Posted from 6 addresses as thalassocrat, Andrew Bollen, Mr Thalassocrat, Ed EDson
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Excellent! I was wondering. That's a fantastic obit, mentioned in the thread: https://www.theringer.com/2019/4/25/18515675/gene-wolfe-science-fiction-author…
26 Apr 2019, 13:27
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A shame. Thanks, Gene Wolfe, for many, many hours of pleasure. A little thing I wrote somewhere else: *One of my favourite authors. A conservative mid-Western Catholic, in …
16 Apr 2019, 01:19
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Doh! Now I'm going to spend far too much time wondering if there are any other Trollope references in PEACE that I've missed. I've never really gotten into short stories, even Wo…
29 Apr 2015, 23:28
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Last week saw the 200th anniversary of the birth of Anthony Trollope, probably not a big anniversary for most Wolfe readers, given that on most measures the two are about as differ…
29 Apr 2015, 16:32
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Wholehearted agreement! Also: I think the most fruitful approach to Wolfe is via considerations of character and ethics. Why did this character do this or that; and did he or she …
07 Oct 2014, 03:29
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jbatach wrote: As for "Gene," that's derived from Aunt Jeannine's name. Her brother, Number Five's father, would be Jean, and so that would also be Number Five's name ... but if …
02 Sep 2014, 00:02
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Gerry wrote: *"You can argue that the Old Wise One is confused at one point as to which of the two peoples in the story is which, but it can be explained in a straightforw…
21 Aug 2014, 13:25
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If the troll in Weer's walled-garden dream is indeed linked to gnome-prince Peacock, then its interesting to think about why it has "fallen from his little pedestal". Maybe there'…
24 Nov 2012, 00:22
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The Neil Gaiman thing annoys me. In my opinion he's a forgettable, mediocre genre writer & having him constantly endorse Wolfe is very tail-wagging-dog-ish. Whatever. I read PEACE…
23 Nov 2012, 12:07
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That's a fair criticism, of course. I wish I were more comfortable than I am with the counter-argument that the genetic odds are surely far greater than the probability of Chris' t…
08 Nov 2012, 13:18
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(Apols for the name change - I screwed up setting up a new gmail account.) I read the book differently. I think in Chris Wolfe paints a picture of a character who knows what "good"…
03 Nov 2012, 20:10
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Many moons ago I worked out the chronology below & posted it to this list. Having just re-read PF I think this can be elaborated in interesting ways. The idea starts with my obser…
03 Nov 2012, 11:24
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But maybe there's a story to spin here. Ouen claims to have a good memory, so there's a plausible starter hint that Sev's remarkable memory has a genetic basis. I can't see anythin…
31 Jan 2011, 13:04
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Interesting! On my reading - in which Sev is the dupe and Judas goat for a bunch of inimical aliens intent on slaughtering most of Urthly humanity, depriving the remnant of their …
27 Jan 2011, 03:15
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Perhaps it's a separation-from-nature thing. Societies destroying themselves by cutting themselves off from nature is a faitrly common trope for Wolfe. Abandoning a calendar based …
27 Jan 2011, 02:50
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I think it’s possible that Wolfe scattered red herrings around as fake clues to Severian’s family tree, with the intention of driving overly-attentive readers insane. But it’s a q…
26 Jan 2011, 05:27
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I did, with caveats. I read it mainly as a "character" novel, rather than a "plot" novel. That's fine for me, but while some of the character work is pretty good, Wolfe really isn'…
26 Jan 2011, 01:06
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Oops! You're right. Anyway, they've both lost an arm. Well, it's pretty clear that Babbie did it. Surely she was younger. Horn must be in his mid/late thirties at this point; hum…
26 Jan 2011, 00:53
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I had the same kinds of question. Plus one other: Why was Rick so determined to kill Chelle? On another tack, "Sea shell" is surely some kind of literary shadow-cousin to Seawrack…
25 Jan 2011, 22:27
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A Borges story I hadn't read before, about a man with perfect memory: http://evans-experientialism.freewebspace.com/borges.htm Nice to ponder on what use Wolfe might have made of …
24 Jan 2011, 07:36
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& not succeeding very well. Apart from anything, I keep dreading the appearance of the next deli sandwich. Which is a pity, because normally food in Wolfe novels sounds like someth…
19 Jan 2011, 03:26
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Hang on - I'm pretty sure that it says somewhere that Typhon was the *first* to carve a mountain, and that the *Autarchs* continued the silly practice. No?…
23 Sep 2010, 21:34
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That's my guess. I read it as "made to forget in general": their memories were wiped to a large extent. The memories of Typhon et al went too deep for this wipe to eradicate them…
16 Sep 2010, 21:32
