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mantis, blattid: Fabulous work on PEACE! One very minor thing I'll add immediately: the lich and something else that I can't find right now (damnit, I need a searchable text ver…
19 Oct 2000, 16:25
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mantis, blattid: Fabulous work on PEACE! One very minor thing I'll add immediately: the lich and something else that I can't find right now (damnit, I need a searchable text ver…
19 Oct 2000, 16:25
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<vast snippage> Very nice, mantis. On the "dead Den" thesis, I think it is proper to see this as a purgatorial fantasy. In my opinion, the final moments of the book do indicate …
17 Oct 2000, 17:03
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Alga spoke thus: Although I think we're all waiting for the other shoe to drop and reveal what all the Scylla foreshadowing in Short Sun so far is about. But if it turns out to be…
24 Aug 2000, 18:41
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You definitely had the idea before I did--I didn't read Long Sun until well after Exodus had been published (had to dodge spoilers on this list for a while). While I agree with Nu…
24 Aug 2000, 16:26
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Hmmm... Alga's mapping to Origen's ideas is interesting, but I'm not convinced. Universalism doesn't strike me as being particularly Wolfean, given the number especially of short…
22 Aug 2000, 11:17
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I'm with alga--Horn as an inhuma seems pointless and wrong. I may turn out to the wrong, but this seems like another example of Clute's real talent for working out Wolfe's mysteri…
16 Aug 2000, 10:30
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Wolfe's political views are probably not easy to peg. Wolfe talks about his political beliefs in Nutria's interview (http://world.std.com/~pduggan/gwjbj1.html#pol). I would suspe…
16 Aug 2000, 10:16
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Speaking of Crowley and DAEMONOMANIA, would it be a good diea to start reading these now? If they are like the volumes of the NEW SUN books, and suffer in isolation, I'd prefer to…
11 Aug 2000, 11:34
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"Technophobia" or whatever, evidence does not seem to indicate that Wolfe would be better off spending his time surfing the net or reading email. I say, if his net-free state prod…
02 Aug 2000, 16:51
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William said: I agree with this strongly. In my opinion the change stems at least partly from something (fairly) simple: Horn is no longer ruling a city "as Silk." Horn is freed…
01 Aug 2000, 08:46
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Preserving spoiler space (didn't on my last post, sorry) Adam said: Sorry if I gave the impression I think this is the secret. I don't, but I think that your point 4: is someho…
25 Jul 2000, 09:57
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Narwhal said: I think it's the same reason why the Neighbors won't tell Horn about their gods: it's better if he comes to figure it out for himself (with some hints). That the Ne…
25 Jul 2000, 08:29
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Thanks, Robert and William! A side note: I "stole" (with attributions I'm sure no one paid any attention to) much of my high school graduation speech from LITTLE, BIG and Eliot'…
07 Jul 2000, 13:55
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William Ansley said (congratulating Allen): In fact, it seems more than just plausible that Smoky's middle initial doesn't stand for anything--remember that he wears "A Suit of Tr…
27 Jun 2000, 08:18
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Adam spoke: Well, not that I recall, but then in Long Sun many of the more significant "foretold" events don't occur until later books (and some aren't really clear until a second…
22 Jun 2000, 10:00
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Rostrum said: Thanks. That's what I was trying to say. Lots of fiction does this, but seldom are the people in the fiction TRYING to forsee the future and managing to do so--whe…
21 Jun 2000, 15:34
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alga said: Yes. In fact, the "Silk for Calde" graffiti shows up shortly after, and Horn lets us in on the (strong likelyhood anyway) that it wasn't one of the schoolboys who wrot…
20 Jun 2000, 12:02
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(In response to Alga's revelation of the mastermind in Long Sun): Aha. I ruled out Crane because I thought you were speaking more generally--his -initial- meeting with Silk is "a…
19 Jun 2000, 20:30
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Alga said: It certainly seems that Vodalus is at least as opportunistic as anything else--he seems more Nietzschean aristocrat than Ascian ideologue. On the other hand, he does r…
24 May 2000, 17:06
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The idea, as I understand it, isn't that Communism is Pelagianism, rather that it's a kind of secular adaptation of certain ideas with a Pelagian flavor. The key idea is that Pela…
21 May 2000, 13:30
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It would make considerable sense as an intentional linkage. Vodalus, for one thing, is an ally of the Ascians. Ascia is, among other things, Wolfe's version of a Communist state.…
19 May 2000, 11:50
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Perhaps the character in a book reading and the Catholic parable reading aren't incompatible: Chesterton, after all, quite a few times talks about Christianity as being highly in …
19 Apr 2000, 12:07
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Hmmm... This is definitely a possible source of Horn's name, except that the symbolism is the reverse of (ivory true, horn false). To wit (from Fitzgerald's Aeneid translation): …
14 Apr 2000, 12:47
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Cosmicomics is (sort of) science fiction, although definitely not <genre> science fiction. "And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free." John 8:32…
23 Feb 2000, 21:57
