandmother’s worried,” Ch. 9. IGJ.

Good catch, anon. The Horn-Babbie hypothesis killed in one stroke.

>>24485785
I'm more tentative of this one, but I think Mucor may be a clone of Scylla/Cilinia.
Here are my reasons:
1. Mucor has black hair, Cilinia has dark hair.
2. Mucor, like Silk, was one of the frozen embryos, and I believe Blood says she was *very* expensive (I seem to recall somewhere in Long Sun saying Calde Tussah paid a lot for Silk's embryo, but I can't be sure).
3. I think most agree that Silk is a clone of Typhon. It wouldn't surprise me if the other family members were cloned, too.
4. Silk is psychic and Mucor obviously has asomatous abilities. Mamelta in LotLS Ch. 9 says Molpe would dance through their dreams, which brings up mental powers, again (Though it may just be she dreamed her after seeing her in person).
5. Scylla/Cilinia has a connection with Great Scylla on Urth and Mucor seems to have a connection with the Mother on Blue in Ch. 3 OBW.
6. In LotLS Ch. 9, Silk invokes Echidna's name against Mucor when she's possessing Mamelta and Mucor says, "I know her. She likes me." This could make some sense if Mucor is a clone of Echidna's daughter. (It is also possible Mucor was referring to Mamelta, but it seems more towards Echidna).
7. Silk has a dream in LotLS Ch. 8 where he sees six old men, one blind, carrying a tattered litter while they argue about who it belongs to. Silk feels that the litter belongs to Maytera Marble. He then meets with the Prelate, who is Mucor, and they discuss problems with the schola. She then blames him for an issue she can't resolve. Obviously the six old men are six of Pas and Echidn's seven children, Tartaros being blind gives it away, and Marble is later possessed by Echidna which explains why he feels she owns it, so that leaves a seventh child out. Lemur says in LotLS Ch. 12 that Scylla/Cilinia founded Viron's chapter. So, it makes sense that Mucor, a clone of the founder of the chapter, is arguing about the schola in his dream.

>>24496755
Master Malrubius explains it at the end. It's too crazy for me to have imagined it. A 'white hole' would be created inside our sun if Severian passed the test.

>>24496900
Baldanders also mentions it at the end of Urth when explaining the situation to Valeria.

>>24485116 (OP)
Just finished Shadow & Claw.
Pretty great. Ill get around to the other two eventually

>>24496856
Also:
8. After Marble-Rose's possession by Echidna she adopts Mucor, fulfilling both Rose's familial adoption of her granddaughter via Blood and also Echidna's, since possessions leave a bit of the soul behind, adoption of her clone daughter.

>>24485785
The distance between Blue and Green during conjuntion is about half of the average distance between Earth and the Moon as confirmed by the astrologer that correctly predicted Silk's future in Gaon.

>>24496815
I always interpreted her saying “babbie came back without you” as “babbie came back without the fragments of your soul that possessed him”

>>24496966
What else are you reading anon?
There are “two other” books in name only. The whole thing is one book. It’s meant to be read all at once and was only split up for the benefit of the publisher who didn’t want to published one 1000+ page book

>>24485785
aramini seems to be getting btfo in this thread with his theories of green being ushas and horn being babbie.

>>24497645
Yeah I’m 100% certain Wolfe’s “green is URTH!” Note was a joke. It’s obviously not and is definitely not Ushas (a clean slate)

>>24497648
tied into this theory was the whorl being a noah's ark type vessel but as mentioned earlier, where is the evidence supporting that? was typhon, 30k years ago, per agia, privy to what the autarch needed to do to revitalize the sun? seems more likely he literally cast himself in mainframe and in silk to settle new planets.

>>24497645
One of the worst things about talking about Wolfe online outside of /lit/ is how much Aramini and other "Wolfe celebrities'" ideas are taken as gospel

>>24497697
his wizard knight theory is completely unhinged if you want a laugh.

>>24497648
aramini argues that the lander horn dies in is the matachin tower and i can't even wrap my head around any possible way he can reconcile that with the time difference.

>>24497715
Or the fucking size, dude.
The Landers are SMALL. They’re described consistently as cramped and think.
The Matachin tower is fuckhuge. So big that the “propulsion chamber domes” (the bottoms of the jets) are each used as large examination/torture rooms (so quite a bit bigger than a modern rocket motor like the rocketdyne f-1, pictured left)
The sheer scale of the Matachin tower is unquestionable. What a fucking moron.

>>24497738
Oops meant thin, not think.
The walls of the Matachin are thick. Real golden era of tech shit. The landers are basically sheet metal and barely held together lol. No way the fucking matachin is the kobbled together remains of landers that fucking sinew of all people put together.
Oh also I just remembered - the Matachin was a gunship - not a lander. There are rooms full of mounted guns and canons at the top that Severian describes as being fit for the apprentices and journeymen to crawl into to defend the tower should it ever come under attack. (I assume this is meant to evoke the turret-bubbles Wolfe would have been used to seeing on WWII and Korea-era bombers but it definitely wasn’t a peaceful colonizer lander.)

>>24497697
Alzabo Soup is the worst offender I think. Their bullshit isn't as egregious as Aramini, but they're way more known. It's an absolute travesty that their podcast is the most recommended resource for people getting into Wolfe.

>>24497715
>>24497745
Doesn't Horn refer to the towers of the Citadel as landers when he first visits in IGJ? Aramini may be overenthusiastically generalizing from that. Of course it doesn't necessarily mean landers and the towers are all identical, just that they are the same kind of thing.

>>24497813
Yeah it’s clear that they’re the same type of thing - but that’s like saying the temple of the Rajan of Gaon MUST ALSO BE the House Absolute because uhhh they’re both castles :^)
Wolfe doesn’t hide the fact that the Matachin is a ship - it’s just a fuckhuge gunship instead of the small cramped landers hey had from the Whorl, which were meant to be simple transit to and from the “mothership”. The Matachin is clearly meant to be self sustaining, hence having a kitchen, med bay, bunks, and living quarters all WITHIN the tower (they have tunnels beneath the Matachin, but the living quarters and kitchen are all along the stairs.

>>24497747
It’s reddit as fuck. I hate reddit discussions on wolfe. If you look up the origins of “Matachin Tower” on reddit the post that comes up is some retard who doesn’t understand Wolfe talking about how it must be reference to a gay french subculture of mask wearing homos who kept their gayness secret instead of the fact that it just means fucking butcher in south american slang (Matar = kill Chin = employment/career descriptor)

>>24497573
i think a theme in these books, much like how cs lewis wrote, that beings like pets(or inhumu) gain their unique identity and "spirit" from their owners or caretakers. babbie took on some of horn through out their adventure which is why we get that scene near the end of blue as a neighbor calling for babbie but silk/horn "knowing" they were being called too. babbie took on horn which is why his astral projection is "horn like" in appearance and in action to protect his son and give him hugs. horn's good bye at the end of blue is due to silk's spirit finally becoming the dominant one, no longer a back seat. "I" snatched the ball and won the game, but had i been more careful, what then? is silk coming to the forefront. mucor obviously has some sort of psychic vision and can still see that portion of horn in blanko, but horn is no longer in control and effectively gone at the end, exorcised by remora.

>>24497843
ramblings of an insane person.

>>24497850
Shit yeah I like this way more. You’ve convinced me, anon. I think Wolfe was pretty clear that two souls, or fragments of souls, can inhabit the same body. It’s a major theme.

