(urth) Chronology

[James Wynn]

>>> I find the chronology overall very confusing but I'm certain
>>> it is just as GW intended it, because he didn't have any gun to his 
>>> head not to make
>>> it correct....No, I don't think he would introduce brutal 
>>> incoherence into latter works
>>> just because it would be cool to have this or that episode happen. 
>>> And I don't find the
>>> 'it's all different universes' theory satisfying.
>
> Gerry:
> The incoherence of introducing Ymar is not all that brutal if one does 
> not try to closely analyse the story as a realistic history.  Perhaps 
> Wolfe underestimated how hard readers would pluck at the threads. 

I think the problem is Wolfe's answer to the Ymar date question in an 
interview. I suspect he was probably too flippant in giving an answer. I 
doubt he had thought carefully how long it had been since Typhon/Ymar 
autarch (just as --over time, based on interview answers-- the length of 
Time between Severian and Neil Armstrong adjusted in his mind). 
Additionally, we must remember that no one here (who has said so) has 
seen the text of that interview in question. If Mantis has a copy of the 
Thrust issue in question, he has never posted the precise context. He 
might have been working from memory himself.

> The Ymar episode is a cool story, and it may be that Wolfe thought its 
> coolness would outweigh the questions raised by the quick succession 
> of Ymar.  Or perhaps he felt that the rapid succession of Ymar was 
> plausible.  After all, it might not have been all that rapid.  Perhaps 
> Ymar only attained the Autarchy in his fifties, after decades of chaos.

I presumed this was true. And the story of Frog certainly leaves that 
open. Certainly there is a tribulation period between Typhon's 'death' 
and Ymar's rise from the Guild. He's too young otherwise when Severian 
meets him, and he has yet done all the things in the Story of Frog.

>
>> As the girl with snake-arms on the ship in RttW? Or when Scylla 
>> possesses Chenille in LotLS? I think
>> in Chenille she sounds like a haughty young woman, roughly of 
>> Chenille's age. She certainly
>> doesn't sound as young as Cilinia to me. Tartaros does sound older, 
>> wiser and world-weary. Maybe,
>> even in scanned form, he has experienced more pain and sorrow than 
>> Scylla. Perhaps one can mature
>> as a computer program? That is a strange point about Scylla, 
>> certainly.  In her Window she appears as a young girl on the cusp of 
>> womanhood, and Tartaros tells us that the gods appear to us as they 
>> see themselves.  I lean to the view that Tartaros matured, while 
>> Scylla did not, before or after scanning, or both. I don't see why 
>> one should not mature as a computer program.  Most of Wolfe's 
>> computerised people are embodied in humanoid androids of some kind, 
>> and I think there is considerable evidence that they are similar to 
>> people in most ways including the ability to change.  It is probably 
>> more difficult for disembodied programs, and also for god-like 
>> rulers, and Scylla and Tartaros were both - but I would not say it is 
>> impossible.

Right (mostly). As Kypris-in-Chenille said, every time a Whorl god 
possesses a person and is reincorporated, it takes with it something 
from that person. The gods we meet are Typhon's family after centuries 
of this process. We assume that as a person "matures" they become nicer 
and wiser. Sometimes this happens but often (maybe usually) they become 
more extended versions of themselves. And who the gods are inclined to 
possess will determine their evolution as well.

I've mentioned before that during a Wolfe Q&A panel someone said "After 
all, Typhon was sort of on the Whorl as Pas..."
Wolfe quickly jumped in to correct him, "No! Typhon _was_ on the Whorl 
as Pas." In Wolfe's mind, these scans of their personalities _are_ 
duplicates of the originals -- even if, after tinkering and Time, they 
change in different ways.

As, in the Gaiman novel 'American Gods', Norway Odin told Shadow about 
American Odin "He was me, but I am not him."

J.