(urth) Problematic element in chronology - Red Giants

[Gerry Quinn]

From: "Sergei SOLOVIEV" <soloviev at irit.fr>
> You say it is not obvious - let me quote Wolfe (from "Return to the 
> Whorl",
> chapter "He took me with him" - written by Hoof -)
>
> "The Red Sun was rising behind us, and the old falling-down city was 
> between
> us and it. It was so big and so dark, like a great big coal buried in 
> ashes.
> You could look right at it , and the whole city was dark against it (...) 
> You could see how big that city was, and it was bigger than I ever 
> imagined (...)
> But against the Red Sun like that, you saw how little the city was,too. 
> This
> is hard to explain. The city was immense. Huge. (...) So it was all so big
> that when you looked at it, it was hard to breathe. But the sun kept 
> rising
> and rising, and Nessus was little."
>
> Severian may be so acquanted to his Red Sun that he does not think it
> anything special. Hoof comes from the planet with ordinary yellow sun,
> and he is immediately impressed. (It is possible, of course, that GW
> didn't think too much about the size of the sun when he wrote TBotNS,
> and decited to be more precise later - but I think this quotation proves
> that he represents the Red Sun as a Red Giant.)

Interesting quote, but I don;t think it really proves anything about the 
size of the sun.  It looks big on the horizon, just as the Moon does.  But 
Hoof hasn't really said anything about its actual apparent size here.

- Gerry Quinn