>>24497747
Yeah, Aramini got lost in the sauce but at least is clearly literate. The Alzabo boys are so blinded by their biases they cannot even approach coherence on the topic.

>>24498246
Any examples? Never listened to them as podcasts are gay

>>24498246
That's my exact issue with them. I tapped out when they spent over 30 minutes talking about how colonialism is bad at the beginning of their Fifth Head discussion.
>>24498274
They never miss a chance to attribute Severian's motivation for doing something to the fact that he's a mysogonist, and if they can shoehorn that motivation in, it's the only one they explore.

>>24497885
I think Wolfe possibly plays around with the idea of trees and lianas on Green being *representative* of the Neighbors (and later humans) and the inhumi. The trees are described as cannibalistic, and the lianas grow around them, and I think are compared as parasites. Which would fit with the idea of people preying upon each other which in turn allows the inhumi to prey on them as well. The Neighbors seem to have an affinity for trees throughout the books, too. The other interesting note that I find a bit compelling is the ring. Horn dies with Hyacinth's ring on Green and later Oreb brings him a ring on Blue that he goes back and forth on whether it is the same ring or not until he finally settles on it being Hyacinth's ring. So, the question is: if Silk-Horn is right and it is the same ring, how did Oreb get it? I can think of two possible ways: 1. Auk, using his genius-mechanic abilities he received in Long Sun, got the lander with Horn's body in it in working order and landed it on Blue. Silk-Horn, after getting hit on the head, has a vision of Auk in a tavern and moments later Jahlee shows up drunk and Silk-Horn briefly thinks she is Chenille. Jahlee denies it and says she fed on a "big woman" in an alley. Chenille is described as a tall woman, and she also had that drunken episode in LotLS. So, there seems to be some merit, but I would think Jahlee would recognize Chenille, but who knows? I certainly don't think the lander Horn died in is the Matachin Tower. 2. The Neighbors gave it to Oreb.

>>24498274
to follow this >>24498335 anon up, they are also the types to read "unreliable narrator" as liar rather than someone without a frame of reference for things. they are extremely skeptical of severian's honesty to the point where it's like, why even read the story if you doubt everything.

>>24498274
Besides what others have said, they come off very reddit midwit and really struggle to get any themes of the books. They treat them as basically puzzles to put together and any time they try to comment on themes it hurts
>>24497885
If you want some real fun, look up the rereading wolfe podcast's explanation of short sun. It has all this plus shit like
>incus is actually a biological woman masquerading as a man
>hyacinth is fava's spirit made real after being released in the whorl

>>24498431
>Silk-Horn briefly thinks she is Chenille. Jahlee denies it and says she fed on a "big woman" in an alley.
to be even more exact, jahlee says, "the woman on green? nah, it's me". like very clearly not chenille and like you said, silk was recovering from a blow to the head and the bar reminded him of auk. number 2 is the easy answer for me.

>>24498475
>hyacinth is fava's spirit made real after being released in the whorl
There is absolutely no chance in hell that this is even remotely possible.

>>24498431
can you help me out with the timeline of this. the lander in pajarocu is auk's when horn arrives; he recognizes it. so he takes the lander to green, gets imprisoned and battles it out with the inhumu in the city before raiding colonies to fix this very same lander they arrived in before dying in it. at what point is auk escaping to fix it and then go to blue? the lander at the end silk leaves on is one they go back to pajarocu for as one "will eventually be there" as they say at the end. like i don't understand how any of this can work in the story if auk and chenille are on green when they visit sinew.

>>24498431
Whoops meant to say Seawrack’s ring not Hyacinth. Gods, I’m like Silk-Horn getting his women mixed up...

>>24498503
Yeah her remembering what Chenille looked like is the big obstacle for that theory. It just seems odd that Wolfe would include a vision of Auk, plus mistaking Jahlee for Chenille, plus having Jahlee feed on a big drunk woman. Could it be that if it is Chenille, she was lying drunk in an alley and maybe Jahlee didn’t recognize her in such a state plus on a whole other planet since she last saw her in Green? I don’t have access to the books for the moment but the last we see Auk and Chenille is on Green at Sinew’s settlement. Don’t Jahlee and Silk-Horn show Sinew the lander Horn died in? If so, and if Auk and Chenille are freed, I think it could add more credibility to the theory.

>>24498531
I don’t think the lander that Horn and his gang were fixing up was the same one they were transported to Green in. From what Silk-Horn says, they were getting pretty close to having it fixed up by the time Horn dies, but maybe that was just wishful thinking. Jahlee and Silk-Horn over a year later astral travel to Green and go to Sinew’s village where Auk and Chenille are inprisoned. If memory serves, it is during this trip that they show Sinew the lander Horn died in. A chunk of time passes as Jahlee, Hide, and Silk-Horn make there way to Dorp. At Dorp is when Oren brings the ring back. If Auk and Chenille did land on Blue, it is presumably during the time between Silk-Horn and company's astral trip to Green and arriving at Dorp that they may have been freed, fixed up the lander, and arrived in Blue.

>>24498568
oh you're right. after getting btfo in the city trying to get back to their original one, auk's, they found a deserted settlement's lander. i skimmed green but didn't see a reference to one other than maliki saying her landed returned without her on it but this is while chenille and auk were still prisoners. i'll read more later but nice catch.

>>24498515
bro they're both bean related names bro you just gotta know that's how wolfe writes bro come on just believe me

>>24497697
On a similar note: whoever started the whole "Wolfe lies in interviews" thing has done untold amounts of bad for discussing Wolfe. He sometimes obfuscates or is very indirect, but he's clearly trying to point you in the right direction.

>>24498631
That idea is perpetrated by a man whose name starts with “A” and ends with “ramini.” He is also the one who mentions the elusive letter where Wolfe allegedly says Urth is Green... which just so happens to fit with his theory of Urth being Green and Blue being Mars... though of course this letter is nowhere to be seen...

>>24498620
Hyacinth is a flower. Someone is straight up trolling.

>>24498619
ah, here it is. they reference the lander horn tried to fix as one being the closest.
>“Where is your lander?” Maliki inquired with studied carelessness.
>“We have none. I was going to ask you—I do ask both of you now—if there isn’t a lander near here.”
>Bala nodded. “The one Sinew’s father tried to repair. It won’t fly.”
>“I know.”

>>24498656
he posted a picture of it on reddit
>https://www.reddit.com/r/genewolfe/comments/1brousx/how_does_long_sunshort_sun_relate_to_new_sun/

>>24498431
It's not the same ring, Horn retrieves the original ring from his body at either the start of RTTW or end of IGJ and gives it to Sinew.

>>24498665
God what a faggot
I hope be never finds /lit/

>>24498665
I am absolutely convinced that anyone who talks about time travel in the context of long/short sun hasn't read the books.

>>24498673
Hmm, I tried finding it, but I can't. At the end of RttW in Ch. 17, he gives the ring to Hoof briefly to look through and then takes it back and says to make sure to take it from his body if he dies. It's during this encounter with Hoof that he calls it Seawrack's ring. Which is odd because in Ch. 9 he says it is *not* the same ring just similar. I guess he changed his mind again.

