Jlawrence’s Comments (group member since Mar 08, 2010)

Jlawrence’s comments from the The Sword and Laser group.

I think the biggest hint that the Commonwealth is in South America is through Apu-Punchau. Apu-Punchau ("Head of the Day") is another name for Inti, the Inca sun god. The "cyclopean stone" that Apu-Punchau's resurrected Stone Town is built with is one of the features of Incan architecture. The mausoleum Severian played in as a kid was Apu-Punchau's tomb. The ziggurat which Severian is imprisoned by Vodalus in Citadel could then also be an ancient mesoamerican step-pyramid.

Adrienne wrote: "I'm pretty sure Ouen is too old to be his father. Severian is around eighteen, and I figured Ouen is most likely older as he's described as balding."

My dad was balding when I was 8, and I know guys who starting balding at 30, so I don't think that's a safe reason to exclude him. Besides, we know for sure Ouen is Dorcas' son from the note he tried to pass her at the Inn ("you are mother come again") and his locket with Dorcas' portrait, so if he's *not* Severian's father, then Severian would also not be related to Dorcas, and their relationship would revert back to non-squeamish state. ;)

Adrienne wrote: "Related to Severian's family tree, there are a few hints that Severian has a twin."

I'm intrigued by this, too, but don't have any good guesses about it, other that the a vague idea about the "other Severians" brought up by the Corridors of Time idea (I'm going to open a separate thread on that). Well, and the weird wizened talking homunculus in a jar he finds in old Autarch's quarters - that thing claims it died at birth and directly calls him "brother" among other hints, but it's also suggested that Severian is right to think the whole conversation is an illusion - a projection of his subconscious.

I'll post Andre-Driussi's guess about Severian's mother tomorrow.

Adrienne wrote: "I do, however, think that someone in his family was an exultant, as he's described numerous times as being tall and having that look about him. "

Agreed, my favorite quote along these lines is when Agia tells him (this is when they've just met):

"You have the face of someone who stands to inherit two palatinates and an isle somewhere I never heard of, and the manners of a shoemaker..."

Adrienne wrote: The whole Dorcas reveal made me very upset with the books. Did that really have to be in there? What does it add? In my opinion, we already get that he has mommy issues!"

Yeah, plot-wise, I liked how the family relation reveals tied so many things together, but on the level of Severian and Dorcas' relationship .... :-/

Maybe its purpose is to be an odd echo of the inbreeding of autocratic dynastic families in our own past?

Not sci-fi (outside of the title game being beyond commercially-feasible 80's technology) but Lucky Wander Boy is a brilliant and funny novel about one man's obsession with old video games (he's compiling a Catalogue of Obsolete Entertainments) that leads him on a quest to recover the rarest and most bizarre of all forgotten stand-up arcade games.

Bruce wrote: "Nitpick Warning - He broke his whetstone and handled half to the Green Man. This can be used by the Green Man to wear down a weak spot in the chain.

Normally this would takes days (I do woodworking and metalworking). Maybe the whetstone had an adjustable grit. LOL."

Advanced-but-now-forgotten-Urthian-whetstone-tech. ;)

Yes, I can buy that too, the gem became known as the Claw once what it encased was forgotten.

Chris wrote: "The reveal that you're thinking of is actually at the end of Chapter XXXI in Citadel. And it's one of my favorite passages in the Book."

I finally read that last night - I agree, it's a great passage!



** FURTHER CITADEL SPOILERS **


And yes, he talks about seeing the same thorn bush in Sand Garden of the Botanical Gardens, which does explain his attraction to that area, which we wondered about in other threads.

In Citadel Chapter 34, Severian also explicitly contemplates Ed's theory which we've discussed here: that the power actually emanates from him, with the Claw just being used for focus. He is frightened by the idea - "I reject and fear it because I desire so fervently that it be true" but continues to contemplate it.

He posits three theories as to where he could have gained such a power. The first is some kind of metaphysical "the-Increate's-symbols effect the real-world" theory that I still don't fully grasp after having read it several times.

The second is that the power is a gift from the beings who will put him through a trial to decide if humanity is worthy of the rebirth of Urth's sun -- that it's actually an award for passing the trial. He muses he's received it *before* taking the trial because perhaps the being's gifts transcend time the way the beings themselves do.

His third theory, the one I find the most interesting but also the most unlikely, is that the gift came from Abaia and the other monstrous enemies of the New Sun. That they saved him from drowning, gave him this power, etc. in order to further debase humanity -- by having a torturer rise to the highest social position on the planet.

