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Oh, certainly. I said that was the reference _Hethor_ was going for. What _Wolfe_ may have meant by it is quite another matter.…
26 Oct 2011, 22:10
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I'm not wholly convinced by that, because of the vagueness of dates in the _Sun_ universe generally. GW in one of the appendices to _New Sun_ complains that the people of that age …
26 Oct 2011, 17:07
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Another possible interpretation is that Gerry was making a joke. If I remember rightly, the point at issue in that debate is not what Americans normally mean by 'vine', but what '…
26 Oct 2011, 16:35
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Can the custom of calling the sea-monsters 'Megatherians' be sanctified in the same way?…
24 Oct 2011, 21:57
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I'm sure I've seen somewhere a suggestion that Fechin was Dorcas's father, and his girlfriend, accordingly, her mother. This would establish a thematic link between the passages wi…
24 Oct 2011, 21:53
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. I think that the story functions on a few levels. There is clearly the hero quest which is most accessible on the surface. The page turning element, if you will. Nobody disputes …
24 Oct 2011, 13:58
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Having checked the passage, it seems to me that Merryn , who is the one who actually uses the name, is most naturally read as referring to a divine or somehow spiritual being: 'Tho…
24 Oct 2011, 13:41
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uncertain what we should. make of it.…
23 Oct 2011, 22:21
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I think the Outsider is identified with the Maker in the Pajarocu story. 'Demiurge' does indeed just mean 'maker'; it has a specific connatation in gnosticism, where it is opposed…
23 Oct 2011, 22:19
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Well, I think this depends on the kind of theory. Your tree theory is presented in order to explain evidence, and you have listed the evidence it is meant to explain. I'm not yet s…
23 Oct 2011, 19:35
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No one is disputing that Wolfe's works _contain_ puzzles to be solved. Sometimes, as various remarks by him make clear, this is because he overestimates our intelligence and expec…
23 Oct 2011, 19:01
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Lee Berman wrote: > Talos predicts, in a way that is uncannily accurate (though also strangely skewed) the events of the last day of Urth. He places a prophet, a giant, a demon at…
23 Oct 2011, 18:14
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Lee Berman wrote; Well, that wouldn't help the particular pattern I was hoping to find, of a distinctive Inire appearance in each book, since Talos is in every book. (Which is rat…
21 Oct 2011, 21:15
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Actually, this is rather less clear than I imagined, but I still think he can. Isangoma says 'The tokoloshe, Preceptress, the tokoloshe come'. Marie says 'I think he's lost his min…
21 Oct 2011, 20:58
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Gerry Quinn wrote: . But I just found a problem: Well, clearly Cyriaca's story is not entirely accurate. After all, she thinks the Citadel is deserted and no one but the Autarch …
20 Oct 2011, 19:36
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. Because he is telling us about his expericence as it happened at the time, and he didn't know it was Inire then? I think there is a definite plotline involving Inire, which is …
20 Oct 2011, 19:26
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'But on the night before the burning was to begin, the autarch of the time, who had never dreamed before the wild dreams of sleep but only waking dreams of dominion, dreamed at las…
20 Oct 2011, 19:14
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I agree in principle, but his idea of telling us may not be ours. He thinks he told us that Pike was Blood's father. I suspect he thinks he has told us that Merryn is Severian's si…
20 Oct 2011, 19:08
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The jungle guide and his two young companions are described as looking like Isangoma; they seem to pass for natives of that jungle, and certainly are not African. 'Though the first…
20 Oct 2011, 19:04
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_Urth_ chapter 36 (the physician speaking): 'This coast is quake-prone, as the old records indicate clearly enough - praise to our Monarch, by the way, for having them brought her…
19 Oct 2011, 22:13
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Lee Berman wrote:. But doesn't Severian see Isangoma's Yes, but Severian is allowed to see Inire's face once - the problem is if he sees it more than once, in which case he shou…
19 Oct 2011, 22:09
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It seems to me that the Isangoma-Inire theory has more going for it than the Isangoma-Dorcas or Inire-Dorcas theory. The difference is that we have quite an elaborate backstory for…
19 Oct 2011, 22:06
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Well, C.S. Lewis did, and he was pretty conservative. That's not to say it's actually orthodox, but it's not so blatantly heretical that no basically orthodox believer could entert…
14 Oct 2011, 20:32
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Wolfe has actually explained (in COTO) what he thinks the Nephilim were; they were the product of matings between humans and non-rational hominids, who, being innocent, could be ca…
14 Oct 2011, 20:18
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The clearest evidence is the statement that in one of his enlightenments he saw a man riding through a city where people were waving fronds. The man on the scaffold, and the child …
14 Oct 2011, 19:54