>>24498888
Horn and Hide at the start of RTTW:

>“Were you wearing a ring? Any jewelry at all?”
>He shook his head.
>“Do you remember the ring I found in the lander?”
>“Sure. Only you gave it to Sinew, not me. I don’t think I could have taken it back with me.”
>“Neither do I. I simply wanted to know whether you remembered what it looked like.”

>>24498665
Here is the letter for those interested. If taken literally it would seem to contradict with >>24493074. Aramini thinks Wolfe was being sly when he denied the identity of Green and Urth in his interview because the interviewer phrased it in terms of pairs and Aramini thinks Blue is Mars, but the interviewer says the key phrase "if any" in their question, so I don't think that explanation works. There's also no planet in our solar system that would correspond with Blue, and it also seems to spit in the face of Urth/Ushas being purified. Aramini's comment is also too vague for me to make out what Gene is responding to specifically.

Aramini is also confusedly combining the tower in the red cliff Silk-Horn and Jahlee wake up in as the lander Horn died in. He also identifies it as the Matachin Tower. And he thinks the tall individual in a colorless cloak with a bird-like gait that Silk-Horn and Jahlee see above the cliff is Severian...

>>24498921
Good find. It's odd then he would say the ring he has at the end of RttW is the ring Seawrack gave him. Maybe she gave him another one?

>>24498888
>It's during this encounter with Hoof that he calls it Seawrack's ring. Which is odd because in Ch. 9 he says it is *not* the same ring just similar. I guess he changed his mind again.
Oreb's ring changes to match Seawrack's ring over time. Originally it's black and too large to wear on any of his fingers, then he starts wearing it on his thumb, and eventually he starts wearing it on his ring finger. He also mentions that it's dark with a black gem, and later on that the gem isn't actually black, and eventually he's confused about what color it was supposed be:
>I see I have confused the rings. The one I am wearing is not the one Seawrack gave me, although it resembles it closely. This is Oreb’s ring. It seems the stone changes color when it is worn; it was originally much darker, surely. I should go back and line out my mistake, I suppose, but I hate lining things out—it gives the page such an ugly appearance.
Also, on the ring that Silkhorn hands to Hoof and describes as Seawrack's ring, Hoof notices small scratches that could have been writing. Horn noticed those same scratches on Oreb's ring but nothing of the sort is ever mentioned regarding the original ring he got from Seawrack:
>Then he explained to me about the ring he had on, saying, “This was given me by a woman I called Seawrack. You don’t know her, but when you read my manuscript you will learn about her.” He took it off and handed it to me. It was a plain silver ring with a white jewel. There were scratches on it that could have been writing or pictures. If it was, I could not make them out. “Look through it,” he told me.

>>24498977
He never meets Seawrack again until the afterword. The ring changing is fucking with him and he's old and receiving a ring from Seawrack is one of his strongest memories.

>>24499012
Yeah, it could be him making a mistake. It also wouldn't surprise me if all those rings can change. When I said that it may have been a new one from Seawrack (or the Mother) I meant that she may have possibly given it to Oreb since they are close to the sea, not that it was given to Silk-Horn in-person by her.

>>24499024
I think Silk himself might be changing it by confusing it with Seawrack ring. Have you read Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius?

>>24499028
Not yet, but I was thinking that may be the case. Seawrack likely doesn't even know about Silk-Horn, after all, so it could just be Oreb stumbled upon it unrelated to her. I take it something similar happens in that story?

>>24498999
>Hoof notices small scratches that could have been writing. Horn noticed those same scratches on Oreb's ring but nothing of the sort is ever mentioned regarding the original ring he got from Seawrack
Looking over the chapter where Seawrack gives him the ring originally:
>When we had finished our meal, she asked me to hold out my hand. I did, and she slipped a ring on it. The mounting was white gold, I believe—some silvery metal that did not tarnish as plain silver would have. The stone was white and dull, scratched and very old.

There are no secrets in Gene Wolfe books. He just writes vague bullshit so pretentious autists can argue about its interpretation all day.

>>24499040
Briefly and inadequately, Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius is about a fictional world in which imagining things causes them to manifest physically, and how learning about that world in the real world causes the fictional world to begin manfesting in reality. You should read it, it won't even take an afternoon and it's at least as much of a mindfuck as Wolfe at his best.

Anyway, I was just thinking that Silk's casual remembering of Seawrack's ring along with his psychic link with the Neighbors caused it to manifest upon Oreb's ring.

>>24499049
I guess that's true, but I read that is just being beat up. Maybe Horn was just less observant than Silkhorn or Hoof. Oreb's ring is explicitly mentioned several times as having some sort of drawing carved on it:
>There is a picture cut into the black stone. I took it to the window, and although the day is far from bright I was able to see that there are lines graven on it, a picture or writing. I suppose it is a seal ring, and the thing to do is to imprint it on wax so the seal may be read.
>Nothing more to report, save that I have asked Vadsig to bring me a lump of sealing wax so I can study the impression made by this ring. The stone is not actually black, I find; call it purple-gray.

Here's Aramini's writeup about Short Sun if anyone wants to torture themselves.

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/rkke9n6m6djzlygl4j8a2/Book-of-the-Short-Sun.docx?rlkey=4h8vqhwab0zccx8izsri2nfnj&e=1&dl=0

>finished Solar Cyle
>there's nothing to read

>>24499374
Latro

>>24499374
There are the three short stories. The Map, The Cat, and The Night Cough.

>>24499387
>The Night *Chough.

>>24499374
I started Jack Vance's Dying Earth. It's so painfully inferior.

>>24499374
i had to take a break after finishing and rereading bits of it. i went with some short stories of his before i tackle peace.

>>24499403
Fuck. I just ordered this for like 30 bucks.

Was there a thinking machine in the whorl? Patera Pike that Silk sees once and vanishes was the same thing as Master Malrubius and Triskele were to Severia, right? What's the significance?

>>24498274
>>24498335
Yeah, and combine that with their pretense of reading chapter by chapter and ignoring the full text gets you incredibly retarded outcomes like them wasting 40 minutes speculating that Severian forged Thecla's execution and then ignoring that she would be fucking screaming in his head after the feast if that were true. Or their bizarre notion that Thecla's mind tempers Severians towards his duties when Thecla is shown to be incredibly cruel to the Antechamber residents for fun and conversely Severian takes no pleasure in the pain he inflicts on others.

They seemed to have built up this strange idea that Thecla was some sort of saint unjustly imprisoned instead of an airheaded and cruel noble with fringe contacts with Vodalus and the Megatherians.

They also just generally cannot analyze a story to save their lives. They'll spend hours on chapter summaries and poring over the names of saints and come up with zero cogent understanding unless it is to call Severian a monster for something they've dreamed up he did.

>>24499424
Wolfe was luckily asked this very question and said Pike's appearance was not machine made. You can talk to dead people at Mainframe, it is mentioned somewhere in Short Sun I believe, so yes, but I think it is different than the eidolons the Hierogrammates and Hierodules use. I think in Mainframe it is more like a virtual room visit, but that's just my guess.

>>24498958
>if any
refers to the multiple set of pairs that were provided. IDK if Green is Urth, but I think Aramini has a good defense against that interview.

>>24499437
Hmm, what if it was Silk, not the inhumi, who could mess with spirits the

>>24499444
Maybe, I recall someone (not a character, I mean an actual person) saying that Pike was said to look like Silk, but I don't recall it myself.

