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I am not sure I can buy into the Wizard Knight as a treatise on metaphysics. I suppose this mixes up the macro/microcosm a bit, but I thought that what this inverted order was rea…
27 Sep 2007, 18:16
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I would agree with what you are saying to a point - it is a dangerous practice to assume that simply every tiny detail is crafted and planned to have a deeper, inscrutable meaning.…
18 Sep 2007, 22:32
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The reviewer said: "But I think my biggest complaint -- my biggest stumbling block -- was a pair of intertwined issues: the character of Abel, and the ethics (even, politics) of th…
18 Sep 2007, 20:08
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The link at the bottom of these posts (including your own) about subscription/information will take you to: http://listserver.dreamhost.com/listinfo.cgi/urth-urth.net I believe …
25 Jun 2007, 07:19
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It sounds like you may be a hopeless case for the stoics :P The question is, do you act with rational deliberation? Whether or not a stranger insults you, for example, is not und…
15 Apr 2007, 20:29
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It depends, I guess. The good life that Stoics (and the ancients in general) were after isn't exactly equivalent to our concept of "happiness", but that's probably about the clos…
13 Apr 2007, 23:15
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"Interesting" is not a positive value judgment, and I suspect he didn't intend it as one. I sort of disagree, however, on Chestertonian grounds. Christians explain the universe …
13 Apr 2007, 23:09
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My personal favorite: "Rico, I'm gonna die." "No, you're not gonna die!" "It's OK, because I got to have you." For some reason I'm the only person in the theater who laughed out …
13 Apr 2007, 22:25
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I have a hard time fitting this to GW I as well. Also... I have trouble attributing a great deal of subtlety to the person who, if I recall correctly, brought the film "Showgirls…
12 Apr 2007, 21:19
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The issue isn't their intelligence. It is simply a difficulty in adapting to the media. For one thing, consider how often the written form of a typical Gene Wolfe story has an i…
12 Apr 2007, 21:10
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I agree that Memento was one of the first things I thought of. But if you used all the same devices, you would basically be making another Memento - even if the content of the st…
10 Apr 2007, 21:52
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Hardly. Witness the Long Sun series; Wolfe is not averse to portraying false religions, and we all know it. One primary problem as far as I am concerned is that the theory assume…
09 Apr 2007, 10:59
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Is that really Borski's theory? I don't recall him mentioning that in Solar Labyrinth, although Wright did put forward that sort of theory (in Attending Daedelus). Either way, n…
08 Apr 2007, 02:32
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Auk is still alive when Horn runs into him on Green. I don't recall any direct reference to his demise.…
31 Mar 2007, 20:53
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And by his dead Amazon lover. But there is undeniably something going on with Pasicrates as well, because of the dreams, etc.…
03 Feb 2007, 20:50
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I do not recall anyone "heaping" "venom" or "derision" on Borski. Borski was a contributor to this list for a while, if I recall correctly, and well-liked by people here - even t…
20 Oct 2006, 20:40
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Interesting - to be honest I can't think of any interpretation of that statement that really makes any more sense than what you just offered. But, yeesh, the incest-factor is bei…
04 Oct 2006, 07:35
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You're using an interesting new sig, Dan'l.…
28 Aug 2006, 11:49
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I generally don't find top-posting hard to follow (yes, I'm doing this on purpose), especially on a relatively low-volume list where the post that's being responded to is fairly …
28 Aug 2006, 11:47
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While it's difficult to produce references from an oral tradition, granted, there isn't much reason to believe otherwise. As you note the stories were regarded as ancient, and wi…
10 Aug 2006, 00:17
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Just wanted to throw in there that the idea of fallen angels mating with human females to beget giant children is not really a matter of translation, it's part of Jewish myth tha…
09 Aug 2006, 21:25
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I am not familiar with the work, but I would be slightly wary of reading too much into Latro's story from a modern book about its historical background. This background is, for W…
08 Aug 2006, 19:27
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But if I recall correctly the scriptures of Silk's church have all been lifted by Typhon from previous religions. And it seems to me there were snippets of new testament passages…
23 Jul 2006, 10:06
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Dan'l said: Not to say that I don't agree with a lot of what you've said, but a qualification can be made here. You can believe in objective aspects of the world that aren't cod…
14 Jun 2006, 22:40
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http://www.urth.net/urth/archives/v0022/0039.shtml http://www.urth.net/urth/archives/v0307/3817.txt.shtml http://www.urth.net/urth/archives/v0026/0012.shtml For a few of the older…
13 Jun 2006, 00:22
