(urth) UotNS and how it screws with your head

[Cliff Judge]

The first time I read this book, I was overawed by it, but found it
confusing to the point where I didn't like it much. Second time around, I
find I enjoy it more, but it is clear that it is not quite up to the
standards of the main series. But maddening.

So....for foreplay, Severian and Apheta talk about numinous matters, and she
spends awhile talking about how time flows however they want it to in Yesod,
past can become future, and the future ripples back to the past.

And then they engage in what a couple of Wolfe's characters call the "warm
congress" and Severian says, I entered Yesod, or rather, it enclosed about
me, yada yada, and then he describes his orgasm as this terribly serious
cosmic event, and talks about something that is conceived from the union.
Then he states that what was conceived was himself.

Now as a reader who has just decided that its pretty clear that Dorcas is
his grandmother, Ouen is his father, and btw I like the idea that his mother
is Catherine, of whom a khaibits is slain every year at the Feast of Holy
Katherine, there is something in my brain that really WANTS to take the easy
way out here and say, right what was conceived was "himself" meaning the
actual white fountain that will replenish the sun of Urth.

But part of me is also thinking....yeah there it is, Severian is his own
father.
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