>>24497738
in his write up, he does make a few good points.
from igj chapter 8:
>“this was a tower indeed, its nose high as the tops of the tallest trees and its sleek lines radiating a strength it no longer possessed. I can see it now, that slightly canted tower gleaming dully in the reddish light of the stifling afternoon. Like a rotting corpse, it showed ribs where some sideplates had been taken. How we shouted in our delight, thinking it would save us

from igj chapter 23
>I was silent after that, thinking of our night in the Bear Tower, where Mora had mentioned the Neighbors and Rigoglio had died. ... Across it stood the torturer’s tower, against which even the Bear Leaders had warned me, a lander huge and sleek still although black with age and missing a few plates. To one side, the Witches’ Keep (as it was called), yet more decayed. To the other, the Red Tower, ocher withrust. On Blue as on Green, we would have called all three landers. ...

>I had died in a room not very different from the room I occupied there, in just such a lander, and the memory of death returned to me with a poignancy I have seldom felt. I looked up at the stars then, which were brighter then than they had been by day, and more numerous; but I could not find Green there, or Blue, or the Whorl, or even the constellations Nettle and I used to see when Sinew was small and we spread a blanket on the beach and sat side by side there long after sunset, her hand in mine as we stared up at the stars.

>the year is 2026
>/lit/ has finally realized that Aramini (pbuh) was right about everything
It's coming.

>>24499601
Let’s not infect /lit/ with gay reddit eceleb brainrot. It kills the enjoyment of the solar cycle

>>24499424
>>24499437
reading the end of chapter 1 of lake of the long sun, it's mucor with a flying oreb and a "pike" in all black that smiles before shimmering away. at the time, silk's oreb had a dislocated wing, so this likely points to the three of them astrally traveling to this point in time and "finding" silk. the only time this could have really happened was in rttw while in blood's mansion.

>>24496856
Instead of clones, why not children? It's embryos that were frozen, no? Silk can just as well be Pas' son

>>24485810
First two should be lower. Beginning of Sword of the Lictor is peak of New Sun.

>>24500465
Sword of the Lictor in general is my fave book of the New Sun. Also loved Urth, but that’s just because I’m a sailing geek. Same with OBW. That was peak wolfe.

>>24500481
blue is the coziest book in the solar cycle because of that.

>>24500481
Now that's a patrician hobby. Some of the greatest sci-fi authors were sailors. I don't live next to large bodies of water, so I sometimes row during summer. Water is amazing.

>>24500497
Listening to Brandy by Looking glass and reading OBW is peak comfy
>>24500527
It starts with a free canoe from a family member and before you know it you’re down the rabbit hole

>>24500621
How did you know? I have a canoe my dad looted in the war!

>>24500635
I have no idea why but 9 out of 10 people into boating are only into it because they got a free boat of some variety. Stamp collectors too usually lol.
It’s like a bug you can catch

>>24499403
Vance probably felt much better reading him in separate magazines separated across time. Reading his short stories back-to-back lets you see his writing tics too easily

>>24500306
Well, I've already given the reasons why I think he is a clone in >>24493062. The biggest one being that Silk sees that Pas has his same face. I don't know an instance of a father and son having the same face. Similar? Sure. The same? No. And think about it from a writer's perspective when something like that gets included. It would also explain why he was asked by Kypris to merge with Pas. I suspect that Pas wasn't able to gather all his pieces together and that some were lost. Also, we already know who Pas's children are. Their scanned minds are gods on the Whorl and their bodies are long turned to dust, as Tartaros tells Auk. And Kypris, Typhon's lover, already seems to be infatuated with Silk right off the bat. She thinks of Typhon when talking to him.

There's this part at the end of RttW that I think is pretty funny if you accept the Silk-Typhon clone connection.
From Ch. 17 of RttW:
>“Correct. Pas has not yet come, perhaps. Or perhaps he has, and Oreb simply failed to find the place that Pas found or created. You pointed out that she had long years in which to learn the nature of her father.”
and then:
>“Then I believe Pas knows that as the years pass we will come to realize how much we need him, and bring him. New Viron sent me for Silk. That was foolish, because no mere man could repair all the evil there. Silk did his best for Viron itself, but left it scarcely better than he found it. The same impulse will be applied to Pas in another generation, surely.” I asked if he thought a god could do it, and he said that the people themselves would have to, even if a god helped them.

It's funny because Silk is a clone of Typhon who is Pas. Silk-Horn spends a chunk of the story looking for Silk and denying that Oreb is the same Oreb that Silk owned. Well, it turns out that "Pas" has come and Oreb has found him. The events happen as he describes them. New Viron already sent for Pas via Silk to fix their problems, but he, being a mere man, can't be their magic fix and calls it foolish. And throughout the books, Long and Short Sun, there is a shift of allegiance in the main characters from Pas, who is a man, to the Outsider, the real God.

For the anon who was wondering about Horn's height compared to Silk's:

1. Silk-Horn says Horn’s height, >“was three cubits and two hands at that time—a good deal less than it is now,” (OBW - Ch. 9 Krait).
2. >“Fava, I have to ask you about Incanto’s leader, because Incanto never did describe him. Was he tall? As tall as Incanto?” Fava shook her head. “That’s funny. No, he wasn’t. But almost as tall, though he didn’t look it, and—” * * * Stocky. You can think of him as muscular if you like, and he certainly looked strong enough to fight and climb and the rest of it, but there was nothing heroic about him except his eyes. (IGJ - Ch. 9 Fava's Second Story: The Girl on Green).
3. >“Describe your father.” “His name’s Horn, sir. He’s about as tall as me, maybe a little bit taller, and kind of stocky. Just about bald.” I untied my scarf and let my hair blow free in the wind. “Like this?” “No, sir. You’ve got a lot more hair than he does, and yours is white. His is kind of a dark gray, and there isn’t that much of it.” “As tall as I am?” “No, sir. More like me, like I said. Sir, don’t you think we ought to go back to the fire?” (IGJ - Ch. 19 Say Father).
4. >Horn was standing as straight as a Guardsman on parade now. With a slight shock of insight, Silk realized that this unaccustomed perpendicularity was in imitation of his own, and that Horn’s clear, dark eyes were very nearly level with his. (NtLS - Ch. 1 The Manteion on Sunstreet).

I'm reading Long Sun and while I liked Auk at first and thought he was pretty cool the parts in the tunnel are the most boring drag disconnected to the interesting parts of the plot. I don't like almost everything about the tunnels especially since he no longer acts like the same character even.

>>24502843
Also it is particularly bad because everything in the city from Rose's funeral onward has been great. The funeral in particular was fantastic.

>>24502843
i suffered from this a bit in my first read only because i believe i was excited to see the future developments of the story outside the tunnels. on a reread for me it was a lot more enjoyable and interesting. the idea that this entire system was beneath the city(cooling tunnels, prisoners, sacrificial dumpings, etc) is very neat. auk not being the same character anymore is kind of the point and i really like mint/remora/spider arc.

>>24502486
>4
young horn embellishing while writing those books as a teenager. classic.

>>24503913
“Yeah i was 8 feet tall and jacked btw”

>>24503913
He's independently confirmed as being almost as tall as Silk. He just looks shorter because he doesn't have Silk's presence.

>>24502451
>The biggest one being that Silk sees that Pas has his same face
The image that he was shown was probably doctored. Other people have seen both Silk and Pas and none of them commented on them having the same face.

