(urth) Standard Wolfean Riddle

[Gerry Quinn]

From: "Ryan Dunn" <ryan at liftingfaces.com>

> - Gene doesn't provide dates, and neither does Severian. They certainly 
> don't provide dates representing the distance from our real Earth. Do we 
> assume that a painting of a moon man will live in a picture gallery for 
> tens of thousands of years, but a painting of Jesus Christ would not? Or 
> that a spaceship from the 1960's would still be standing and inhabited by 
> a Guild of Torturers tens of thousands of years into the future?

The spacecraft are not from the '60s.    As for the picture, there may be 
many pictures of Jesus, for all we know.

>> Christ is supposed to come back in the end, why wouldn't his name come up
>> even once in any of the five volumes set in this world?
>
> That's a good point. He certainly vanished from common knowledge - as did
> ebrtything that pertains to our history, even though bits are there as a
> vague memory.

> - See below regarding vague memories and the use of ancient Saint names. 
> By that logic, there should be a character in the text named Jesus, in 
> honor of the savior who forgave all of humanity for their sins on the 
> orders of his Father, the Increate.

Ah Lah is mentioned in BotLS, as "a forgotten god, perhaps another name for 
the Outsider".

>> We get plenty of Saint names.
>
> Not even one. The only memory of a saint that we get is Holy Katharine. I
> see no St Dorcas in the text.

> - Even more to my point. These saint names are used, however obscure they 
> might be. And yet you claim that the Urthian society has long since 
> forgotten the name of Jesus? Most of the Catholics I know wouldn't know 
> half the saint names Wolfe uses in his text.

In Ireland people are often named after saints, but never after Jesus.

- Gerry Quinn