Posted from 6 addresses as thalassocrat, Andrew Bollen, Mr Thalassocrat, Ed EDson
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On Thu, Jul 8, 2010 at 11:41 AM, Roy C. Lackey <rclackey at stic.net> wrote: <sensible stuff> +1. Another +1 for Antonio's standard, which I phrase as: does a proposed story enh…
08 Jul 2010, 03:15
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Anyway, I read BOTNS/UOTNS as containing zero evidence that Sev is acting for God, and only comprehensible as a tragedy - but appreciate that I'm in a minority with that!…
24 Jun 2010, 14:04
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The most interesting question for me is whether this unquestioning acceptance is supposed to be a *good* thing. The Claw is only special because it has been soaked in Sev's blood…
23 Jun 2010, 12:53
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You're right, of course.…
20 Jun 2010, 05:20
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I just assumed that he has travelled so far back in time that the proper motions of the stars had carried them far away from their positions in his own day. http://en.wikipedia.or…
20 Jun 2010, 01:02
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Argh! I'd worry about early senility if I couldn't remember making stupid mistakes like that even when I was young. So figure around 125 miles away, for a mile high Wall just visi…
15 Jun 2010, 03:47
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This is where I get to. Sev says that the highest flying birds such as eagles, wild geese etc might be able to fly over the wall, or something like that. Wikipedia trawling suggest…
15 Jun 2010, 01:38
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Just on a different tack, I think it's easy to miss what Jonas' actually meant to explain in his interrupted story at the gate. I think it was clearly offered in answer to Sev's qu…
14 Jun 2010, 04:33
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But isn't that contradicted a little later in the same scene? IIRC, Sev points out the walls aren't going to be much use against creatures the size of Abaia, and Jonas agrees, indi…
10 Jun 2010, 07:11
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Don't you think "newly built" here may not be not reliable? From the point of view of a future fable, events in the past can easily be seen as happening in the same "long ago", eve…
07 Jun 2010, 13:02
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That's certainly the way I understood it. Note how the ring gets introduced in this first conversation with Doris. She wants to hear any ghost stories Bax might have; he tells her…
15 May 2010, 08:45
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I think Duns Scotus' name is just a nice little easter egg - anyway, I hope understanding TSH doesn't require reading all of Duns Scotus' works :) Small correction: Martha's origi…
05 May 2010, 02:06
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It reminds me that Bax describes himself to Martha as being of Scots descent. He also says that the name "Dunn" comes from a town there (I think). Wikipedia says that Duns Scotus w…
04 May 2010, 11:45
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On Fri, Apr 30, 2010 at 4:23 PM, Roy C. Lackey <rclackey at stic.net> wrote: <snippety> "Griffin" is an excellent name for a gold digger - because that's just what griffins did, …
01 May 2010, 15:18
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Absolutely - I was going to say something along the same lines but work intervened. I was thinking that perhaps the "other things" might just have been "women". Bax does of course…
30 Apr 2010, 07:19
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Griffins were supposed to guard gold. Not exactly dragons, but as Jake Jacobson says (p214), "Sort of like a dragon". Not wedded to the idea, but I like it more than Ted = Ambrosi…
29 Apr 2010, 22:56
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Sure - we're agreed that Bax killed & replaced George. The discussion (I thought) was about whether Bax planned it all along. I think he might have.…
23 Mar 2010, 21:37
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But it's Bax who makes a will in favour of George, and Bax who "disappears". Everything about the replacement is under Bax's control, really, if he can get George to come to him, s…
23 Mar 2010, 20:31
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Maybe Bax's intention from the first was to lure George to Medicine Hat, kill him & take over his non-ex-felon life (and money). Bax is a "revenge served cold" sort of guy. He scre…
23 Mar 2010, 04:38
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Or something. - The only time discrepancies we get told about explicitly involve him: messages around his birth, and his ethermail message to Cassie. - He wears a watch but doesn'…
28 Oct 2008, 10:20
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But if you looked only to RTTW surely you'd assume that the sun went out just as he was leaving the manse. Bright sunlight when he found himself in Silk, switching to dark as he l…
28 Oct 2008, 10:03
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Another explanation might be that Sharon is in California. Under the Kololahi = fictionalised Tonga assumption, that would put her 3 hours ahead of Cassie (with a day shift). Sharo…
25 Oct 2008, 21:52
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Thanks for digging up all of that and putting it together. I'm not totally convinced that Cassie's apartment changes. She actually does have a balcony to start off with (p76, down …
25 Oct 2008, 07:48
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On Thu, Oct 23, 2008 at 2:50 AM, Eric Ortlund <eortlund at briercrest.ca>wrote: wrote: But about inhumi flying from Green to Blue - I wonder if that's a lie, because as I remember…
23 Oct 2008, 05:23
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As SilkHorn explains to Vadsig in RTTW, while they are sailing from Dorp to New Viron. There's a lot to think about in this. Just reviewing the conclusions I came to and seeing ho…
22 Oct 2008, 00:16
