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On rereading the relevant passages, I'm inclined to agree with Roy that the dolls are more like toys for children. If Tina was meant to be worshipped, why would she call her owner…
24 Jan 2003, 15:08
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Could you elaborate? It's been a long time since I've read the novel, but I don't recall any indications of this. --Adam…
22 Jan 2003, 14:51
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I have to admit, when I last read TAD (several years ago, at least) it never struck me that Green was lacking in intelligence (or courage, or enterprise). And rereading the confro…
21 Jan 2003, 14:52
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Both these things may not represent traditions indigenous to Otherworld, but bits of our culture that have "leaked" across. Otherworld could have adopted Christmas as a purely sec…
21 Jan 2003, 14:52
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I confess that I'm not quite clear on this. Wolfe's fiction is full of gods and goddesses explicitly identified as such. And in TBOTNS, God is no more "pretending" to be the Incr…
20 Jan 2003, 17:03
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Klamm is a transplant to TAD's universe of Kafka's Klamm, although older. TAD's Klamm is "a crag-faced old man with long, pointed mustaches dyed jet black and cheeks pulled flaccid…
20 Jan 2003, 17:03
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I can't comment on the Graves angle. But my reading of the book, for what it's worth, is that it takes off from a certain view of gender relations which around that time, iirc, ha…
18 Jan 2003, 15:39
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Klamm calls the hero "Herr Kay" because Klamm is a character from Kafka's THE CASTLE, and the protagonist of that book is always referred to as K. I don't know why Klamm says K. "…
16 Jan 2003, 13:54
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You seem to be under a misapprehension. The idea that Wolfe may have been joking is not a "theory" that the anti-"Greeshas" people concocted. Rather, it was introduced to the lis…
29 Dec 2002, 14:58
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[snip] I have no access to Wolfe's motives, of course, but my money is on Wolfe's original comment to you being the joke, for several reasons: 1) While I don't believe Blue is Ur…
28 Dec 2002, 21:06
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I'm curious; what was your epiphany? I had an epiphany of a sort while pondering TAD, but I don't know whether it was the same as yours. --Adam…
21 Dec 2002, 03:17
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I think There Are Doors is Wolfe's most underrated book, but it's undeniably a very strange reading experience. It's probably his most somber book in tone, if not in plot. And if…
21 Dec 2002, 03:17
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This response is way late, but... Having reread the end of FLF (from the man in the duffel coat's speech), I see that I'd gotten the circumstances of Free's death wrong, and that …
16 Dec 2002, 14:55
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I can't share Dan'l's enthusiasm; in fact, I see several strong objections to this scenario, apart from Wolfe's words in the interview. 1) The white hole, iirc, is a conduit of m…
12 Dec 2002, 14:52
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I'm putting in a plug for this recent anthology, which is one of the best original fantasy-sf anthologies I've read. (Most of the stories are original; the few that aren't origina…
11 Dec 2002, 14:22
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Going to Narnia, through whatever door, doesn't magically change children into adults. In TLtWatW, the children spend many years in Narnia and grow to adulthood naturally, though …
02 Dec 2002, 21:12
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[snip] I always took it for granted that the four would become the quadrumvirate of the prediction who, having improved themselves by merging with their past selves, would take po…
30 Nov 2002, 16:04
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Rather than argue religion, I'll stick to the books and ask why, if the Outsider's "love" for humanity is compatible with letting most of the people on Urth die, He doesn't also le…
30 Nov 2002, 04:11
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And that is? If the Outsider loves human beings so much, why doesn't He stop the Hierogrammates from killing almost all of them? And if He's concerned with the salvation of the p…
27 Nov 2002, 03:33
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Here are my questions, from vol. 4 of the archives: 1) Why are there two Whittens (in addition to "Ben Free") in 1983? The younger Whitten (the man in the duffle coat) is there o…
26 Nov 2002, 15:08
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I read in the most recent LOCUS that Crowley has sold a book entitled LUCIFER: LORD BYRON'S UNDISCOVERED NOVEL to William Morrow. Anybody know anything about this? It doesn't sou…
17 Nov 2002, 23:57
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I don't know if anyone has ever commented on it, but I for one had been very struck by the similarity between Latro's depression and Severian's in UotNS. You can add to the list TH…
17 Nov 2002, 14:31
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Not quite. The key line is "the future of the whole establishment turned, as upon less than a hair, on his judgment." (45, hc) It is not Peacock, but the proprietor of the boardi…
07 Nov 2002, 23:36
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I see some problems with this: 1) Did Typhon, then, fail to provide scriptures for his invented religion? If so, why? If not, what happened to them? 2) Iirc, the Writings were a…
07 Nov 2002, 23:36
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I'd forgotten this; which means that the analogy between Pas and the Demiurge, and the case for a gnostic influence on the Long Sun books, are even weaker than I thought. I see no…
06 Nov 2002, 02:41