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I think there is a version of the OED that gives you access to their online edition. It is really quite handy.…
12 Jun 2006, 02:44
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It is not so much Covenant's horribleness that bothers me about that series, it's Donaldson's tendency to *wallow* in that horribleness for extended periods of time. I enjoyed s…
10 Jun 2006, 19:55
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Well, only children are another of Wolfe's themes that he's mentioned in essays - I can't refer to the originals, but they are quoted in Wright's book, "Attending Daedelus" - giv…
08 Jun 2006, 20:49
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What you are primarily missing here, I think, is a reference to the Templars.…
29 May 2006, 00:20
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MSG said: bsharp said: Right, and I think it may again be time to point out that interpretation of Wolfe tends to get into an occasional lunatic (in the memorable sense presente…
28 May 2006, 21:47
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I found the reference to mirrors to be interesting, particularly the idea of the Hierodules's attempts to mold our history as a sort of drawing in a mirror. When Wart tries to do…
27 May 2006, 20:17
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Forgive me for bringing up something that is old hat, but it's new to me and I don't see it in the archives. I am reading "The Once and Future King", within the first couple of c…
26 May 2006, 21:28
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Dan'l said: Sure, the two assertions (about the nature of Abaia and Baldanders, respectively) don't necessarily stand together. On the other hand I think the case is relatively …
19 May 2006, 07:55
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b sharp says: That is one of the questions implicit here. The second is whether one, both, or neither are human - which you also picked up on. I suppose the only answer I can gi…
18 May 2006, 21:48
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Not quite, and I think this is the source of some small confusion here. One of the cacogens says that "for your species" it is the only way to extend life (or something along tho…
18 May 2006, 10:42
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I also had the impression that he was a baby Abaia, though keeping in mind that we have only a hazy notion of what Abaia & co. *are* (if we take into account the nature of the so…
17 May 2006, 19:40
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I am unaware of any published analysis of The Knight at the moment. I believe Peter Wright does discuss The Last Thrilling Wonder Story in one of his books, probably Attending Da…
30 Apr 2006, 21:17
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Roy said: Well, one could also take the approach - which is part of my interpretation of the books, but on other grounds - that the undines are actually more primordial than Aba…
28 Apr 2006, 20:07
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If, as you say, there is no reason the undines' future knowledge doesn't extend to the flood, then it implies that Severian gave them what they wanted - otherwise if they knew he…
28 Apr 2006, 08:06
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I said: James said: Yes and no. If what you mean is that the two are incomplete by themselves, then yes; if what you mean is that Faith is empty of content, then no. What you w…
20 Apr 2006, 20:11
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James said: I am I suppose what you would call an anti-church Christian (not against one particular denomination, but all the organized forms on general principle). As such I ad…
20 Apr 2006, 03:36
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James said: The problem you get into there is that when you explain love and altruism as evolutionary phenomena, you find that what is left of "love" and "altruism", lacking mor…
18 Apr 2006, 20:31
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To say that metaphysics is "generally empirically underdetermined" bothers me a little bit, although it may - I am not sure - be perfectly true. It seems to imply that one arrive…
14 Apr 2006, 21:11
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Generally yes, although keep in mind that logical and physical impossibilities were not clearly separated from each other with a lot of these thinkers. What the rationalists real…
12 Apr 2006, 19:54
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Descartes, IIRC, vacillates between indirectly assuming that God can't violate natural law or produce true contradictions and that he simply won't. If you look for it you'll find…
12 Apr 2006, 19:42
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Kieran said: It's a little more/less complicated than that, and the philosophical problem (religion taken for granted) is actually human knowledge/experience. To grossly oversim…
11 Apr 2006, 22:09
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As much as I appreciate an eye for detail, this isn't a physics lists. In any event I believe he was not referring to any one particular paper on the subject - there is a great d…
11 Apr 2006, 19:46
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Sorry to single you out, Marc, but you are making a move here that's all too common on this list. You have made an unnoticed shift from *speculation* that Pleistorus *might be* "…
04 Apr 2006, 19:11
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True to an extent, but it really sounds more like Athena's kind of warfare than that of Ares; and we know that sometimes she can beat him in the open field. Jeff said:…
03 Apr 2006, 00:39
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Another possibility is the fact that wrestling is sport, not war, and thus perhaps only secondarily in the realm of Ares - the techniques necessary to win a wrestling match are n…
02 Apr 2006, 13:21
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