Well, each one stands alone, especially BotNS, but Long and Short is kind of like the First and Second Chrons (not to mention, I think Short Sun would've just about fried my brain if I hadn't read Long first).
Ok, some very mild spoilers to kind of explain it.
***spoiler***
In BotNS, Severian encounters the tyrant Typhon. I won't say how, since Typhon was alive millenia before Severian was born. In Typhon's time, much of the ancient technology that's no longer of much use or much understood in Severian's is still around. Typhon apparently understood the situation Urth would be facing in a few thousand years with the sun dying out. So he sends a giant craft into space to find another planet to colonize.
Long Sun takes place on this craft thousands of years after Typhon. Its inhabitants don't really know who Typhon is/was. Much like Urth, it's falling apart and people don't really understand the technology.
Short Sun takes place on the planet that the craft is supposed to colonize (actually, there are two planets, Blue and Green). There are a few references/connections to New Sun here, but it would be impossible to explain. Wolfe also published one or two short stories with similar connections.
________________ I wanna feel the metamorphosis and cleansing I've endured within my shadow. Change is coming. Now is my time. Listen to my muscle memory. Contemplate what I've been clinging to. -Tool, "Forty-Six & Two" <i></i>
|