So the very end of Citadel reveals that --

The old boatman hunting for his wife at the Lake of Birds was Severian's grandfather, husband of Dorcas (he was searching for "Cas" during that scene in Shadow, and Dorcas is having a funeral for him when Severian finds her the ruins of old Nessus near the end of Citadel).

Dorcas was/is his grandmother (! um, more than a little awkward...)

The waiter Ouen who passed Dorcas the note (which was intercepted by Severian) at the Inn of Lost Loves is his father.

Ouen reveals that a woman he loved, Catherine, was in trouble with the law for running away from 'monial order' (likely the Pelerines) -- she was taken away and never heard from again. Earlier in the books Severian reached far enough back in his memory to remember being with his mother as a babe in a cell of the Matachin tower.

Andre-Driussi has a semi-plausible theory of who Catherine, Severian's mother, is in the books, but before I post it, any guesses?

OK, I can now confirm he does appear again. :) (I'll have more to say about him in a spoiler-filled-if-you've-finished-all-four-books thread).

OK, so confirming our collective belief in "no actual magic here" is this quote from Wolfe in Lexicon Urthus:

"I view The Book of the New Sun, as science fantasy - by which I mean a science-fiction story told with the outlook, the flavor of fantasy. There are no fantasy elements involved -- no "magic" in the fantasy sense. Tehre is time-travel, but that belongs to sf, not fantasy. There are hypnotism, sleight of hand, and a few other things, but those belong to the world of reality, if not the world of science" (Thrust no. 19, winter spring 1983)

Andre-Driussi thinks Decuman was using hypnotism, which I guess I can buy. Typhon's mental shenanigans I'm betting were tied to one of the mind-reading machines -- one that was in the control-room like area in the statue head where he and Severain have their confrontation.

The thinking, mind-reading machines Cyriaca spoke of come fully into play with the ship that transports Severian from the jungle in Citadel. The ship which Triskele and deceased Master Malbrubius emerge from to speak to him. When Severian asks Master Malrubius if Malrubius and Triskele are real, Malbrubus reveals,

"Once you met a woman named Cyriaca, who told you tales of the great thinking machines of the past. There is such a machine on the ship in which we sailed. It has the power to look into your mind...The machine looked among your memories and found us. Our lives in your mind are not so complete as those of Thecla and the old Autarch, but we are there nevertheless, and live while you live. But we are maintained in the physical world by the energies of the machine, and its range is but a few thousand years."

So the ship is essentially unmanned until it finds its intended passenger, and then it generates "aquastors, beings created and sustained by the power of imagination and the concentration of thought" to communicate with its passenger. Compare the idea of aquastors to Severian's thoughts about his possible insanity early in Shadow, when he contemplated his vision of Vodalus in the graveyard being a phantasm his mind created.

Also, the revelation of aquastor technology could mean Severian's earlier visions of Malrubius could have been created by the same ship, or at least by a similar thinking machine.

I could buy that possibility (that he has no idea what was causing the chaos), but even so, there's still the unexplained narrative gap between the chaos erupting and him suddenly being in Saltus with Jonas, split off from the rest of the group. I just finished Citadel, and still don't have a good theory about that.

These are from Andre-Driussi's Lexicon Urthus. I don't have a scanner at home, so unfortunately these are (contrast boosted) photos instead of proper scans.

Goodreads are re-sizing them a bit too, so you click the links below the 1st two for slightly larger versions.

Zooming out, starting with the Citadel:



> Actual image size

Nessus:



> Actual image size

NW corner of the Commonwealth:



Ascia and Commonwealth:



Sorry for the crappy quality - grab Lexicon Urthus for the real things. ;)

Kate wrote: "aldenoneil wrote: "Kate wrote: "yes, we did already do American Gods, waaay back in the heady days of 2007"

Wow, we've really been doing this that long?"
Well Tom and Veronica have been anyway."

I was amazed by this, too! Ah, Ning memories (courtesy of the Wayback Machine)...

Yes! I had that as a fun fact for the podcast, but we never got to it! Here's a quote from an interview:

"LP: Along those lines, is it true you invented the machine that makes Pringles potato chips?

GW: I developed it. I did not invent it. That was done by a German gentlemen whose name I've forgotten for years. I developed the machine that cooks them. He had invented the basic idea, how to make the potato dough, pressing it between two forms, more or less as in a wrap-around, immersing them in hot cooking oil, and so forth and so on. And we were then called in, I was in the engineering development division, and asked to develop mass production equipment to make these chips. And we divided the task into the dough making/dough rolling portion, which was done by Len Hooper, and the cooking portion, which was done by me, and then the pickoff and salting portion, which was done by someone else, and then the can filling/can sealing portion which was done by a man who was almost driven insane by the program. Because he would develop a machine, and he would have it almost ready to go, and they would say "Oh, instead of 300 cans a minute, make it 500 cans a minute." And so he would have to throw out a bunch of stuff, and develop the new machine, and when he got that one about ready, they'd say "make it 700 cans a minute." And they almost put him in a mental hospital. He took his job very seriously and he just about flipped out."

