(urth) UotNS and how it screws with your head

[James Wynn]

On 7/13/2010 11:12 AM, Lee Berman wrote:
> Anyway, how the heck are we supposed to draw sensible family trees if they involve
> clones and time travel and shape changing alien beings who can reproduce sexually and
> asexually? With regard to Severian's father, we must ask about Ouen (though I am more interested in Ouen's small, bent father).
>    

Hear! Hear! Don't forget aquastors. Additionally, it is important to 
note (as I do fairly often) that Wolfe can be very free-wheeling when it 
comes to familial titles and associations. Maitre is Number Five's 
father. Silk is Tussah's "son not of his body". In _The Book of the 
Short Sun_ the Rajan various calls Jahlee his daughter and his sister. 
Later he warns his son against giving in to her wiles saying IIRC "she 
could be your sister or your aunt".

I think this deviousness is why people have doubted that Ouen was 
literally Severian's father by seed and intercourse. Or that Dorcas was 
literally Ouen's mother. Let's face it. That option is still open in the 
story. Wolfe stretches the concept of identity to the breaking point. 
Number Five and Maitre are essentially the same, or so we are told by 
Dr. Marsch. Is a "perfect copy" something different from the original? 
The point of _The Fifth Head of Cerberus_ seems to be to cast doubt on 
that. The point of Ossipago's lesson about aquastors seems to be that it 
is not. Wolfe doesn't see Pas as Typhon "sort of" being on the Whorl. To 
him, Typhon IS on the Whorl by another name.

If there were a Silmarillion of the New Sun, I can guarantee there would 
be a movie adaptation of Severian so fast.

u+16b9