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

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

Adrienne wrote: "Jenny wrote: "Well, I was thinking about it, and I think the claw chooses you."

Oh my god, I will never think of the Claw in the same way. The claaaaaawwwww!"

Hahaha!

"Play CLAW OF THE CONCILIATOR! Insert 2 aes! (Just 1 aes for Seekers of Truth and Penitence)"

Adrienne wrote: "I think there was a line somewhere talking about how they swam between the stars'

Hah, hah.. I just discovered I read that in the first post in the thread about the Undine. I have no idea where in the books it is! I'm still voting for aliens."

It is when the Undine speaks to him in Claw ch. 27:

"Do you think that we, who swim in so many waters-even between the stars-are confined to a single instant?"

So agreed, alien seems likely (or mutants who participated in the lost art of space travel - I get an mental image of undines floating in space, each suspended in a kind of transparent bubble-ship.)

Adrienne wrote: "As for Decuman, we've seen in Shadow that the Revolutionary can mess with your mind. Later on in Citadel (Chapter XXXI), there is a reference to thinking machines (probably advanced computers) that can read your mind. I'd expect there could be technology that exists to make Severian feel as if magic were being used. I'm not sure that I'd expect such a primitive-seeming tribe to be able to use that sort of technology, though."

Ah, excellent examples of mind reading/manipulation earlier in the books! So the precedents are there, but it is still puzzling as to how that tribe is making use of such technology. I could imagine something like such a machine hidden behind the wall of the prison cell where they keep Severian, though.

Adrienne wrote: "I don't remember: is there something in the Urth of the New Sun where Severian feels like he's hanging between two suns?"

I don't remember, either, but I'll look out for that on my re-read.

Yes, Borski's "Swimming with Undines" essay. From what little I read (before fleeing in the face of so many spoilers) I was finding some of it outlandish, but yes, I'll take a full look at it when I finish the series.

Adrienne wrote: "He certainly tells us about Hethor's other attacks - why not here? Maybe Severian had a bigger role here than he wants to mention. Did he accidentally kill some people, who weren't supposed to be executed and therefore shouldn't have been killed?"

Hmm, yeah, that could be a possibility. I'll be on the lookout for any hints as I finish this re-read.

I now believe that all news about fantasy and science fiction authors should be delivered in this format.

I now have a theory about what happened at the Gate of Nessus!


*** SPOILERS, Sword, ch. 15 ***



When Agia reveals to Severian that Hethor is the "old man" who wants to marry her & that she persuaded him to send his various smuggled-in extraterrestrial pets after Severian, I decided the commotion at Nessus could have been the first time Hethor loosed some of his beasties after Severian. It being his first attempt, he did it sloppily and in too public a place and it caused a panic and the soliders got involved, etc. His following attempts are somewhat more strategically planned (though his Salamander still gains a lot of attention for burning many the wrong target in Thrax!).

That still wouldn't explain why Severian omits the tale of what happened at the Gate, however.

Adrienne wrote: "I've been thinking about why the Claw glows sometimes, but not others. Maybe it's related to why it sometimes "works" and sometimes doesn't? Urth gave me some ideas about why it might be glowing, but not about why it only glows sometimes. ..."

I have a sketchy idea that the times it fails to heal someone is when that person's death or illness was caused by technology -- for instance it failed on little Severian and Jolenta. Little Severian was killed by some kind of force field around Typhon's statue's ring. With Jolenta, while she was also bitten by some kind of bat, I got the feeling that her death was more due to the gradual failing of the mechanical scaffolding Dr Talos had implanted in her to "goddessify" her. Whereas the times it worked -- Jonas and the uhlan had been attacked by Hethor's creatures, the little boy and girl in Thrax were simply sick, etc.

I don't know if that's consistent with the all the times it works/fails, though.

Fascinating. The fact that Taxi star Marilu Henner has hyperthymesia summons up 70's sitcom-watching memories of my own. :)

I agree that Severian's memory seems more like the eidetic variety, since hyperthymesia looks like it leans more towards total recall of any facts, while eidetic leans towards precise recall of images, sensations -- the way Severian can get lost in a memory when he's recalling it.

Typhon I could buy as advanced if grotesque bio-engineering (though I had wonder - if his experts first offered to transfer his brain to an entirely diffrent skull, and he refused because he wanted to retain the "face that people obey" -- I guess the tech of plastic surgery has been totally lost?).

The undines definitely struck me as pure fantasy the first time I read, but I now I buy them as either aliens, or genetic engineering experiments that use the weightlessness of water/space to maintain their immense size. Abaia -- not sure yet since there's been no direct contact in my re-read yet.

The mental spell Decuman casts seems the most fantasy-like so far, just because there seemed no nearby tech to rely on -- at least none yet revealed. But I too would like to be able to relate everything back to a science-fiction explanation.

There's discussion in the What is the Claw thread about the miracles it seems to perform -- is it an example of hyper-advanced tech or could it be something else?

