(urth) Typhon's nature

[Jerry Friedman]

> From: Lee Berman <severiansola at hotmail.com>

>> Jerry Friedman: The mandragora tells Severian that Sev's continued 
> psychic shrieking 
>> from being abandoned as an infant inhibits his telepathy, which is along the 
> same lines 
>> but not the same.)  Maybe someone did a little surgery on Mucor's embryo 
> to disable the 
>> part of the brain that would have inhibited her powers. Anyway, I don't 
>> see that it matters to the story.
> 
> I think the best answer is whatever gives you that "click" sense of 
> just feeling right. If 
> the surgery hypothesis does that, you should go with that.

It might be churlish of me to disagree when you're being so agreeable, but you've put your finger on the difference between our styles of interpretation.  None of the hypotheses gives me that "click" sense, and I see no reason to go with one in particular.  The best answer for me is to accept that we don't know, except that Crane tells us controlled conception was involved and Silkhorn (who may have additional sources of information) repeats it.

> For me, the seeds of the entire Sun series can be found in Fifth Head of 
> Cerberus: the 
> uploading of human intelligence to machines, the dead end nature of cloning, the 
> 
> mystery of identity and family, the origin of myth, the relationship of the 
> faerie/divine
> world with our "reality" etc.

Certainly those are among Wolfe's repeated interests.

> Of the three sections of the Sun series I am least familiar with Long Sun. But 
> given the 
> themes I think Wolfe established in 5HoC, I tend to gravitate toward genetics 
> and cloning
> as explanations which tie into the larger picture Wolfe is trying to paint. I 
> get the 
> impression Wolfe is trying to make philosophical points with all that he writes, 
> though I'm not sure all his fans would agree.                           

I'd say "with some of what he writes".

Steven Brust apparently says he got his method from Wolfe: it's "And now, I'm going to tell you something really cool."

http://books.google.com/books?id=hHbWswMuvOgC&pg=PA397

Does anyone know what the source of that might be?

Of course, for Wolfe (and most of us), philosophy can be really cool.

Jerry Friedman