>>24504353
In the Long Sun it is said that the gods appear as they mentally picture themselves. It seems like a pretty clear example of Wolfe just trying to keep it secret until the big reveal at the end. I'm willing to give Wolfe slack for storytelling purposes. Though you can try and rationalize it by pointing out that Pas has been wiped out for over thirty years, that lots of people have likely never even seen a god, that the series is full of characters making mistakes and mis-identifying things, that if someone did recognize the connection, maybe like Quetzal, they wouldn't be too eager to mention it, maybe they were too awe-struck like in Mint's case to notice, or would think it would be too crazy to say, "Hey, you look like Pas! You must be a clone of him!" etc. But I really think it is just a fact that it is a story, and certain things need to be kept murky for the surprise. Saying it is doctored I think ignores everything else which points to him being a clone. Time and time again it is said that Pas would have a way to leave the Whorl and rule the colonists. Typhon wanted to keep his face, so he would be recognizable to those he ruled. Silk is grown from an embryo with leadership abilities. They are both blond. Both psychic. Echidna seems to refer to Silk as her husband when she is glitching. Silk loves Kypris and Kypris loves him and reminisces about her memory with Typhon when talking to him. He is asked to merge with Pas. Silk-Horn has that whole dialogue about New Viron sending for Pas. We know clones exist with the khaibits in New Sun. And... they have the same face!

>>24504399
Severian sees both Silk and Typhon and doesn't comment on any similarity despite his perfect memory.

>>24504417
Because Short Sun was written many years after New Sun.

>>24504423
So? Severian meets Silk when he's a child. If having seen Silk as a child would have caused Severian to recognize Typhon and thus retcon the narrative, Wolfe would not have included that scene at the end of Short Sun.

Also, Duko Rigoglio knew Typhon and doesn't comment on any similarity.

>>24504435
Rigoglio saw Silk-Horn as an old man, with long white hair and a beard, and one eye. He probably doesn't look like how a younger, clean-cut Typhon looked. And when they are astral traveling to the past and visit Severian, Hoof is constantly talking about how Silk-Horn looks shadowy and how Severian couldn't seem to see them clearly.

>>24504417
See
>>24491121
>>24491262
To elaborate on him not mentioning it as an explanation, narrator Severian chooses not to mention stuff. The extent of his relationship with Valeria being the most notable.

>>24504449
I also just remembered that Severian interacts with Merryn when Silk-Horn and the others are visiting but doesn't seem to recognize her in New Sun with the Cumaean.

>>24502843
I love Auk. I always saw him kind of like Tony Soprano, and Blood like Phil Leotardo.

I finished Return to the Whorl today. A great ending, bringing us back around to the Necropolis, and throwing a final complication into the question of Silk/Horn's identity. Pig and Marble each get an eye. And one last, um, encounter with everyone's favorite, ah, recurring interlocutor, hm?
>>24504449
Severian tells Horn outright at one point during the Necropolis visit that he won't write about him in his book, as nobody would believe him.
>>24504449
Not only do the astral projections look shadowy, Silk-Horn looks more like Horn than Silk during those sojourns, no? There are still aspects of both but his spiritual self is Horn.

>>24504843
it really is a fantastic ending. it's something you kind of expect but it is handled so well with the passage read to silk from remora.

>>24504843
>Severian tells Horn outright at one point during the Necropolis visit that he won't write about him in his book, as nobody would believe him.
That's a good point, anon.
>Not only do the astral projections look shadowy, Silk-Horn looks more like Horn than Silk during those sojourns, no?
He looks like a mix of Horn and Silk until that very last trip. For that trip Hoof says he looks like a younger version of himself as he appears at the house they're staying at on Blue and he now has both his eyes. I think Wolfe was aware that people would ask about the whole Typhon-Silk-Malrubius thing and so covered his butt a bit by having their astral projections be shadowy. And we don't really get a good idea of what they look like from Severian's POV.

>>24504863
>>That's a good point, anon.
Not really, since that wasn't a binding oath and wouldn't have prevented Severian from noting that Typhon looked familiar.

>>24504911
A binding oath? lol
Perhaps you could give us some reasons and evidence of Kypris and Pas doctoring one of Pas's faces to look like Silk's?

>>24493046
>Glory to the Group of Seventeen
>United, men and women are stronger
>All must do their share in the service of the populace
>All endeavors are conducted well or ill precisely in so far as they conform to Correct Thought
>The cries of the children are the cries of victory. Still, victory must learn wisdom
>All must do their share in the service of the populace. The bullock draws the plow and the dog herds the sheep, but the cat catches mice in the granary
>Thus men, women, and even children can serve the populace

>>24504860
Finally calling the protagonist Silk in the final sentence (minus the epilogue) after simply referring to him as "he" for the whole book is such an obvious thing to do, but hits like a truck anyway. Honestly the last hundred pages are amazing and contain so many phenomenal passages.

>>24504940
Severian certainly lies when it's convenient, but there's also promises that he makes that he clearly intends to keep. The thing about not talking about Silk wasn't such a promise, it was a simple statement of intent. If something had changed that made Silk's presence and explanation believable to Severian's audience, he probably would have mentioned it.

>Perhaps you could give us some reasons and evidence of Kypris and Pas doctoring one of Pas's faces to look like Silk's?
Pas wasn't involved. Kypris showed Silk a picture of Pas, and one of the faces was Silk's. What if I told you that you could be President of the United States and showed you this image with your face shooped on? Would that mean that you're a clone of Donald Trump?

>>24505195
yea that's what got me. the entire series you know it's coming and by this point, it has to come; but it's handled in such an elegant way, especially with the narrator pacing before then with the reference to the very same book from sun street. it's incredible.

>>24505220
We really don't have much of an idea of how Silk-Horn appears to Severian. All we can really gather is that he seems to look like Malrubius, and Gurloes, by his reaction, seems to agree. It is perfectly consistent both for Silk to be a clone of Typhon and also for Silk-Horn, as he appears to Severian during astral travel, to not look enough like Typhon for him to notice later on in life. After all, he's shadowy and cloaked in fuligin. So, this whole "he didn't recognize Typhon" schtick doesn't hold much water for me.

>Pas wasn't involved. Kypris showed Silk a picture of Pas
So where is the evidence for this is what I'm asking. Nowhere does it say in the text that it is just a picture and that it isn't really Pas. Nowhere in the text does it say that a god can conjure up an image of another god without them being there and alter their appearances. We know from Tartaros that a god's appearance is their mental self-image. If Wolfe wanted us to think it was doctored, why didn't he describe what Pas's real face looks like prior to showing us the doctored face? How are we the readers supposed to know it's doctored? Pas having Silk's face makes sense of why Wolfe held off on describing Pas's appearance until the end of the book. It's supposed to be a surprise. Again, think about it from a writer's perspective. Also, why would Kypris doctor it? She can just ask Silk to merge with Pas without an image or Pas can order him to do it. Changing his face is completely unnecessary and only serves to confuse readers.

