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Originally Posted by EatingPie
I actually enjoyed the Torturer books, but Woolfe has a very strange style of writing. He also wrote a book about Greek times, presuming the gods were real IIRC. I kept thinking it was the torturer character in Greece.
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It's really only SF on a technicality. In terms of setting/action (sword and sorcerer... er... torturer!) it fits more squarely in a fantasy genre. Well, until he boards the space ship in the second series... but then it becomes a lot less coherent anyway.
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No, it's clearly SF from early on. We learn quickly that Severian lives in a world whose gear is basically scavenged from the trash heaps of history. A lot of what is in common use is literally excavated in what are effectively archaeological digs through the remains of civilizations centuries or millennia extinct.
We also learn that humanity had once traveled in space, and that characters like Father Inire are hierodules - aliens from elsewhere residing on Earth.
Call it science fantasy if you like, but despite the tropes, it's not really pure fantasy. Trying to claim it for fantasy is like making the same claim for Anne McCaffrey's Pern series if you come in in the middle. Pern is a lost colony whose settlers got there by starship, and the dragons are products of genetic engineering on the indigenous fire lizards. But come to the books in the middle, and you see a roughly medieval society with fire breathing dragons, don't see the back story, and say "A ha! Fantasy! I recognize it by the tropes!" Er, no...
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Similarly, Robert Jordan is considered fantasy, but his work takes place in a different universe, and is in a world that had technology, but lost it.
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Yes. There are hints in early books that our time is the age
before the Age of Wonders, with dim legends of the nations of Merk and Mosc dueling with lances of fire.
There are also hints scattered in the books that man had even traveled in space. It did indeed have high technology, save that the One Power was the energy source.
One of the things Rand Al Thor has been doing in recent books is encouraging the development of other energy sources besides the One Power, like steam powered vehicles. One interesting resolution for the series would be for Al Thor to solve the problems inherent in the One Power by blocking it. I suspect he has the ability to make the entire world the equivalent of on of the Ogier steadings, when the True Source cannot be sensed.
"Okay, the Great Lord of the Dark has been stuffed back into his prison and can't get out to touch the world. And now
nobody can channel. I've blocked access to the True Source. You'll have to find other sources of power for what you want to do..."
That would well and truly break the world beyond the worst nightmares of the Aes Sedai in Tar Valon. (I've felt for some time they've erred in taking prophecies about the Dragon Reborn "breaking the world" too literally, and he's already changed things beyond recognition.)
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Dennis