(urth) TEOTNS

maru marudubshinki at gmail.com
Mon Apr 4 19:39:10 PDT 2005


I finally bought Urth o' the New Sun, and have been
carefully re-reading it.

Aside from the murky issues of just what Severian is at this point
or what's up with the time travelling or the Increate, or how the whole
Kabbalistic scheme works, I want to clear something up:

Sev, at the begining, tosses his Book of the New Sun (our BOTNS as well)
toward a 'new universe', when the ship is apparently floating on the stream
betwixt Briah and Yesod.  Is that the explanation for the 'translator's 
notes'
in our BOTNS?  Cause they always confused me otherwise.

Another thing: It seems clear to me, from what Apheta says about how there
were two possibilites for Urth/Ushas (another thing: Is there a special 
significance
to that name? I do not recognize it at all.), with each having a certain 
possibility/
chance-of-coming-into-being,
but each nevertheless reachs back into the fixed past whether through 
Sev's premature
access to New Sun powers, or Master Ash.  So, in 4-d space, each future 
exists.  We know
further that the ship can navigate not just in 3-d, nor in universe-d, 
but it also moves about
in time, which suggests that it should 'land' in multiple future 
universes.  But, as far as I can
tell, it never does. Why not? or what did I miss?

~Maru



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