Your interpretation also doesn't help explain why Kypris was watching Silk, why she was so eager to talk to him, why she was already infatuated with him, why she's thinking of Typhon when talking to him, why he's automatically drawn to her, why she's so eager to help him, and why she asked him to merge with Pas. According to your interpretation, Silk is just some random blond guy she fell in love with out of the blue and is risking her existence over. Would Pas really want to mentally merge with some random blond guy just because his concubine for some reason has the hots for him? I tell you what. It makes a whole lot more sense for Kypris to seek out the clone of her lover after her lover has been deleted and she's been hunted for thirty years than to stalk some random dude. Your interpretation I guess would also say that Silk being an embryo with leadership abilities is just fun trivia with no implications. That the characters speculating on how Pas was supposed to leave the Whorl and rule them isn't really hinting at anything. That we should conveniently forget that Typhon was obsessed about keeping his face recognizable. That Silk and Typhon both being blonds is a coincidence. That them both having psychic abilities is a coincidence. That Echidna calling him her husband when she was glitching out is just random nonsense Wolfe decided to put in. And this >>24502451.

>>24505336
I didn't say that Silk isn't Pas's clone, just that they don't look the same. Look up how cloning works, anon. Clones don't look identical to the originals.

>>24505359
Ahhhh I see now. So Wolfe is writing a story of a clone that doesn't look like the original subject and this subject is temporarily doctoring his face to look like his clone that doesn't look like him. Got it.

Hey anon, it is a science fiction story not real life.

>>24505369
I don't get it, why is that so hard to believe? Wolfe seems generally well-informed on matters of science, it solves a bunch of issues with Pas and his various clones running around without anyone realizing it, and the way I read that passage with the image of Pas was that Silk himself thought that Kypris doctored the image to try and tempt him. Why is it so unbelievable that Typhon and his clones might all be tall, slender, blonde haired, bore eyed, and incredibly charismatic, but have differing facial features? Also clones being slightly different in appearance and temperament could explain why Typhon was a warlord while Silk was a statesman and Malrubius wasn't even the head of a tiny guild.

>>24505446
Because there is no indication that anything about Pas has been doctored. Because Kypris was able to locate Silk by looking for him and undoubtedly knows his connection to Pas. Because Echidna identifies him, too. Because it is a common trope in science fiction that clones look like each other. Because we have examples of identical clones already in the series with the khaibits. Because it is blatantly misleading. And I’m no expert on cloning in real life but a government website states that clones can look as identical to each other as identical twins. It would be things like fingerprints and freckles that would differ. Also, the way the reveal is presented is blatantly meant to show that Silk looks like Pas. That’s why it’s a surprise. Because the reader learns that Silk is a clone of Typhon. Think about it from a writers persoective.

>>24505369
You're good at trolling these morons. There's no way anybody can be as retarded as you're pretending to be.

>>24505819
Show me in the text where it says I'm retarded

>>24506058

What's the symbolism of Seawrack having only one arm?

>>24506058
How dare you try and impersonate me.

>>24506382
I don't really know about the symbolism, but I think it can add a couple things. It shows us that Babbie was immediately distrustful of her which may serve as a warning to us as well. It shows her strangeness because of how oddly unaffected she seems to be about losing an arm. Perhaps it also shows the Mother's determination to have Seawrack join this seemingly pre-selected man even though her "daughter" just had her arm ripped off. And I think we're meant to ask why.

>>24506530
But do we get an answer? Is Seawrack the woman that brought the megatherians to Urth? Can you even travel back in time by ship in Wolfe's universe?

>>24506542
Tzadkiel's ship can travel back in time because it can go faster than light and then I think Wolfe added more sci-fi fake science on top of that. As far as I'm aware we don't get an answer to her motives. Silk-Horn speculates Seawrack was fashioned by the Mother to get us to worship her and love her. And the Neighbors are pretty reluctant to talk about her to Silk-Horn for his "own sake" and say she was once their sea god. Though they also say the ring she gives Horn identifies him as a friend, so who knows? I don't know if Seawrack is the woman who brings the Megatherians to Urth. I don't even know if the Whorl can go back in time. It's been 300 years from their perspective on the Whorl (though it seems they've been parked outside the Green-Blue system for at least a few decades) while 1,000-2,000 years have passed on Urth since the launching of the Whorl. I think this is meant to display time dilation. And if Silk-Horn isn't bullshitting about seeing the red dot in the sky that he identifies as the red sun of Urth, then the Megatherians have already been inhabiting Urth for a while from Blue's perspective.

>>24506578
Yes, the Whorl would need to travel back in time for Seawrack to be that woman. She remains a mystery.

>>24506586
It's an interesting idea. To keep it at least somewhat alive recall the words of Father Inire talking to Domnina in Ch. 20 of Shadow when discussing the mirrors:
>"The ancients, who knew this process at least as well as we and perhaps better"
[...]
>"Is this how the cacogens come?"
>"Has your mother ever taken you riding in her flier?"
>"Of course."
>"And you have seen the toy fliers older children make on the pleasance at night, with paper hulls and parchment lanterns. What you see here is to the means used to travel between suns as those toy fliers are to real ones."

So if Inire by "ancients" means people of Typhon's time and before, like during the time of the first empire, then it may be possible that the Whorl does have time traveling capabilities. After all, it would seem to be necessary for there to be inter-planetary travel to hold together an empire of distant planets and that some time shenanigans would be necessary. Jonas, who comes from a very distant time, was aware of the mirrors and was looking for them.

>>24506628
You can't leave a planet in a spaceship and travel to another planet faster than light and then turn around and return to your home planet before you left. The idea that traveling faster than light results in time travel is based on the idea that time propogates at the speed of light. If you could travel faster than light, you could travel to planet B and then get out a really big telescope and watch yourself board the spaceship on planet A. That's the extent of the time travel that's possible that way.

Tzadkiel's ship can go back in time in a meaningful sense because it can travel to a space outside of time, and there's no guarantees where it will end up upon returning. It's magic, not physics, like Severian walking along the river of time and choosing the perfect spot to return to Urth. Meanwhile, the Whorl "travels forwards" in time, not back. 300 years pass on the Whorl, while many thousands of years pass on Urth. This is time dilation as a result of traveling at a substantial portion of the speed of light.

>>24507284
I'm aware of the time dilation and psuedo-science magic. My point was that Tzadkiel's ship uses those giant mirrors to travel, and it seems like that technology has been around for a while from what Inire says and because Jonas seems to be familiar with them. It's also hard to see how a planetary empire that spans the stars could be maintained if you can only travel forwards in time and it takes hundreds of years for a ship to get to another colonized planet. Which is why I think there may have been weird time things going on. And since we don't get told, as far as I'm aware, what the Whorl uses to traverse the stars, the possibility it utilizes those mirrors or something like them is left open. Basically, I'm trying to say it isn't ruled out for the Whorl to go back in time though I'm not trying to endorse it either. We just don't know the full extent of the technological capabilities of the people in Typhon's time and what the Whorl is equipped with.

>>24485224
it doesn’t. people here pretend to like it because they really want to signal they’re christcucks or because sam hyde mentioned it once. it’s all a giant circlejerk

>>24507387
Just look at this faggot.

>>24507352
The Whorl would have to travel to a space outside of time in order to time travel like Severian, the Green Man, and Tzadkiel do. We never see anything about it going anywhere, just orbiting the Blue/Green system.

>>24507492
If the technology was known and available and if other ships can do it, it may not be too extraordinary for a starcrosser like the Whorl to do it. We just don't know.

>>24507387
>it doesn’t. people here pretend to like it because they really want to signal they’re christcucks or because sam hyde mentioned it once. it’s all a giant circlejerk
Damn, I'm impressed Sam actually read it. He's a smart guy but more ADHD, high energy kind of smart rather than sit down and read a book smart. Sam was calling (((them))) out nearly a decade before it was semi-acceptable. Joe Bernstein gloated after getting MDE cancelled; it was one of the very very first public cancellations, as hard as that is to believe.

