(urth) Wall of Nessus

[Jerry Friedman]

----- Original Message ----

From: Roy C. Lackey <rclackey at stic.net>
>Gerry Quinn quoted and wrote:
>> > At one point in URTH Sev, going on about the size of the mirrored sails
on
> >> The Ship, said that the Wall was "a few leagues in height and a few
> >> thousand
> >> long" (p-103). Bah! That's a Big Dumb Object.
>>
>> Too big.  I prefer to maintain my original assumption that the Wall is of
>> ordinary height and Severian made a typo.

>It's not a typo. Sev also went on about the Wall's improbable height
>(clouds; the few birds that could fly over it) just as the theater troupe
>got to the gate. The gate itself is like a huge cave in it.

>James Wynn wrote:
>> What would the radius of the city need to be for a wall of that height
> >to disappear beyond the horizon at ground level?

>Mantis made some calculations along these lines, based on scattered comments
>in the books about the Wall's height, in the Wall entry in LU2.
...

He estimated the Wall's height at 3000 feet (taking the flight ceiling for waterfowl to be 4,000 feet).  He didn't mention the quotation from /TUotNS/ about "a few leagues".  Also, he took the radius of the Wall to be 10 leagues according to the map in /Plan(e)t Engineering/, which shows the Citadel at the center of the Wall.  Thus he couldn't reconcile this with Severian's "black line" comment.

With that radius, the circumference of the Wall is about 63 leagues, not "thousands".

What does Severian know about the heights of flying birds?  Part of his education in the Matachin Tower?

Why doesn't any of us have /Plan(e)t Engineering/?  Including me?  Apparently it's also got a map of the Commonwealth.  If Michael Andre-Driussi's map in /LU2/ is based on that, by the way, then Nessus is near the west coast of South America and is therefore not Buenos Aires, and the mountains are not identical to the Andes.

Jerry Friedman