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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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?The jungle guide is the masked figure who leads Vodalus and party through the jungle in COTA, and occasionally disappears into the Autarch's litter to talk to him. The old boatman…
13 Oct 2011, 13:05
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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 think the two sets of parents actually count against the clone theory; a clone does not have genetic parents in the ordinary sense. One might call the parents of his source his p…
10 Oct 2011, 19:06
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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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I think the main evidence for Typhon as Neighbour was that they both have doubled body parts; but I don't find this plausible, as Typhon's doubled part was artificial.…
09 Oct 2011, 21:37
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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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Of course, that would cause demarcation problems in some cases - and in no case more than with Wolfe. I think the _Sun_ cycle, taken as a whole, has to be read as both SF and fanta…
23 Jun 2011, 14:55
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I'm not sure what you understand by 'blot'. I don't think it's impossible to say that something overhead 'blots' the fields by casting a shadow on them. (Not 'blot out', since they…
02 Jun 2011, 13:29
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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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There's an interesting passage in _Urth_ which I think illuminates the recent discussion. UOTNS 37: Severian talking to his followers in prison (the speech which was transcribed b…
28 May 2011, 20:33
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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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. It makes perfect sense to me. 'March winds' is a well-established phrase, enshrined in a nursery rhyme. And a garbled retelling the Romulus tale is kind of lame and That dep…
25 May 2011, 21:19
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Gerry Quinn wrote: ?In BotNS, (unless you include Frog!) there is no More than that:it seems actually inconsistent with some things in the text. In connection with the antechamb…
25 May 2011, 20:54
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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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Gerry Quinn wrote: > ". Elements from the Jungle Book include: The name 'Frog' (that's what 'Mowgli' means) The tiger (smilodon) as the threat to the child. The figures of the Bl…
23 May 2011, 17:42
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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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No, I don't think anyone did. But we may wonder whether this represents actual concealment within the world of BOTNS, or whether it's just Wolfe's tendency to make things less clea…
19 May 2011, 22:16
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I'm sure Cyriaca's story has been embellished, but I think it likely that something like that happened, since it explains something which is otherwise mysterious; how there are a l…
20 Feb 2011, 20:39
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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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Gerry Quinn wrote: . As you say, Latin and English would be nearly indistinguishable in I agree with all this. But another question is whether real Latin is being used in _Long S…
19 Feb 2011, 22:21
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Actually it's not really surprising; the meanings are linked. A gift is something that is presented to you; and 'now' is the present moment, the moment that is presented to me as I…
19 Feb 2011, 22:12
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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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I think the natural sense of 'heir' (and, even more so, 'son to succeed him', which is what Lemur actually says) is one who would rule after him in the empire he currently ruled. A…
12 Feb 2011, 22:20
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Gerry Quinn wrote: Afterward, Hide said he had no I wondered that. I don't think it can be exactly the same, because Severian spends much of his later life as an aquastor, and I…
12 Feb 2011, 21:48
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Was Tussah expecting to die just when he did? If not, perhaps he intended to do more to bring Silk to power. Still, perhaps he would have become prolocutor. Quetzal shows you can d…
12 Feb 2011, 21:43
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were probably multiple embryos of this lind. Of this _kind_.…
11 Feb 2011, 23:25
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Well, for one thing, although Silk has been bred to be special, his specialness is not wholly due to his breeding, but also to the Outsider. Without his intervention Silk might ha…
11 Feb 2011, 23:21
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Gerry Quinn wrote:> Oh no, clearly not. You'd have to take 'you' to mean just 'humans', not 'humans on Blue'. To clarify: I'm sure the plain, literal meaning of the remark is tha…
11 Feb 2011, 23:11
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The Neighbour looks towards the Western stars when he says this, which suggests to me that he is thinking of an actual place you can travel to by physical means. That no one else …
11 Feb 2011, 13:35
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I don't think this is so. Marl, the servant of a black mechanic, is not paid, but this is clearly seen as improper, and its only because his employer has interfered with his mind t…
11 Feb 2011, 13:22
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Antronio Pedro Marquez wrote: . Mamelta may be his mother without being Kypris. This is consistent with Typhon being his father, if he is the result of in vitro fertilisation (wh…
11 Feb 2011, 13:15
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