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Lee Berman wrote: . I'm not sure if I'm disagreeing with you here, but it seems to me that one philosophical point that Wolfe is making turns on the importance of the mind, and ho…
14 Oct 2011, 19:07
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Gerry Quinn wrote: > The monarch repented, and everything we see of Typhon, both on Urth and on the Whorl, would have come after that repentance. I think it's clear that this mona…
14 Oct 2011, 18:43
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When Kypris invites Silk to merge with Pas, she says 'you would be him, and he would be you'. This could be seen as a tautology - if Silk (in Mainframe) is Pas, of course Pas (in M…
12 Oct 2011, 21:29
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Well, the other inhabitants of Viron don't seem to have had a problem with it. When Tussah died, leaving the message that 'my son, not of my body, will succeed me', they set out to…
12 Oct 2011, 21:11
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One thing, by the way, that would count against Typhon being a Neighbour, is that Wolfe has said that he did not know about the inhumi - which, if he came from Blue, he surely woul…
10 Oct 2011, 19:11
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I don't think it does, really. It's not humans, as such, but Commonwealth citizens who have saint's names; Ash, for instance, or Loyal to the Group of Seventeen don't. (Also Baldan…
09 Oct 2011, 21:46
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Some people do find it controversial whether the name 'megatherians' refers to the monsters (Erebus, Abaia and co.), but that's by the by. As James says, there is definitely a con…
09 Oct 2011, 21:32
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You read _Short Sun_ first? Was that not a rather puzzling experience?…
23 Jun 2011, 14:58
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Gerry Quinn wrote: > The only evidence that it travelled at relativistic speeds is the seemingly There is actually one other way of reading it; suppose that Marble is right when s…
01 Jun 2011, 18:33
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Sergei Soloviev wrote: . It seems also that the plan might include that I don't think Typhon knew about the floods when he started the Whorl project - they seem to have been reve…
31 May 2011, 22:03
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. Perhaps once a book has been copyrighted, _Epiphany_ certainly diverges from earlier editions at one point: the memorable line 'At that moment I burst into the room' is changed …
31 May 2011, 21:50
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Can you remember where that comes? One thing that puzzles me is where the landers travelling to the Whorl left from. You might expect that they - at least the ones from the 'Commo…
27 May 2011, 15:28
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Well, lots of people have thought, for reasons quite independent of Ymar, that something has changed at some point between _New Sun_ (the original quartet) and _Short Sun_ - and of…
27 May 2011, 15:23
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But I don't think the myth has to be applicable in every detail. The myths which are applied to Jesus don't fit him in every detail; _Frankenstein_ doesn't fit Baldanders in every …
26 May 2011, 20:06
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That Tartaros was an adult when he was scanned is suggested by one thing; at Silk's second enlightenment one of his visions is 'a blind god metamorphosised from a blind man [not bo…
26 May 2011, 19:57
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I'm not sure why June is OK for Juno, but March is not OK for Mars. (We're asking what a redactor of the myth might think. What associations the name might have outside the story, …
26 May 2011, 19:48
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By the way, there is a fourth seventeen in the story: it is mentioned in the old Borski post that was linked to. There are seventeen cells on each row in the Matachin Tower. I thin…
23 May 2011, 17:45
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Is it an Ascian book? The author's name is given as Blaithmaic - apparently a saint's name, so presumably a Commonwealth citizen. I think the main evidence of effective universali…
20 May 2011, 13:51
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The prayer certainly seems to be identifying the Conciliator with the Increate,in some way - which is not straightforwardly right, but, in the light of _Short Sun_ and some remarks…
19 May 2011, 22:34
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Gerry Quinn wrote> I think alternatively it might be a work of biology dealing with the lives of great beasts - the smilodon, the mammoth and so on. I agree that the megatherians …
19 May 2011, 22:21
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Though it's a reversal of the original story; the Tin Man started off human and became tin, while Jonas started off tin and became partly human.…
19 Feb 2011, 22:24
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I don't think we do - but is there a reason to think it was different from Silk's time? If Pas had meant the chems to be slaves, why would that have changed? By the way, what do p…
14 Feb 2011, 16:41
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I think it was the reverse. Interestingly, Wolfe says in a interview somewhere that Ares was not really a war god, but a soldier god. (In the same interview he says that Aphrodite…
13 Feb 2011, 22:48
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You may be right. I don't think it's at all odd that both Scylla and Lemur mention the point. I do think it's a bit odd that Silk later repeats Lemur's entire speech, when the only…
13 Feb 2011, 18:59
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Antonio Pedro Marquez wrote: > Here is the word of God on Silk's abilities. (Kieran Mullen) It's pretty broadly indicated that Silk was gestated from a frozen embryo as Mucor was…
12 Feb 2011, 23:00
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