(urth) planetary problems

[Jordon Flato]

I'm certainly not of a mind to believe the reason the Rajan ends up on Urth
is purely metatextual.  Any metatextual layer in these books must surely be
accompanied by a more direct narrative link.  However, there is certainly a
theme in Long Sun/Short Sun of the power of stories, and the Rajan/Horn
demonstrates that he can enter the stories of others (Fava in her story of
her youth on green(?) and the Grandmother).  The nature of dream travel
seems at once figurative and literal.  However, I feel like it has to have
elements of both, not one or the other necessarily.

I'll admit that when I first read Short Sun I was fully expecting to find
that Green and Blue were Urth and Lune.  I looked hard for evidence to
support that.  I just don't think much of what has been presented is that
compelling.  Mostly because I just don't see the purpose of it, in terms of
the large thematics (and the notion of 'you can't go home again', while a
good thread to follow, is subsumed by much stronger themes, in my opinion,
which makes a theory like matching Urth to Green in order to fulfill the
'can't go home' theme a stretch too far).

Why does the Rajan end up on Urth?  Some people point to the Duke, which is
a likely element, but what about Oreb/Scylla?  Am I completely off base and
misremembering here?  Wouldn't Scylla's desire to return to Urth be a
powerful element of changing course from Green to Urth?  Syclla and the Duke
just seem like such likely and comprehensible (What, in a Wolfe story???)
explanations, that to me pretzling around to find out a way for Urth to be
Green (or Blue!) is unnecessary.

What is the link then between Blue/Green and Urth/Lune?  Well, on a
certainly level, for me, it is mostly thematic.  They left a world destined
to be flooded, and landed on a world post flood (clearly Blue was the
subject of flooding at some point in it's past).  Megatherians on Blue and
Urth seem to have a connection.  To me, it is just i irresistible to
conclude that the Mother is connected with Scylla/Erebus/Abaia and also to
the consciousness contacted by the Cumean.  Is it possible Blue had it's own
version of a Conciliator in the past?  How ironic that if the Cumean was
attempting to contact an old consciousness on Blue, a planet which may have
already seen it's own 'conciliator' facilitated flood, she was doing so in
the presence of Urth's conciliator.  Who's to say that the consciousness
contacted on Blue by the Cumaen (in this unlikely scenario) didn't recognize
that fact, seeing Severian for what he was?  Anyway, that's a riff of
another color.



On Tue, Dec 28, 2010 at 10:03 AM, James Wynn <crushtv at gmail.com> wrote:

>  Okay, there's also "The Island of Doctor Death and Other Stories" as well
> where a character in a short story reads a book of short stories, and they
> all know they are characters in a short story. But if someone is claiming
> that that is what is happening in The Book of the Short Sun, get ready for
> some aesthetic blowback. And I'll be puffing along side them.
>
> u+16b9
>
>
> On 12/28/2010 11:58 AM, Stuart Hamm wrote:
>
>   There certainly are instances of characters jumping between short
> stories..when I first read "Ain't you 'most done" and got how it related to
> "Blueberry Jam" was my GW lightbulb moment.........
>
> --- On *Tue, 12/28/10, Lee Berman <severiansola at hotmail.com><severiansola at hotmail.com>
> * wrote:
>
>
> Antonio Pedro Marques: >Besides the fact that it is *the* probable way a
> travel powered by the
> > mind would work?
>
> This seems right to me. I can't imagine checking star charts and making
> careful mathematical
> calculations before engaging in dream-travel.
>
>
> >James Wynn: Are you saying that the Rajan psychically emplants himself in
> the memories of other
> >people or are you saying he's a meta-fictional character than can travel
> through Wolfe's own novels?
>
> The latter seems like a very cool possibility. I think there may be some
> examples of this in classic
> literature but for some reason all I can think of is R. Daneel Olivaw
> managing to insert his god-like
> presence into three different Asimov universes, tying them together.
>
> I get the sense that Gene Wolfe is more aware of himself as a
> god-like/demiurgical creator of his books than
> Asimov. I'm not as familiar as I should be but I think James Joyce does
> something like this in his work.
>
>
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