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Whether or not he makes it in his interviews, it is clearly present in the books. Typhon is the ruler of Urth who built the Whorl; Pas is a copy of Typhon's personality that was d…
06 Nov 2002, 02:41
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I don't know much about Kabbalah (just what I've read in Gerschom Scholem), and don't recall much of the discussions on this list of the topic; but based on what little I do know, …
31 Oct 2002, 17:46
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D'oh! Of course. Thanks. --Adam…
30 Oct 2002, 22:01
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But this is not specific to Gnosticism, but true for any monotheist in a polytheistic world--like Silk. And the Outsider isn't really "outside"; that's just the role assigned him …
29 Oct 2002, 15:03
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The passage actually reads: Aunt Olivia, having untied the blue thread that had held it shut in the basket, peered into a small milk-glass with a lid shaped like a setting hen. …
29 Oct 2002, 01:02
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Perhaps I'm being dense, and it's been several years since I last read TBOTLS; but I don't see any particular connection between the Long Sun books and Gnosticism, either positive …
25 Oct 2002, 15:47
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If he doesn't speak to Weer because of loathing, yes. If, as I and mantis have argued, they just don't have occasion to speak to each other, then it's not so strange, given that w…
20 Oct 2002, 13:48
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For his parents, see below. As for Tilly, Smart couldn't have known that Tilly's relatives would keep him on at the store; he'd have had greater reason to think Tilly's death woul…
20 Oct 2002, 13:48
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[snip] An interesting speculation; but it strikes me as unlikely that, had Weer been in a position to blackmail Smart in his youth, he would have chosen to live in poverty for twe…
18 Oct 2002, 13:17
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A very interesting post, which motivated me to look at those passages again myself. A couple of comments: Do we know that Olivia has a checkbook? I don't know whether a woman li…
20 Sep 2002, 17:09
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I think this was discussed before. In any case, you're almost certainly correct. There's a moderately long discussion of "Suzanne Delage" in vols. 10 and 11 of the Urth archive w…
16 Aug 2002, 14:46
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But we don't know that the other man isn't above average height. All Miss Hadow says about him is that he isn't "really very tall," which still allows for him to be taller than av…
11 Aug 2002, 00:30
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I don't buy this line of reasoning. Wolfe's characters don't stop behaving realistically just because they're in retellings of older tales (as most of his characters seem to be). …
08 Aug 2002, 20:22
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[snip] No, it is clear that there are two photos. I am just questioning why Charlie only mentions sending one photo. Indeed; but then, as I asked in an earlier post, how can the…
08 Aug 2002, 13:38
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To be precise, I was only doubting that the photo Miss Hadow saw was the one Charlie described. Indeed, the photo Charlie says he put in the letter is certainly of Candy. But my s…
07 Aug 2002, 14:16
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In fact, Charlie says that Tom is eighteen. So if the letter is factual, and the picture is indeed of Tom, it must have been taken around the time the letter was written, which is…
06 Aug 2002, 02:32
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I'd always assumed that the photo of the woman was the photo of Candy that Charlie says he is sending, but looking over the passage again, I have my doubts. Weer shows the photos …
03 Aug 2002, 19:07
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on 8/1/02 2:54 PM, Robert Borski at rborski at charter.net wrote: Blattid says that your explanation makes the Doris-is-Weer's-daughter theory plausible to him, but it doesn't to me.…
02 Aug 2002, 19:01
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One of the Ascian's sayings also alludes to shadow imagery: "Behind everything some further thing is found forever; thus the tree behind the bird, stone beneath soil, the sun behin…
02 Aug 2002, 00:20
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Neither are 99.9% of the Commonwealth's population. And do we know that no Ascians survived? If a few people survived the destruction of the Commonwealth, isn't it probable that …
02 Aug 2002, 00:20
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Well, it's not a "folk-etymology" in the sense of being an incorrect etymology; it's a true etymology based upon a false belief (cf. Ash's remarks in TCotA, chap. 16, pp. 121-2 of …
01 Aug 2002, 02:08
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I don't think so; "the book" says that "With the absorption of Europe by Russia and _the British Empire by the United States_ [my emphasis], two of the three existing powers, Euras…
31 Jul 2002, 13:37
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As Nutria said, no need to apologize; it was an interesting discussion. And you're not the only one to hold the Silk-reboot model; in fact, it may be the majority view among those…
19 Jul 2002, 14:50
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This reflects my view that Silk is present in "Horn" (or Silkhorn, the Narrator, or whatever you want to call him) throughout. Hmm, maybe I'd misremembered the earlier debate. Bu…
18 Jul 2002, 14:19
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I've stated my objections to this view before, so I won't repeat myself. But it just occurred to me that this position is also incompatible with the view (which seems to be the maj…
16 Jul 2002, 16:31
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