Another case that seems to push the "it's all got a rational, technological explanation" boundary -- Severian's duel with Decuman (ch. 21). Severian assumes that the tribe that's captured him is faking their boasts of dark-magic mastery, but is thrown off guard when he feels truly mentally invaded and partially paralyzed by the "spell" Decuman seems to cast (which is only broken thanks to one of Hethor's beasties breaking into the room).

Likewise, when Typhon attempted to get Severian to swear allegiance to him, Severian felt "A snare was closing beside which Decuman's net was a primitive first attempt. This one was so subtle I scarcely knew it was there, and yet I sensed that every strand was of hard-drawn steel."

So we seem to have mental powers in play in both the cases of Decuman and Typhon that go beyond just psychological manipulation. Typhon *also* says he has "sent my thought into the far places" and thus learned of Abaia and the other monstrous powers in the sea.

I guess you could just postulate that psionic powers were evolved/developed at some point of Urth's past and some retain knowledge of how to use them. Or likewise, maybe there's long-ago developed nano-tech swimming in the blood and brains of all Urthians (that is passed on with every birth) and some know how to manipulate these. But unlike other initially-hidden technological elements in the story, there don't seem to be many hints of either of those - have you noticed any?

Do you think these instances are just very advanced/obscure technologies, or do you think Wolfe could be introducing some truly metaphysical / magical elements?

That's awesome if Abercrombie was making a nod to Severian's sword there.

I found the passage where Severian puts forth an argument for torture and the guild's "justice" - it's in ch. 3 of Sword. More on it below...


**** SPOILERS, Sword, ch. 3 - 11 ****



It's when Dorcas is depressed and silent and he thinks she's come to despise him and his profession, and possibly despise herself for loving him. So he attempts to give an philosophical defense for his guild's practices.

What's interesting is not only how at odds this argument is with his mercy towards Thecla, but how shortly after making this argument he betrays the guild *again* by refusing to kill Cyriaca. (We could possibly throw in there his freeing of Agia when he had her trapped, too -- though she was not charged guilty by his society's laws, she had tried to kill and will most likely try again).

I forgot to mention how much I liked the Undine's suggestion that Baldanders is one of her kind -- that basically he's a kid who will eventually grow so large that he too will have to take to the sea to avoid being crushed by gravity.

Ed wrote: "Gee, I would have said that Patera Silk philosophizes the most of all of Gene Wolfe's protagonists, but you seem to be making a distinction between thoughtfulness and "abstract and generalized musing" which I have difficulty making. As for Wolfe's short stories, I find them to be often message-driven and about something philosophically; "

Well, I think the distinction is how it shows up in the narrative directly. Many of Wolfe's characters are thoughtful, and agreed, his stories often have strong philosophical themes to them, but Severian is the only Wolfe character I've met so far (again, admitting I've read very little of his other novels) who will stop in the middle of the narrative to expound philosophically at great length on the abstract meaning of something. It's the difference, from how I remember it, of Silk thoughtfully analyzing some practical aspect of his situation and making a decision based on it, and Severian *pausing* the narrative to give an extensive aside on what he sees as a abstract, general truth that's been illustrated by something he's just seen. An example I just read would be when Severian leaves a cape in a shepherd's hut in payment for the absent shepherd's food he's just eaten, and he gives a seven-paragraph aside of musings about the issue of free-will vs. a creator deity's pre-ordained plan, the origin of the universe, the nature of time, the existence or non-existence of a creator deity, and how if time is infinite angels might exist even if a creator deity doesn't.

I totally agree that philosophical themes are strong in all of Wolfe's works I've read. But Severian's first-person narration in the New Sun seems to have a stronger degree of direct philosophical asides than other Wolfe I've read, and is a strong component of both Severian's personality and the feel of the entire book. I didn't get that feel from Book of the Long Sun, largely I think because we're not always in Silk's head like we are in Severian's -- but maybe there's more of it than I remember. Maybe we could say both characters are philosophical, but it's only in Severian that we really get directly exposed to the philosophizing?

So I didn't mean to suggest that Wolfe's other works are less philosophical, just that the technique of having a character/narrator directly interrupt the story to philosophize to the reader seems unique to (or at least more prominent in) the New Sun. But I may think differently after I read Latro, Peace and other Wolfe I plan to get to!

Ah, nice point about Triskele! That'd be very interesting if it does end up being just a placebo object for Severian awakening powers of his own, I'm still not sure yet.

Whether it comes from Severian or the Claw, time-manipulation being the main power in play (as Dorcas theorizes) would seem to pull together various time-travel aspects of the book nicely, and would obviate the need for other technological explanations (the healings are always "bending" time back to before the injury/death, Jonas wasn't rebooted, but just brought to a point before he was wounded, etc).

It's also interesting to contemplate if the times the Claw *doesn't work* have any pattern to them.