From this interview:
http://replay.waybackmachine.org/2008...

Veronica wrote: "My favorite part of the show was the after-show, in which Josh said "I'm so glad I got you to like Shadow of the Torturer!" to which I responded "I never said I liked it."

Yes, I went off and cried into my fuligin cloak a bit after that.

But Veronica did admit that Shadow made her resentfully curious about finding out the answers to the puzzles it presented. *Wolfe win!*

Sean wrote: "Jlawrence wrote: "My mind-control experiment on Tom and Veronica worked then!! :D "

Only partially. The book after Claw is Who Censored Roger Rabbit? by Gary K. Wolf, and after that after that The Right Stuff by Tom Wolfe. "

Doh! Curses! Stupid faulty ancient-Urth technology!

Ala wrote: "Also, don't list to Tamahome. They said the next book was The Claw of the Conciliator. And that we're changing the name of the group to "Gene Wolfe Appreciation Club"."

My mind-control experiment on Tom and Veronica worked then!! :D

Chris wrote: "Adrienne wrote: "I'm leaning towards that sort of explanation, but I don't think it's an animal claw. I think..."

The reveal that you're thinking of is actually at the end of Chapter XXXI in Citadel. And it's one of my favorite passages in the Book. "


Ah, Adrienne and Chris, I'm looking forward to that, then (I'm nearing the end of Citadel).

In Citadel, ch 18, Severian contemplates some of the same ideas/explanations about the healing power that we've discussed in this thread:

About Triskele, Severian recounts how the dog really did seem dead when he found him, and because of the dog's revival "When I think back on it, it was if I had the Claw already, more than a year before I got it."

On when it doesn't work: "When I had the Claw I found that it would not revive those dead by human acts, though it seemed to heal the man-ape whose hand I had struck off. Dorcas thought it was because I had done it [the striking] myself."

I enjoyed the first as a cheez-imbued Access TV take on the book, and I actually liked the second as a song, except for the keyboard diddlings. ;)

Sorry, it was mostly the 'What happens to Thecla?' part in the first video that I thought could be spoiler-y if you hadn't gotten that far yet. ;)

Ed wrote: "I have a theory.... I actually don't think the Claw is anything. The power emanates from Severian solely. The Claw is a way for Severian to mentally focus his powers that he doesn't even know he has, but it has no power in and of itself."

* SPOILERS, Citadel, ch. 8 - 10 *


There's an exchange between Severian and a Pelerine (the first he tries to tell about the Claw) that could support that idea, Ed. She says,

"'I saw the Claw of the Conciliator when it was elevated for our adoration. It was a great sapphire, as big around as an orichalk...As for its working miraculous cures and even restoring life to the dead, do you think our order would have any sick among us if it were so?...If it had been the sort of thing you believe yourself to have, it would have been precious to everyone, and the autarchs would have wrested it from us long ago.'

'It is a claw--' I began.

'That was only a flaw at the heart of the jewel. The Conciliator was a man, Severian the Lictor, and not a cat or a bird.'"

That's a very intriguing idea -- there is no Claw (there is no spoon!), only a jewel called the Claw, and that jewel completely shattered when Baldanders threw it from the castle roof, and what Severian found near the Claw's fragments was *just* an actual animal claw that happened to be in the same area. Not sure I buy that yet, but a very interesting possibility.

The second Pelerine Severain talks to about the Claw, Ava, also thinks him mad, but, having seen Thecla inhabiting him, takes him and the idea of *some* kind of power at play more seriously. When he laments that he didn't try to bring Thecla back with the Claw when he was at Vodalus' feast, Ava argues that he has brought her back -- that Thecla is alive, co-existing with him in a way very different from behavior of the memory-possessed corpse-eaters she's previously seen.

They also discuss the times healing failed, Severian wondering

"Do you think that if something-some arm of the Conciliator, let us say-could cure human beings, it might nevertheless fail with those who are not human?"

That would explain the non-healing of the artificially-enhanced Jolenta, the half-healing of half-mechanical Jonas, but it still doesn't explain why it didn't work on little Severian (there doesn't seem to be anything yet to suggest the boy wasn't human).