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6/30/2025, 9:04:02 PM
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>>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.
>>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.
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