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On my hypothesis, the Triv culture on the Whorl was an artificial construct, so Islam needn't figure into at all. (Hopefully I'm not missing the point here!) As to how the Whorl-d…
15 Sep 2010, 21:55
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2010/9/14 Ant?nio Pedro Marques <entonio at gmail.com> As you say, it's not really very important whether or not the Dorpians actually speak Dutch or know what their names mean. O…
14 Sep 2010, 21:49
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Again just fwiw, looking at the "Grandecitta culture" names, from IGJ: Adatta: Suitable Affito: Properties (Inclito's coachman) Bello: Handsome (colonel) Blanko: ??? (town) Bricco:…
14 Sep 2010, 10:47
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FWIW, I tried to find the meaning for the names of all the Dorpians given in the IGJ listing, using Google translate and the Dutch version of wikipedia; below. Not all of them are…
14 Sep 2010, 09:40
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On Mon, Sep 13, 2010 at 9:43 PM, Andrew Mason <andrew.mason53 at googlemail.com ... and then the knowledge was collected by Typhon, perhaps, in the library. This is an observation…
13 Sep 2010, 13:29
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08 Sep 2010, 09:53
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Did she actually call him "Bloody"? I thought that was just her pet name for him. On a tangent, I wonder why Viron has this naming system, while all the other towns don't? Modulo …
07 Sep 2010, 15:51
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Yup, Texas it is, I think.…
06 Sep 2010, 10:58
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Or "Philly" at a stretch, by association with "philai" = "friends". (Now that I write it down, vaguely remember somebody else suggesting that sometime in the deep past.)…
06 Sep 2010, 01:01
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Whatever the Mother calls her, I think it's pretty clear how Horn comes to call her "Seawrack". While walking on the island he pulls up some of the ground cover and sees in his ha…
31 Aug 2010, 13:22
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I doubt that anybody is very interested in any of this.…
21 Aug 2010, 15:22
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And what the markings on Seawrack's rings are. And who the girl hiding under the sofa in Hoof's (Hide's?) dream is. And how SilkHorn got to Green in the cliff scene. And why does H…
18 Aug 2010, 10:33
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Couple of points. - The Neighbors first entered the Whorl as it approached Blue's sun, before it went into orbit. (Testimony of one of them at SIlkhorn's trial in Doorp.) - The N…
17 Aug 2010, 01:30
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But if Yesod is this kind of meta-eternity, why is it important to the Hiero-dudes to engineer outcomes in one particular Briah? All the Briahs would be accessible from Yesod, incl…
11 Aug 2010, 13:05
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I guess Vodalus may never before have met the old Autarch, but he certainly doesn't seem to have any trouble accepting him as his agent when they do meet, after Agia et al pluck Se…
10 Aug 2010, 13:00
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Recent posts about what Sev might or should have discovered about his mother/sister/himself at the end of BOTNS remind me of something which has bugged me for a long time: How come…
10 Aug 2010, 08:21
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13 Jul 2010, 10:18
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(The name of Jonas' ship.) This may well have been pointed out a gadzillion years ago, but I don't remember ever seeing it. Apparently a "lucky cloud" is a very common traditional …
12 Jul 2010, 14:12
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2010/7/12 Ant?nio Pedro Marques entonio at gmail.com Or a proper name that is the infinitive form a verb? I don't see the Fenrir thing, but I also don't see the Latin "inire". Th…
12 Jul 2010, 14:04
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2010/7/10 Ant?nio Pedro Marques entonio at gmail.com I don't think they are simply fighting for their lives. They attack, rather than defend, voting with their weapons against the…
10 Jul 2010, 06:12
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2010/7/10 Ant?nio Pedro Marques entonio at gmail.com The sailors who witness Sev's "trial" almost unanimously choose to oppose the new sun. (The only one who doesn't is poor Gunni…
09 Jul 2010, 23:38
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Sorry, that may be unclear. ".. why didn't Sev at least try to make an evacuation happen ...".…
09 Jul 2010, 12:16
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But on my side of the argument I have Ash's words about the majority of the population having been evacuated before the ice death, in his future. Whatever the benefits of Ushas, wh…
09 Jul 2010, 12:13
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** Not very important, but I don't think a dog/ape hybrid is intended. "Cynecephalus" (dog-headed) is a term which seems to get applied to baboons - eg *Papio cynocephalus ** http:…
09 Jul 2010, 04:31
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This is the way I see it: In the BOTNS, Wolfe shows how a young man, by no means inherently evil, is induced to do the will of (call it) Lucifer, working on the young man's inclina…
09 Jul 2010, 02:24
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Finally got around to tracking something down which had been nagging me. When I first came to the conclusion that Tzadkiel was a liar and a no-good, it put me vaguly in mind of a s…
09 Jul 2010, 00:35
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Silk and Remora, throwing Musk's knife.…
08 Jul 2010, 10:35
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