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"If On a Winter's Night a Traveler" was translated into English by William Weaver, who also does Eco's translations. It's my favorite Calvino book-- probably because it's a tribut…
22 Feb 2000, 10:04
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I'm sure Wolfe's come across Borges references to Swedenborg, and perhaps read some--but really the idea of dead protagonists (from "The Other Dead Man", PEACE, etc.) is not necess…
11 Feb 2000, 13:18
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Dennis G. Berdanis asked some questions, I think I can answer a few: Hard to say what precisely caused it--however, the idea is not new to Wolfe-- "In Looking Glass Castle" and "M…
06 Feb 2000, 11:03
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Dave Langford said: Thank goodness--I just haven't read the Covenant books in so long that my memory of the details is slowly eroding. This lessens the spooky resemblance conside…
31 Jan 2000, 12:35
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Thanks, but oops--I may have slandered Dozois if that's how it came across-- unless he's spoken in another forum, I'm referring to his comments in the intro. to whatever Year's Bes…
30 Jan 2000, 16:09
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<snipping Nutria's nice analysis> One thing--I think the twins are not necessarily "American white girls"-- isn't their father, the tennis player, Mediterranean? My copy is at ho…
28 Jan 2000, 12:47
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Ah, but it's always been my opinion (and I'm fairly sure I've read somewhere an essay by someone agreeing with it) that Amis, while falsely accused of "sexism," could be quite righ…
28 Jan 2000, 12:34
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In fact, thinking about this--doesn't Severian? Horn? Silk? someone somewhere say "we all destroy what we love best." THIS is the sense in which Emory kills the coyote and his s…
24 Jan 2000, 18:39
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Ah, we're all using a very loose interpretation of "kill" (at least I am, and assume Swanwick, mantis are doing the same) here. Emory's LOVE for the coyote, trying to tame it, slo…
24 Jan 2000, 17:57
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Hmmm... Yeah, I caught the Tamar reference--I hadn't thought of the daughter-of-the-future possibility--but this is a clone of a step-daughter if so, which IMO makes Emory conside…
21 Jan 2000, 17:07
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Allan Lloyd said: Hmmm... Not for me. The behavior of the twins convinced me that the accusations were false--since they (unless, as John Kessel has proposed, the story is a "u…
21 Jan 2000, 12:42
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I also thought it was just Mucor possessing the fish at first--although Horn, who knows about Mucor, ignores this possibility, and there are the mysterious references to someone el…
21 Jan 2000, 12:16
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alga said: True. I doubt we have enough to figure out the whole secret (or even the key). However, Wolfe is also good for sticking clues to Big Secrets early in the text and then…
20 Jan 2000, 10:01
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He's definitely in _Jurgen_ (I haven't actually read _Jurgen_ or any other Cabell, but I was told this long ago by someone who did their Master's Thesis on Cabell when they notice…
18 Jan 2000, 13:18
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And only with Wolfe would there be considerable argument about WHICH of his stories are, in fact, ghost stories, and who's haunting who. Question re: "The Ziggurat" When Emery is…
16 Jan 2000, 10:48
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So far, although I just finished "And When They Appear," I think this collection is good but grim, even for Wolfe--who does not tend to be cheery at short lengths. I've read "The …
12 Jan 2000, 12:49
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OK. I will agree that this thread has degenerated to that point (as it did last time), but I've got to elaborate on what I said above. First of all, my evidence would consist of …
25 Nov 1999, 11:47
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I'll give it a shot. Nutria's suggestion about Sev's ho-hum career as Conciliator being remembered because it reminded humanity of an earlier and considerably more significant Con…
23 Nov 1999, 11:32
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But Ori, as I pointed out, I read BOTNS when I didn't know anything about Wolfe (other than, from having stumbled across "The Fifth Head of Cerberus" novella in an anthology, that …
23 Nov 1999, 11:18
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Well, I like to think it's more complex than that--we sure were a pain to have around, apparently, but the hieros (IMO) like us enough to do us a favor in spite of all. I think th…
20 Nov 1999, 22:01
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Ori: Ok, it's not that we're reading Chapter 34 differently, as far as what it says. It's that the meaning "behind" those things is something we approach very differently. First …
20 Nov 1999, 19:18
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Well, you can interpret BOTNS in this manner, but I think you've failed to provide an argument that convinces those who believe Wolfe succeeded in doing what he set out to do that …
20 Nov 1999, 15:46
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Re: Noah Hmmm... It may not be that universal a flood--there are clearly islands and survivors. In fact, I would guess it's returning coastlines to where they are in our day--ma…
19 Nov 1999, 12:24
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(All re: Roy's post) This interpretation of BOTNS can be supported from the text, with a lot of work, but I strongly disagree with it. It seems to me that you're seeing smalland…
17 Nov 1999, 12:57
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One thing it made me think of was the Venus de Milo, especially re: the story about her arms in PEACE. Perhaps Mother arranged for her to lose her arm, knowing this would make Hor…
15 Nov 1999, 12:09
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