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I think it was supposed to be vaguely Phoenicia. I vaguely recall from somewhere that the Perseus/Andromeda myth is supposed to have its roots in some old Near Eastern myth with a …
20 Oct 2008, 11:09
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Margaret is such an enigma! Just some random points, without being able to make much sense of anything ... - She's Margaret Briggs, and this is a story where initials seem to be i…
20 Oct 2008, 09:42
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Yep, I agree - Tonga is the closest real place; Polynesian, it's a monarchy & the people are big! Wherever, it's almost certainly a Commonwealth country, judging by King Woossisna…
09 Oct 2008, 11:04
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One of the people who kidnaps/arrests Margaret wears "a birch suit with those black stripes". Another wolf? A hyena? A zebra, perhaps? Scott wears a "bone-white-and-Chablis seersu…
08 Oct 2008, 23:21
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We get an explanation from Gid for at least one character's preferred colour styling: werewolves wear shades of grey. I don't think Cassie is a beast woman, is she? She's gone up …
07 Oct 2008, 03:47
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Andrew returning with a new email address, in another attempt to avoid spam deluges. Just some quick random thoughts after a couple of readings .... - The bat people surely assis…
30 Sep 2008, 21:34
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http://clarkesworldmagazine.com/wolfe_interview/ Talking about writing.…
04 Aug 2008, 00:40
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Roy wrote: -------------------------- On the morning after Severian bedded Apheta, she brought him breakfast on a tray. It consisted of "... small cakes, a carafe of cool water,…
24 Jul 2008, 01:31
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Given all this, I still can't figure out why you believe that the Hierogrammates are working directly for the Increate. They weren't created directly by him; they display no appa…
14 Jul 2008, 06:47
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Trying to make up a Palaemon story is like squeezing blood from a stone, but I guess there's a couple more pieces of data which might be relevant. We can infer that he was in t…
05 Jul 2008, 13:02
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The Terminus Est discussion raises a tangential issue which has bothered me: how does Palaemon come to have such a valuable antique in his personal possession? Not by inheritan…
04 Jul 2008, 06:39
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For me, of course, this is an argument against the woman being Catherine. I'm sticking to my Catherine = Ouen's sister story, at least until I make up one I like better :) As to…
04 Jul 2008, 04:08
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Hmmm, I must be missing something. How does this roll people's ages back by 15 years? We have Rudesind a boy 70 years ago, so I guess he has to be around 80. We have Dorcas born …
01 Jul 2008, 13:06
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Which ones in particular? The only odd part I can see is that Casdoe, whether in her 20's or in her 30's, seems young compared to her father's age. But that's not anything to do …
30 Jun 2008, 13:15
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A couple of other things I like about my little Sev-lineage story. First & most obviously, it explains Sev's silence about Catherine: he's just not letting on that he's the produ…
30 Jun 2008, 10:29
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Fechin = Rudesind would mean Rudesind is lying about having been painted by him, and I don;t see any reason for Rudesind lying. Fechin = Inire IMO is frankly absurd. On the rese…
29 Jun 2008, 13:26
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Pushing this story along, let's make Catherine Ouen's sister. Dorcas died in childbirth, after 4 years or so of marriage, during part of which Ouen was a toddler. If the child li…
29 Jun 2008, 13:14
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Sev's lineage is a problem which I'm sure Wolfe intended people to drive themselves crazy over, and I don't think there's enough info to get really definitive. But on the flip si…
29 Jun 2008, 05:25
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This has probably been pointed out multiple times, but surely by the end of UOTNS Sev knows his mother's story. We're told explicitly that Gurloes and Palaemon must know the pare…
21 Jun 2008, 12:56
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Jonas confirms Sev's belief that Abaia et al are as big as mountains, not just the size of big ships. (Somewhere in Claw.) I think they survive. Baldanders tells Valeria that thi…
18 Jun 2008, 13:36
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Doesn't one of the demons say something about "the woman tempted me" not working this time around? I just assumed that Dr Talos was working a variation on a story which closely r…
17 Jun 2008, 07:42
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I think "the Temptation" has to refer to something like it would in our world, which is certainly the Temptation of Eve. In Sev's world, the Temptation of Meschiane. At least on …
17 Jun 2008, 00:06
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Neither the old boatman nor Fechin can hang on to stuff ... except (according to Casdoe's f-in-law) Fechin always hang on to his art. I don't think Fechin would have pawned the l…
16 Jun 2008, 15:39
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While trying to think up a devasting rejoinder to Roy's cogent critique of my cosmic theory I took a break to wander through the quagmire of Sev's parentage. If his Sev-mojo wa…
16 Jun 2008, 10:55
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My point is just that it isn't God he reaches with that prayer; it's himself. (Citadel XIV) "My mind was among the starry wastes, far from Urth ... and it seemed to me that tha…
15 Jun 2008, 11:38
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