Physics in The Book of the New Sun

Torture and beyond...

Prior to being tortured, a client may have explained to them the various instruments of torture laying about the examination room as a way to keep their mind off of their impending excruciation.

"'The next one's interesting, I think. We call it Allowin's Necklace. The client is strapped into that chair, and the pad is adjusted against his breastbone. Each breath he draws thereafter tightens the chain, so that the more he breathes, the less breath he can take. In theory it can go on forever, with very shallow breaths and very small tightenings.'"

What is being described here is a mechanical method of torture that kills slowly, in much the same way as a boa constrictor kills its prey. The statement that the torture can theoretically go on forever is not quite correct, assuming that there is a minimum displacement of the chest necessary to draw and exhale a sustaining breath.

However, torture devices which populated the examination room were not restricted to the medieval variety...

There were cables to be wound from one part of the examination room to another, rheostats and magnetic amplifiers to be adjusted. Antique lights like blood-red eyes gleamed on the control panel, and a droning like the song of some huge insect filled the entire chamber. For a few moments, the ancient engine of the tower lived again. One cable was loose, and sparks as blue as burning brandy played about its bronze fittings.
"Lightning," Master Gurloes said as he rammed the loose cable home. "There's another word for it, but I forget. Anyway, the revolutionary here runs by lightning. It's not as if you were going to be struck, or course, Chatelaine. But lightning's the thing that makes it go.

"Severian, push up your handle there until this needle's here." A coil that had been as cold as a snake when I had touched it a moment before was warm now.

The revolutionary torture device is clearly run on electricity. The fact that the electricity is not being used directly to electrocute the client (if you believe the speaker), is a testament to the device's technological sophistication relative to its operators.

Severian notes that a coil has warmed up as the device is turned on. This can easily be explained by assuming there's a certain amount of current running through the coil, which will cause the coil to give off heat proportional to the coil's resistance.

Fuligin, the color which is darker than black...

Throughout the Book of the New Sun, the author refers to the color "fuligin," which is "darker than black." The reader's initial impulse is simply to take the word as a bit of silliness introduced by the author in order to describe darkness in more florid prose. However, the author does impart some meaning to the word.

"All our guild cloaks are voluminous, and this one was more so than most since the brother I had replaced was large of frame. Furthermore, the hue fuligin, which is darker than black, admirably erases all folds, bunchings, and gatherings so far as the eye is concerned, showing only a featureless dark."

In the narrative, what appears to distinguish fuligin from the color black, is that a fuligin surface literally absorbs all light which falls onto it, while black may still reflect light, as we see on most surfaces we call black. This would provide an explanation for the way the hue disguises the folds in the fuligin cloak, which could only be detected by the eye from light reflected off of it.

Strangely enough, there is a technological basis for fuligin presently under development, a metamaterial which absorbs all light that strikes it.