(urth) Career of Severian as Conciliator

[Jeff Wilson]

Dan'l Danehy-Oakes wrote:
> On 10/25/06, Dan Rabin <wolfe-lists at danrabin.com> wrote:
> 
>> Could we have the opinions of our knowledgeable Christian
>> contributors on how these two details might reflect religious themes?
> 
> Well, the first thing that comes to my mind is the 'miracle of bilocation,'
> whereby various Catholic saints have been known to appear in two or
> more places at the same time. (The first example I can think of is is
> Padre Pio.)
> 
> Also, Jesus was known to mysteriously disappear from amongst
> crowds and show up somewhere else.
> 
> You've also made me to wonder whether Wolfe, or you, were making
> a slight Heinlein reference:
>> 2. In _Urth_, Severian wonders how many of the guests at the inn
>> where he fights the zombie are him.
> 
> Somehow this made me think of RAH's time-travel classic,
> "All You Zombies--"

There's never more than two of the protagonist at once in "Zombies", and 
"By His Bootstraps" only gets up to three. The earliest mention of mass 
time duplicates I've found so far was a Poul Anderson short.

-- 
Jeff Wilson - jwilson at io.com
< http://www.io.com/~jwilson >