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OTOH, this could also be Severian speaking in terms appropriate to the audience, in line with Catholic views of Biblical language. That is, it would be easier for them to understa…
16 Jul 2002, 16:31
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Do you mean upload? Iirc, it was pretty explicitly stated that Pig is possessed by Silk, and the only way the "gods" can possess humans is through eye contact. I don't think ther…
16 Jul 2002, 16:31
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No, QED combines special relativity and quantum mechanics. The problem of reconciling general relativity with quantum mechanics is still unsolved. --Adam…
12 Jun 2002, 15:49
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[snip] So in every universe, there is a figure who is regarded as a sacrificed God-become-man, but only one of these universes has it right? In that case, how do we know that we'…
12 Jun 2002, 03:30
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Textual and theological difficulties aside, I really don't like this idea. I won't say it ruins the books for me, but it does detract substantially from their sense of wonder and t…
11 Jun 2002, 14:01
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Do we know that the Theanthropos is the "original Conciliator"? It's been a long time since I read the books, but my impression had always been that Severian was the one and only …
11 Jun 2002, 14:01
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Of course, the hieros do plan to wipe out 99.9% of Urth's population. But Wolfe may be taking the "Live Free or Die" view (not to mention the various reasons why this mass murder …
11 Jun 2002, 14:01
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[snip] Hmm, I don't actually recall people making these complaints about 5HC in the recent discussion. The most I remember is some people saying they didn't really see the connec…
02 Jun 2002, 14:10
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Though I myself have spoken as though he was, Silkhorn's no saint. He's a good man (at least we're told so, and I suppose the sententious advice he endlessly dispenses means we're…
01 Jun 2002, 14:11
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How does this square with your original argument that the inhumi's tragedy was that they were incapable by nature of being other than evil, and that if they were just "humans in dr…
30 May 2002, 13:57
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For a human to be killed by smallpox is a great evil. But we don't regard smallpox viruses as evildoers, because they are incapable of moral thought. Philosphical antelopes would …
30 May 2002, 13:57
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Actually, the initial point of this thread was my objection to what I perceived the Short Sun books to be saying about colonialism. And I never said anything about "inbuilt nature…
30 May 2002, 13:57
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That comment struck me as strange. The idea seemed to be that if two books are set in the same universe and the protagonists can possibly meet, they have to do so (as if Balzac we…
30 May 2002, 13:57
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Yes, I remembered that post. I reread it the other day, and it's a good one. Yes, this was another of the things that provoked me to articulate my dissatisfaction. Of course, …
28 May 2002, 18:13
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It was specifically the view of relations between groups as an evolutionary struggle to the death that I denied was "reality." But no, I don't believe that love will conquer all. …
27 May 2002, 13:50
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I don't recall Quetzal well, but his attempt to stick to beef tea might well have been in order to avoid doing things that might get him caught, rather than out of compassion for h…
26 May 2002, 13:56
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I did remember that there were people who disliked TBOTSS. It was (and is) my impression that they are in the minority, at least among those who have spoken up on this list. And …
25 May 2002, 14:42
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I'm not sure the contrast between the two is as great as you make out; see below. While Horn may not have the miraculous powers of Sev (though he has weird talents of his own), I …
24 May 2002, 14:30
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To be sure. I don't regard that view of relations between groups to be "reality," though. But according to some historians (e. g. Joan Peters), the Palestinians were not displace…
24 May 2002, 14:30
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When I read alga's statement that the inhumi were demons, my first thought was Green = Hell, Blue = Purgatory, Whorl = Heaven. (I'm sure this must have been mentioned before.) Bu…
23 May 2002, 14:30
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It's not just the treatment of the inhumi; the more I think about TBOTSS, the less I like it. To be sure, there's a lot of good stuff in it, and I myself have tried to make excuse…
23 May 2002, 14:30
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A psychological inability to do something can be just as real, and just as resistant to being overcome by force, as a physical inability. In fact Dollo's law refers not to organs …
23 May 2002, 14:30
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The OED gives as one meaning of "tie" for a dog and a bitch to be linked during copulation. But it's still strange. Marsch is an anthropologist; you'd expect him to have read abo…
22 May 2002, 15:05
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on 5/21/02 2:51 AM, Andy Robertson at andywrobertson at clara.co.uk wrote: (I'll refrain from comment upon hartshorn's excursus into real-world politics.) I don't deny that within t…
22 May 2002, 15:05
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Well, the books themselves contain doubts. And I still haven't seen a convincing explanation of why, if we are to take the Annese's existence for granted, there is not one single …
22 May 2002, 15:04
