(urth) Key to the Universe

[DAVID STOCKHOFF]

It's NOT a contemporary painting---it doesn't exist in this universe, as far as anyone here has been able to discover. Therefore, it is a product of Briah in Severian's past.

--- On Fri, 12/17/10, Son of Witz <Sonofwitz at butcherbaker.org> wrote:

From: Son of Witz <Sonofwitz at butcherbaker.org>
Subject: Re: (urth) Key to the Universe
To: "The Urth Mailing List" <urth at lists.urth.net>
Date: Friday, December 17, 2010, 12:52 PM

Third. I've really been chewing over the Apollo moon landing painting.We all seem to take it on face value that it is Neil or Buzz, an obvious nod to the extreme distance of time between Urth and Earth.  But really, the text does not disambiguate this depiction, so we have to admit that it may NOT ACTUALLY be a painting of the Apollo Moon Landing. It may be a photo of an Urth empire astronaut pre-moon forrestation.  Wolfe may be giving us a double mind-fuck!
I used to assume that this painting and a green moon clearly indicated that Earth was in Urth's past, whithin the creation of Briah. I don't think that is a necessary conclusion now.  If a verdant lune is a creation of urthlings, it is conceivable that without their tendings, the moon could go back to being barren, and thus we would see our barren moon despite it once having had a forrest.
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