I recently finished book 3 of Long Sun. I have to say the part where Potto says to kill the Calde and the robots response was cleverly done.

>>24507800
I remember how hyped I felt after the beginning of Exodus.

>>24507533
>>24507492
That's interesting. Do we really not know how the Whorl propelled itself? And is it possible that mirrors were available when Typhon was constructing the Whorl? I have gotten the sense that the mirrors only became widespread under the regime of the Hierogrammates.

>>24508442
i would assume the same. the end of typhon gave way to the autarchy model, which had the purpose of building the person to bring the long sun. agia mentions, and there are other hints, that typhon's end and the beginning of the myth of the conciliator happened about 30,000 years prior to shadow of the torturer. seems like the whorl was just a hollowed out asteroid with a much more primitive in comparison propulsion method.

>>24508442
I believe the only look we ever get at the outside of the Whorl is at the end of RTTW when Silkhorn takes Pig to mainframe and then continues on to Gaon. Maybe there's a hint in there.

(1/2)
>>24508442
Father Inire makes it sound like the mirrors are ancient technology >>24506628. And Typhon isn't really that far back in time as Wolfe says in this interview answer. I don't think we learn the era that Jonas is from, if he's from around Typhon's time or earlier like the first empire, but he is able to identify and work Inire's mirrors. Perhaps Jonas comes from the period of the first empire and Typhon's time is less advanced than the period of the first empire and the mirrors were lost technology? I just don't know how a space empire can be held together if it takes hundreds of years to travel unless Typhon was bullshitting about ruling many planets. I will post a bit more of Inire's conversation because it seems relevant for space travel:


>I thought that to travel to the stars you’d have to sit on the mirror.
[...]
>No, no. Let me outline the problem to you. When something moves very, very fast—as fast as you see all the familiar things in your nursery when your governess lights your candle—it grows heavy. Not larger, you understand, but only heavier. It is attracted to Urth or any other world more strongly. If it were to move swiftly enough, it would become a world itself, pulling other things to it. Nothing ever does, but if something did, that is what would happen. Yet even the light from your candle does not move swiftly enough to travel between the suns.’
[...]
>Since nothing can exceed the speed of light in our universe, the accelerated light leaves it and enters another. When it slows again, it reenters ours— naturally at another place.

>>24508457
Wolfe in an interview said it's only between 1,000 to 2,000 years between Typhon's time and Severian's. Pic related.


>>24508915
LotLS Ch. 10:
>Rungs set in the wall permitted him to climb down to a lucent bubble through which he looked across a benighted plain of naked rock.
[...]
>The somber plain was pitted like the cheeks of a child who had survived the pox, and far more barren than the sheer cliffs of the Pilgrims’ Way; no tree, no flower, no least weed or dot of moss sprouted from its rock.
[...]
>By the time he looked out again, something wholly new was happening. The plain of rock had blanched unwatched, and was streaked with sable. Craning his neck to look behind him, he saw a thin crescent of blinding light at the utmost reach of the plain.

EftLS Ch. 16:
>They floated in an infinite emptiness lit by a remote, spool-shaped black sun
[...]
>Hyacinth gripped Silk’s arm, pointing to the black, spool-shaped sun behind them, from which light streamed. “What is that? Is it—is it…? The lander came out of it.”
>“That is our Whorl.” Sciathan wiped his eyes.

So we see nothing on the Whorl's surface unlike what Severian sees on Tzadkiel's ship with those vast masts with the mirrors. I think the light Silk sees is the sun, but it could be the propulsion mechanism of the Whorl lighting up.

>>24509343
alright then i guess typhon reigned much longer if the population remembers the conciliator appearing 30k years ago.

>>24509372
actually, isn't the first autarch a boy at the time and writing down the pelegrine's creed from what he heard from severian? that can't be right then.

>>24509343
(2/2)
Ran out of characters.

I just wanted to add a few more points that may be relevant:

One is that we also don't really know how long from the Whorl's perspective it took to get to the Blue-Green system. It's been roughly 300 years, but Quetzal has been Prolocutor for over 30 years and I'm sure he's been on the Whorl longer than that. There's also that line from Burgundofara about how on Tzadkiel's ship some people get old and die, others stay the same, some get younger. So even a ship like that can age its "cargo" significantly probably depending on where it's going and when and where its cargo came from which could account for the frozen sleepers on the Whorl.

Here are some time dilation calculators you guys can play around with if the Whorl really is just going fast. Some of the results suggest the Whorl would have had to be going pretty close to the speed of light depending on the relative time and observer time:
https://www.calctool.org/relativity/time-dilation
https://calculators.io/time-dilation/

Another hint that there may have been time-mirror related technology around Typhon's time is the Atrium of Time. Severian can't relocate it when flying around and has to re-enter the tunnels. And Valeria's family stretches back to Typhon's time because she says the autarch left the planet long ago, which may be what people thought after Typhon died on the mountain and the ships had fled.

>>24509372
>>24509374
I think it's just that people have no idea how much time has passed, it just feels ancient to them.

>>24509343
>I think the light Silk sees is the sun, but it could be the propulsion mechanism of the Whorl lighting up.
I think it's thrusters, the godling tells Silkhorn that it's time for people to stop leaving the Whorl because the repairs are complete and it's time for it to launch again.

>>24505359
>>24505477
In RTTW, Silkhorn goes off on a long tangent explaining the aspects of the gods to Hound. He talks about the gods adopting a new personality and appearance but still remaining the same god in spirit, and he says this specifically in reference to Silent Silk, who's become an acknowledged god in there time that Horn was on Blue and Silk himself was incognito. I think this whole concept of aspects is specifically referring to clones of the gods. They look different and act different but still have many of the traits of the original.

>>24509478
>the godling tells Silkhorn that it's time for people to stop leaving the Whorl because the repairs are complete and it's time for it to launch again.
It could be thrusters but Silk seeing the light and the godling encounter are over 20 years apart.

>>24509478
I'm looking over the section and it's pretty vague. It sounds like it could mean that the gods are known to have others scanned and merged with them or maybe it's a side effect of possessions since it takes a bit of the person's soul back with them. Or maybe it's just a change in their mood or mindset that is then reflected in their mental image of themselves. I think Wolfe is playing around with the Father-Son-Holy Spirit deal and also pagan gods having different appearances depending on the people worshipping them or circumstances. I still don't think we have a good enough reason to think Pas was faking his appearance to match Silk's since there doesn't seem to be any mention of it, Kypris and Echidna can recognize him, and it's presented as a big reveal.

Should this just be a general?

>>24504843
>And one last, um, encounter with everyone's favorite, ah, recurring interlocutor, hm?
Kino. That motherfucker 100% would have been a /lit/izen

>>24505156
Aka
>be me
>stuck in hospital bed

So just what in the FUCK did Horn do to Seawrack when she sang for him and why the FUCK is the effect on Silk just to look wistfully towards whatever body of water is closest when she sings?

>>24507387
lol filtered

>>24509687
there is a reason urth.net was as big as it was. the nuance with gene is pretty wild. his entire approach to writing, having a full story mapped out, but making it a point to make the second read your first real read was certainly accomplished. even the more straightforward works like wizard knight have these little easter eggs shouting at you on the second read.

