(urth) Corundum of the Claw

[Gerry Quinn]

I think you are reading for too negative a meaning into certain things.  For a start, the New Sun is welcome despite the destruction, which is predicted in advance by various people; it means continuing life on Urth, rather than a slow dying over a few thousand years (Master Ash's future).  He brings not Peace, but a Sword, you might say.

What coming of Christ does Sev ward off?  No Christ is coming to the moribund Urth we meet at the beginning of the story.

- Gerry Quinn



  From: Mr Thalassocrat 

  There, at the end you have it. He has a happy obedience without the least
  tincture of rebellion. He has been put through his tests, and now he is
  taking up the mantle.

  The most interesting question for me is whether this unquestioning acceptance is supposed to be a *good* thing.

   The Claw is only special because it has been soaked in Sev's blood, while he was on the Ship (or at least that's what giant-moth-woman-Morlock-bureaucrat Apheta tells him in UOTNS). The religion of the New Sun only exists because of Sev's actions in "the past". When he prays at the altar of the Pelerines in the lazarette, he finds that he is praying to himself. 

  If you can import a notion from Long Sun/Short Sun, Sev's strivings lead only back to himself, not outside, to the "Outsider".

  And contrast Silk and SilkHorn's enlightenment and experience of the presence of God, with the thoughtless, formless, fundamentally non-intellectual nature of Sev's experience in this quote. Personally, I don't think Wolfe has any time for this kind of mystical experience, separated from the intellect. I read Pirate Freedom as a critique of it - the worthlessness of feeling all holy when it's separated from the conscious will to actually do good stuff. 

  Sev, the avatar of *his* religion, of course ends up responsible for the death of most of the people of Urth, without really thinking about what he's actually doing or having clear sense of why.  

  When you first read New Sun, and see the strange parallels between the life of Christ and Sev's life, it's natural to wonder if it isn't all a little blasphemous, coming from a Christian writer. 

  I think the answer is that Sev's career is indeed a kind of blasphemy. He says to Aphata that he is worried that the Hieros are like the magicians, promising wonders & delivering evil. 

  I think Sev for them serves much the same purpose as the mutilated cock he & little Sev find, before they encounter the magicians. The cock is a piece of apotropaic magic to ward off the coming of the New Sun. I think the Hieros have moulded Sev as a tool to ward off the coming of Christ, in some sense.

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