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Paging through my old messages, I came across the following year-old post by Andy Robertson: I've just consulted my copy of 5HC, and there's nothing in that passage about "binding…
21 May 2002, 02:16
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David Duffy's recent reference to TBOTSS in connection with 5HC made me realize that TBOTSS is, among other things, about colonization, though I haven't really thought of it that w…
21 May 2002, 02:15
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Iirc, these are all from the series of paperback tough-guy mysteries published under Queen's name, but without Ellery as the detective. http://www.hycyber.com/MYST/queen_ellery.ht…
21 May 2002, 02:03
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THE GARDEN BEHIND THE MOON, by Howard Pyle. A peculiar book: the titular garden behind the moon is not heaven, but a place where the souls of "simple" children play temporarily. …
21 May 2002, 01:58
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To pick a nit, 127 (Annese) years is the age of the trees when they were cut down, not when the French first arrived. When I first read your post, I assumed that the observatory w…
20 May 2002, 01:14
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I never bought the theory that Dollo's Law is a coded reference to either the abo's shapeshifting or the prehistoric colonists' evolution. As Jerry Friedman suggested, he only mea…
20 May 2002, 01:14
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Oops--I hadn't noticed this. Sorry, didn't mean to be redundant. Given that: 1) neither the National Union Catalog (hundreds of thick volumes compiling the card catalogs of the …
10 May 2002, 13:46
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This wouldn't account for Victor's "inability" to hold a pen correctly, though, since he received the same instruction all the other children did. Were the Australian aborigines, …
10 May 2002, 13:46
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On p. 255 of the Ace edition, Victor in his cell writes "I know who I believe the Free People to be: I call it Liev's Postpostulate"; but he never says what Liev's Postpostulate is…
10 May 2002, 00:55
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The Kai Lung stories were an early-20th-century series of fantasy stories set in China, written by Ernest Bramah. The characters in them always talk in the flowery, ultra-polite i…
09 May 2002, 18:20
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I don't think the jacket design sucks; I much prefer it to Gahan Wilson's cover art for the tpb, which is completely out of keeping with the book's spirit and is a big fat spoiler,…
09 May 2002, 18:20
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Not the 1911 book, apparently, but THE UNABRIDGED DEVIL'S DICTIONARY (2000) ed. David E. Schultz & S. T. Joshi, iirc. Unfortunately my library's copy is charged out, so I can't ch…
09 May 2002, 14:05
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That would certainly be a prime candidate. The first short novel in it, "Where Have You Been, Sandaliotis," is about forgery and contains a Master Forger. But checking the most l…
08 May 2002, 13:53
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True; in fact, he does so explicitly, in Marsch's notes (157, Ace pb). But that doesn't necessarily mean that the Annese can actually shapeshift. It could indicate that, just as …
08 May 2002, 13:53
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So Wolfe is a Kai Lung fan. I had no idea. I've seen the "princess on a glass mountain" motif twice before: in a novel called THE GLASS MOUNTAIN by Leonard Wolf, which I haven't …
07 May 2002, 21:17
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Also in the opposition between the individualistic Sandwalker and the collectivist Marshmen and Shadow children: note also that Victor calls the mountain-dwelling Annese the Free P…
07 May 2002, 21:17
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To indicate something about Victor's character, perhaps? If the only purpose of "A Story" is to tell us about the prehistoric colonizations and the Shadow Children's shield, then …
07 May 2002, 02:02
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Because that is what Victor would naturally do if he were writing a fiction about the Annese. Presumably because he wants to portray Victor as a good writer of fiction, though a b…
06 May 2002, 03:33
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But what Victor is doing within the world of 5HC is analogous to what Wolfe did in Soldier. There is nothing to suggest that Silk is a fictional character invented by Horn, and su…
05 May 2002, 14:12
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[snip] But Victor's inability to use tools is not only, or even primarily, a matter of manual dexterity. As Jerry Friedman has pointed out, Victor does a number of things requiri…
04 May 2002, 14:21
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But that's what writers of fiction do. The Soldier series must contain dozens of "externally verifiable" details, but we don't conclude that Latro existed. Even if we accept that…
04 May 2002, 14:21
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There is another possible explanation for the strange echoes between V.R.T. and Number Five: that Number Five has written all three parts, not just the first part. He wrote his au…
03 May 2002, 14:13
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This is an interesting bit of info, but it can't be literally true that Victor is one of the Shadow Children: he refers to his mother as one of the Free People (p. 240, Ace pb), wh…
02 May 2002, 15:45
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[snip] Apart from anything else, the OWO states explicitly that the Shadow Children's ancestors arrived in a "starcrosser" -- i.e. a spaceship (p. 125, Ace edition). --Adam…
01 May 2002, 14:13
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I'm one of "those," but I have to admit Wolfe has a point here, at least if you consider only death. The number of people in the 20th century killed by their own governments, or a…
01 May 2002, 14:13
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