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Currently reading the Oxford Anthology of Victorian Ghost Stories. Couple of comments on what some others have reported: Piers Plowman starts off promisingly enough, but so quick…
12 Mar 2014, 15:26
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So what was the ring of glass that Horn, Seawrack, and Babbie found on the herbal island? Light seemed to go one way through it, implying a dome meant to contain light, like a gre…
09 Oct 2013, 16:18
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...it's not that humans, being lower than Neighbors, are more capable of dealing with Inhumi in a "smash and bash" way. If the Neighbors thought humans more capable, it would be t…
07 Oct 2013, 21:37
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I don't honestly know how time would work for the Yesodis. I'm imagining a situation where you are in your "prime" timeline when Severian dies on you. So you get a replacement fr…
29 Jul 2013, 16:01
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Jeff, I meant that when a Severian died (drowned, for instance), the Yesodis replaced him by pulling a Severian from another time line. If they had manipulated "their" time line …
29 Jul 2013, 13:54
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The discussion of cloning a while back was of interest to me, because I always thought that Severian's replacement bodies were pulled from other timelines, where he hadn't died--an…
25 Jul 2013, 15:13
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Marc, yeah, I didn't really think there was a connection to Short Sun, but once I noticed one similarity (the tree and the identity confusion) I kept finding others--the deer, the …
11 Apr 2013, 15:00
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Has anyone read Peter Ackroyd's Milton in America? At one point, the blind Milton goes into the forest and sits under a tree. Then follows a passage of pronoun/identity confusion…
11 Apr 2013, 13:20
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Since I didn't take notes, I don't have a complete list, but a couple of things stand out. A female fairy who walked through nettles as if they weren't there, and the idea that if…
19 Jan 2012, 14:28
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I've been reading Evan Wentz' "The Fairy-Faith i Celtic Countries," and I'm fairly convinced it's one of the sources Wolfe uses for his research. I've noticed many striking simila…
18 Jan 2012, 14:55
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Isn't there some sighting of the white fountain during the Apu-Punchau scene? If Severian's blood in both his body and the claw creates a temporal anomaly that allows his powers, …
23 Dec 2011, 14:22
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...Just wondering if that Linked-In request somehow threw the server for a loop, resulting in the lapse in activity. ...or if people actually have real lives and it's close to Chri…
13 Dec 2011, 16:46
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Ah, interesting...those dreams have confused the heck out of me. The whole Fava thing gets so weird I've never been able to get my head around it. I didn't think the mandragora w…
30 Nov 2011, 16:57
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Since we all agree Wikipedia is never wrong ;), I'll just stick with their definitions. Mandragora is the genus of the plant mandrake, which often has a somewhat man-shaped root. …
30 Nov 2011, 14:20
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Good point, Gerry, after I sent it, I thought about how curved pieces of a broken structure with a circular footprint could also be a cylinder, not a dome. ...and the one-way glas…
29 Nov 2011, 14:15
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Seawrack says something about there being similar domes on the bottom of the sea. Either those sank or this one has been brought up somehow. I've always wondered if there was a c…
28 Nov 2011, 18:18
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I think the other secret of the inhumi is that they are a hybrid of humanity, and the colonists from the Whorl are a prue strain that is being combined through blood to make a more…
28 Nov 2011, 17:23
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Could the secret of the Inhumi be that they are a hybrid branch of humanity, and the colonists from the Whorl are the pure strain hybridizing through blood to make a more vigorous …
28 Nov 2011, 17:19
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An interesting thing about the multiple Father Inire theory is that multiplicity has been used as a sort of failsafe technique at least two other places in the books. Typhon/Pas s…
14 Dec 2010, 03:24
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Regarding the "Names and the Whorl" thread. I'm pretty sure someone else has noted this, except, perhaps, for the Smoothbone and trumpet parts: Horn is a papermaker who writes a …
22 Sep 2010, 14:07
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I don't remember exactly who, but some characters pretty obviously avoid cursing, and some are fairly obvious about it. I think it's Cassie and Margaret who use substitute words l…
06 Aug 2010, 22:56
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For a while I was thinking the domes were undersea because the Inhumi were unable to survive salt water, but Krait swims to Horn's boat at one point. If they domes are shelters aga…
06 May 2009, 17:55
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Some more thoughts about Neighbors, domes and blood. If the domes are greenhouses, it seems strange that the one Horn and Seawrack find has no old growth in it. Where did the pla…
05 May 2009, 13:11
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"They're hiding in animals" Maybe this applies to the Neighbors as well. Not all animals on Blue have extra limbs. Somewhere in the books, Horn talks about eight-legged wolves an…
04 May 2009, 22:29
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On Blue's Waters, Chapter 10 "The End": "I know places in the sea where there are walls like those," Seawrack told me. Her voice was hushed. "'Underwater' is what you say." They'…
29 Apr 2009, 23:53
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I'm with ya about it being a stretch from polyploidy to multiple limbs. Still, with alien biologies.... Has anyone ever had any solid theories about the greenhouses? Seawrack say…
29 Apr 2009, 15:40
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Well, whatever the Neighbors are to trees, the Inhumi are to vines. Maybe their base form is the slug-like thing that drops out of a tree on green, kind of an amphibian that lays …
28 Apr 2009, 22:11
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He's a tree, he's a tree! Neighbors are trees, Inhumi are parasitic vines. .or something. Not sure what the Neighbor-version of Inhumi are-maybe the vine with a face that is cut f…
28 Apr 2009, 10:58
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...maybe they evolve from parasitic vines to leeches... --Brian Lovely We haven't even approached what happens to Inhumi when they drink neighbor blood.... myspace.c…
22 Mar 2009, 13:53
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Y'know, I think I got the tree in the pit from all the other tree-references throughout the books. Also because the Inhumi seem to be associated with parasitic vines-Incanto's sta…
22 Mar 2009, 13:43
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Remember that hybrids are a big part of the story. That long bit with Silk/Horn, the farmer, and how to cross corn wasn't there for nothing. Plus, in the books, transferring blood…
20 Mar 2009, 18:36
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In Zora Neal Hurston's "Tell My Horse" she describes how a Voodoo deity possesses a worshiper. The deity passes a message/instruction to the worshippers, adding an injunction to "…
17 Mar 2009, 18:30
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I was never entirely sure if Babbie had actually bitten off Seawrack's arm. I HAVE, however, always been curious what that "sharing" of blood might have done to Babbie. Also, In …
17 Mar 2009, 18:00
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I thought that the Sun was a cylinder, like a florescent tube, running from end to end of the whorl (which I pictured as a hollow cylinder rotating with the Sun at its axis). The …
28 Jan 2009, 00:47
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QUOTE So, could the name "Gideon Chase" be meant to refer to the bible in some way QUOTE I haven't read AEG, but I couldn't help butting in. A Gideon bible is placed by an outsid…
29 Oct 2008, 22:28
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I don't have the books in front of me, so forgive me if I make a massive blunder. Anyway, I've always wondered about the ruin that Horn and Seawrack find on an island (blunder que…
18 Sep 2008, 16:47
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(apologies if this appears twice) In UOTNS, Juturna sticks her head and arm into the throne room. Severian asks her if she remembers saving him. She says she does not, that i…
16 Jul 2008, 18:42
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<< I apologize if this shows up twice >> Maytera Marble has cooling coils in her cheeks. Mucor's brain is so different from normal that it baffles a brain surgeon. Silk, like M…
22 Apr 2008, 23:00
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