>>24509788
When a man and a woman love each other very much...

>>24508442
The whorl used traditional propolsion - the mirrors don’t actually send you places - I always considered them to be more like astral projection machines similar to Silkhorn and the inhumas dream traveller

>>24509587
>I still don't think we have a good enough reason to think Pas was faking his appearance to match Silk's
It wouldn't be faking if he was shown the aspect of Pas that was himself.
>since there doesn't seem to be any mention of it, Kypris and Echidna can recognize him, and it's presented as a big reveal.
Of course they can recognize him, they know what Pas looks like and there's clones of him running around all over the place. Any time a tall, skinny, blonde guy miraculously ends up in a leadership role, it's one of his clones.

>>24509687
If gurmslop gets a general, Wolfe absolutely deserves one. It's just a matter of whether we can keep it alive, obviously there's no new content coming out.

>>24509802
>It wouldn't be faking if he was shown the aspect of Pas that was himself.
But Silk hadn't scanned his mind yet.
>Of course they can recognize him, they know what Pas looks like and there's clones of him running around all over the place. Any time a tall, skinny, blonde guy miraculously ends up in a leadership role, it's one of his clones.
You're willing to grant that if there are guys running around that are tall and blond they can recognize them as Typhon's clones, but you aren't willing to grant that his face and his clone's face look alike? Why not? It's the most straightforward reading of the text.

>>24509828
Because the text literally says that aspects (clones) of the gods have different appearances.

>>24509841
The only aspect we're told about in much detail is Silent Silk who is the Silk that merged at the end of Exodus and leaves the holy windows blank. And before merging we're told Silk and Pas already have the same face. Unless now you want to say another clone who looks like Silk has already merged with Pas and that's the aspect Pas was showing at the end of Exodus, but that is ridiculously convoluted and undermines your whole argument.

>>24509812
>obviously there’s no new content coming out
This is true of ASOIAF too and it doesn’t have an iota of the critical or literary merit that Wolfe has

>>24509859
>"They can scan you at Mainframe. As I was scanned, Silk, with him. He held my hand…"
>Silk found that he was staring up at her; she smiled, and his spirit melted.
>"You'll go on with your life. Silk. Just as it is. You'd be Pas too. And he would be you. Look…"
>The face lovelier than any mortal woman's dispersed like smoke. In its place stood a bronze-limbed man with rippling muscles and two heads.
>One was Silk's.
She's obviously showing Silk an image of what he would look like after being uploaded to mainframe.

>>24509877
Yes, but they can still cope and pretend and wonder about whether Sanderson will end up finishing it, which is what I assume they do most of the time. I can't imagine what else they're still talking about.

>>24509910
>She's obviously showing Silk an image of what he would look like after being uploaded to mainframe.
Look, we're obviously never going to agree on this. If you want to think that Silk is a clone of Typhon and yet doesn't look like him despite all the hints leading up to the reveal and that it's a doctored image and not really just what Pas already looks like, then I don't know what else to tell you.

>>24509921
It's literally a picture of Silk after ascending to become an aspect of Pas. If you want to read it differently that's fine, you're allowed to be wrong.

>>24509925
>It's literally a picture of Silk after ascending to become an aspect of Pas.
Headcanon born from convoluted thinking. Yes, Wolfe is writing about a clone that doesn't look like the man it's a clone of. Bravo!

>>24509928
It's literally right there in the text. Have you considered reading the book?

>>24509931
It's simple, anon. I'll go through it one more time for you. 1. Silk is a clone of Pas. 2. In Wolfe, clones look like their subjects (see khaibits for example). 3. That's why he sees his face when looking at Pas for the first time. Simple! Your hypothesis on the other hand... lets' see... ok, he's a clone... but he looks different! And uh... And Echidna confuses him for Pas... because... well he's tall and blond! But his face looks different... Being tall and blond is really all you need to identify a clone of Typhon, and did I mention they're running around all over the place? And aspects, which we hardly know anything about, are all also clones and... they also look different because... And Kypris falls in love with Silk because, well, he's tall and blond! That's how she knows he's a clone. But again, doesn't look like Typhon in regard to his face. And Kypris is doctoring Pas's face because she's a woman and women like makeovers. Brilliant!

>>24509951
You know, when you pretend to be retarded it reads exactly the same as your usual posts. Maybe that should tell you something.

>>24509970
So true, brother!

>>24485785
Everyone says severian dies during the avern fight but he definitely dies when climbing down from mount typhon

>>24510008
that is a hilarious observation you get on the second read. there's no way he made it down and doesn't remember without plummeting to his death.

>>24510062
>>24510008
Can someone qrd the multiple severians theory? How does it work - cosmologically speaking? Quantum immortality? Every time he dies he hops into a continuity where he doesn’t?

>>24510299
Divine science magic. Severian has genuine powers through his sun, but he has to be somewhat near his sun. Famulimus kisses the ground at his feet and tells him that even Tzadkiel can't do what he does. The best the Hierogrammates and Hierodules can do is make an eidolon which is what they do on Tzadkiel's ship and when Severian is too far in the past for his powers to be there.
>Every time he dies he hops into a continuity where he doesn’t?
Nah, he just heals up/revives. It's the same continuity.

>>24510299
i'm not a fan of the multiple severian theory. i think it's an outcome of predestination involving the heiros and when he says the thing about not being the first severian, i think it's because literally eons ago in recorded history he existed because he time traveled there. at the end of autarch, he even mentions he knows who apu panchau was.

Gene dies in the first episode. Still want to transition or vote for Vance?

Does New Sun hint anything regarding Typhon's wife and children? Or did Wolfe come up with those characters later?

>>24510615
Not explicitly. Some think he is actually a Megatherian in which case the other Megatherians would be his family. I doubt it, personally. But they point to his psychic abilities which the Megatherians also have. His name is also not a saint name, which some think is important because they believe human characters in New Sun have saint names while inhuman characters don't. Plus, his name is derived from the father of monsters in Greek mythology. Severian sees a Megatherian underwater with a hundred heads and mythological Typhon is sometimes describes as having a hundred heads. The proponents of this theory also point to the possibility of Megatherians being able to bud and pinch off parts of themselves, like Tzadkiel (and maybe the Mother with Seawrack) because there is a part in New Sun where the undines are called the wives and children of Abaia, though it could just be figurative. Typhon also says he wasn't born in the sense that Severian means, whatever that means is not explained. Counter to this budding origin is that when Silk temporarily dies he sees his two sets of parents, so if those were Typhon's parents he saw then they were likely human as nothing strange was noted about them. Scylla is also mentioned in New Sun and some think Long Sun Scylla and Megatherian Scylla are biologically related, but my reading of Short Sun is that Cilinia is a human who chose the name Scylla for her god persona because of her secret oath. There is also the story told about a woman who reproduces with some sort of alien flower and becomes pregnant. The child is peaceful until introduced to war and becomes unstoppable. This is a throwback to the story of the god Mars, but some think it's talking about Typhon's alien origins. The proponents of this idea also think that the Cumaean is Echidna partly also because of the snake association they both share. There's probably some more I'm forgetting. Anyways... you decide!

>>24510667
I should add that another counter is that they are obviously hostile to his regime from what we learn in Short Sun, and he plans to enslave them in New Sun.

I wonder what Wolfe thought when he saw this.

>>24510935
short sun had the worst covers. i really don't get it. it was like ai slop before ai slop.