I remember hardly anything from The Urth of the New Sun, including the additional details on Apu-Punchau, so I'll look forward to re-reading that, but my idea that he might be linked to the Conciliator is that the Conciliator is also called the "New Sun" and associated with the sun's rebirth -- and Apu-Punchau ("Head of the Day") is another name for Inti, the Inca sun god.

Extra Wolfeian discussion is totally valid here, I think. :) I've had the Latro books on my shelves for many years and have been very interested in their take on memory. With my various 2011 reading goals, they'll probably still have to wait til next year though!

Ed wrote: May I suggest that, assuming it's possible, the name of this discussion forum be changed from "Shadow & Claw" to "The Book of the New Sun"? Perhaps Josh or Tom or Veronica have the ability to do that.

I don't have that ability, but I'll ask Tom and Veronica if they'd like to make that change.

You may have a different answer if you've read even further than ch. 11 of Sword, but this seems a good place to ask the question, since this chapter is the first time the characters explicitly discuss what the Claw does.

Dorcas reveals she thinks the Claw brought her back from death when Severian fell in the lake (she's just coughed up the metal shots used to weigh the bodies down in the water). Severian thinks she wasn't dead -- perhaps suspended like we've discussed elsewhere.

But Dorcas goes on to say, "this Conciliator of yours who came so long ago was an adventurer from one of the ancient races who outlived the universal death...And I believe he brought with him something that had the same power over time that Father Inire's mirrors are said to have over distance...that gem of yours."

She continues, "Severain, when you brought the uhlan back to life it was because the Claw twisted time for him to the point at which he still lived. When you half healed your friend's wounds, it was because it bent the moment to one when they would be nearly healed."

If the Claw is a time-manipulation device, it would fit in with it also enabling Severian and Agia's time travel to what seems to be our era in the Jungle Hut scene in Shadow, and enhancing the summoning of Apu-Punchau at the end of Claw, among other things.

But if so:

-- Other people, surely Claw-less, were known to also see visions when visiting the Botanical Gardens. Maybe something about the Gardens independently involves seeing into the past, but Severian's possession of the Claw enhanced it?

-- Did the claw alone summon Apu-Punchau? Or rather, since Apu-Punchau is described as a vivimancer who actually calls the living to him, in order to exist again, did Apu-Punchau use the Claw to help himself manifest? And if so, was the witches' ritual of contact the ancient mind on another planet (in order to see Apu-Punchau) a sham?

-- Speaking of Apu-Punchau, what did you think of Severian seeing Hildegrin attack Apu-Punchau, and then suddenly Severian felt as if he himself was Apu-Punchau, struggling with Hildegrin? Could Apu-Punchau be connected to the Conciliator, and that be the reason Hildegrin wanted to kill Apu-Punchau? (Ie, even though it's unclear to me whether Hildegrin really serves the Autarch or Vodalus, it seems both the Autarch and Vodalus would oppose the coming of the New Sun, and thus would fear and be enemies of the Conciliator).

What do you think about the Claw at this point?

Adrienne wrote: "Relatedly, I do think it's interesting that he didn't explicitly talk about sleeping with Thecla, but he did with other women."

Yeah, we have a handful of times Severian summons up an image of an intimate moment with Thecla (I just read another in Sword), but he never directly talks about sleeping with her. Did he possibly sleep with her and not the others, or vice versa, or does he simply think and feel about her differently?

Ed wrote: "Severian's "tendency to philosophize in the middle of the narrative" is actually Gene Wolfe's, I think. Wolfe can't resist doing it in most every novel he's written. Try not to hold it against Seve..."

Hm, there many Wolfe novels I haven't read yet, but Book of the Long Sun (which I never finished) is at least told in a much more straightforward way and its protagonist Father Silk, while thoughtful, didn't seem prone to the kind of abstract and generalized musing that Severian is (at least from what Wolfe shows of Silk's thought - being in the 3rd person makes a big difference). It also doesn't seem to be a tendency in Wolfe's short stories (which I *have* read a lot of), so I have always kind of associated that trait with Severian. But it doesn't bother me, I find it pretty well balanced with the narrative and interesting, for what it reveals about the world, Severian's personality, etc.

OK! Sword & Citadel threads ahoy!

Ed wrote: "Jlawrence wrote: 'One annoyance was how he claims he falls in love with every one of the main female characters (in different ways, granted, but come on).'

I never found that to be annoying per se. For Severian, it seems in-character and believable. Remember he grew up in the equivalent of a monastery. His interactions with women have been very limited up until he left the Tower. "

Ah, that's a very good mitigating point.

The older Severian writing the story does occasionally interject with comments like "as much as a young boy could feel such a thing", too (maybe I wanted a few more of those?).

That is incredibly awesome! It is kinda weird that only 'Claw' appears on the chart instead of just 'Book of the New Sun', but the thing as a whole is amazing. I almost want to print it out.

Yes, much head-tilted gazing occurring.