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Dan'l said: I don't entirely disagree, although I think, to be fair to Searle, he didn't intend it to be quite the desperation-position it seems to be. In answer to a rhetorical…
28 Jan 2005, 16:30
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Dan'l said: Turin said: I think it's possible to accept the test without engaging in full-blown reductionism, although yes, it does smack of behaviorism regardless. Basically by…
28 Jan 2005, 14:30
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Well, with regard to 5HC note that if the idea that abos can't use tools, then Veil's hypothesis seems hopelessly naive. Does Veil know something (ie, that popular wisdom is wron…
27 Jan 2005, 14:24
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A ruse is less useful than the archives. Me, answering this question not long ago: http://listserver.dreamhost.com/pipermail/urth-urth.net/2004-December/000158.html My opinion, …
26 Jan 2005, 21:17
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Correction. Lurkers only have a say in what goes on in the list if they speak up about something they like or don't like - people aren't going to read your minds. So, anyone's we…
19 Jan 2005, 11:24
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Personally I always thought of it musically, something like "Variations on a Theme by Proust".…
16 Jan 2005, 11:51
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Well, much of this is for the sake of argument, although I do think the statement "if Silk didn't really exist, we would have to invent him" does have a certain truth to it, rega…
15 Jan 2005, 02:35
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Well, I did mention Nettle parenthetically, I just didn't feel like repeating "Horn and/or Nettle" throughout. But the more I think about it this line of thinking isn't just grat…
14 Jan 2005, 12:09
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What makes it quite tricky is that any supposed slips that we can catch are for events that we've already seen described in BotLS - authored by Nettle and *Horn*. All we know abo…
11 Jan 2005, 17:22
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Certainly there is a bit that goes on in this list that borders on conspiracy theory. On the other hand it is often quite obvious that his texts are carefully crafted to produce …
11 Jan 2005, 15:45
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I am undecided on the supply-side economics bit, but I did not think that the gun-ownership bit was clumsily inserted either; it's quite to the point and a real concern in the pa…
11 Jan 2005, 15:25
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I more or less agree, but now that you've got my interest piqued can you give an example? I don't remember seeing any occasions that made it drop dead certain to me that he had S…
11 Jan 2005, 15:00
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It's an interesting angle, but the point of those posts was an issue of what constitutes the soul/spirit/identity. Without diving too deeply into it, the terms "soul" and "spirit…
06 Jan 2005, 00:50
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As a preliminary note, I've found the posts laying out the specific examples of Wolfe's thought problems to be interesting, although I disagree with the project of dropping them …
10 Dec 2004, 15:14
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Another statement of the obvious: the spirit/breath connection is cross-cultural, definitely not strictly Hebrew (though it is certainly important there). It's there, for example…
08 Dec 2004, 12:59
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Turin said: I should clarify something here, the way I was using the terms, none of these examples are in themselves complex or simple. There are just complex and simple *views*…
08 Dec 2004, 11:10
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Crush said: Quite possibly so. But the issue of gun control is also not so much a deep philosophical problem, and Silk's concerns are quite practical - you can map them to sets …
04 Dec 2004, 12:16
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To go along with the counterargument: you also have the insistence of the Valar to incarnate themselves (or whatever term you wish to use) in Ea, and the creation of the dwarves,…
03 Dec 2004, 10:14
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I don't deny that Mieville is creative, but I don't think the wealth of ideas and images you're talking about is a sign of it... Mieville, by his own admission, borrows a lot of …
03 Dec 2004, 10:08
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Crush said: Well, before going further I tend to think that attempts to look for Wolfe's personal beliefs on these particular subjects through the books are doomed to failure. T…
02 Dec 2004, 18:43
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Turin said: I didn't mean to put the focus exclusively on Hebrew myth. The fact is that the same themes of entropy, slow decline, and sudden cataclysm show up in pretty much all…
02 Dec 2004, 12:32
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I've read Borski's book. He did some very good work with it, but it's hard not to be frustrated with it - especially if you don't agree with his interpretations. And a good porti…
02 Dec 2004, 00:15
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The story you attribute to Tolkien is really a synthesis of mythologies, some elements of which are more straightforward than others. The "entropy" aspect you're talking about is…
01 Dec 2004, 11:22
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I always thought of his leaving as a way to ensure that the man/messenger didn't eclipse the message. He was back, really, to plant a seed more than to fix all of Blue's problems…
05 Oct 2004, 12:36
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Well, a couple things. The first is the tomb that Severian plays in as a child, which he later finds out is his own (from one of his many lives as the Conciliator in and out of t…
04 Oct 2004, 22:57
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It could be that, considering the white fountain as an "anti-black-hole" and some of the odd statements about time made by the cacogens, that Wolfe is attempting to describe the …
04 Oct 2004, 22:46
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There's a lot more to be troubled about in this. Because at least one of the previous Autarchs bouncing around in there is Severian himself, who at that point would have already …
04 Oct 2004, 20:36
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For various reasons it's hard to place the New Sun series chronologically. But in any event I think it still works slightly better to read the New Sun books first. Not that it m…
29 Sep 2004, 11:34
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In response to Andrew's excellent post, some thoughts: I don't have a precise answer about Abaia's place in the post-apocalyptic world, but I do have something like an argument, …
27 Sep 2004, 01:13
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I especially like the last two paragraphs of this post - it also tends to reinforce the association of Valeria with old Urth, in that it duplicates the "severe" necessity of the …
22 Sep 2004, 01:10
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This question actually makes a bit of difference as far as the overall interpretation goes, and it occurred to me as well. This could imply that Severian's white fountain would a…
11 Sep 2003, 04:09
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I just finished reading a lot of discussion that went on here around the beginning of the year - I finished reading it for the first time a few weeks ago - and I wanted to bring …
10 Sep 2003, 23:28
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Hmm. Here I always thought that the Trinity would be something a Buddhist or Hindu would have a much easier time understanding than your average western Christian. Not to say tha…
09 Sep 2003, 18:58
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Baldanders was a potential future that didn't pan out, quite different from Typhon. The Typhon identification aside, I think this doesn't make him a very good symbol for the Old …
07 Sep 2003, 10:40
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You said a mouthful. I just read "There Are Doors" and was playing around tracking references to Attis/Dionysus/etc. looking for more keys that I hadn't picked up. In the process…
04 Sep 2003, 22:32
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I think that this misses a very important point. It's not that the inhumi's "animal nature" overrides their humanity - it's that the "humanity" they're acquiring is not quite so …
22 Aug 2003, 17:37
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I don't think that's the important point in the generation vs. FTL argument. I think a more accurate analogy might be that while the existence of jet airplanes do not preclude th…
19 Aug 2003, 05:47
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Excellent points. Another possibility that occurs to me is that Typhon might have actually revived those languages (presumably from some ancient archive or lexicon) specifically…
18 Aug 2003, 18:33
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And there's the rub. Nietzsche lamented the coming of universal literacy and advanced printing methods (whether he was serious or joking, I couldn't tell you) because he foresaw …
14 Aug 2003, 17:50
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Civet throws in: Or, perhaps Tzadkiel's Ship is the archetypal ship (or the ideal form of "shipness" if you want to go Platonic). Tzadkiel himself seems to operate in the symboli…
14 Aug 2003, 17:27
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I believe that Severian says enough to indicate that he feels much the way Wolfe does on the subject of books, and it's a feeling I share. The idea of keeping a special book that…
07 Aug 2003, 19:42
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Perhaps it's a certain confusion of terms. It sounds like your "everyone else's" advice is telling you that they don't understand what the story is getting at, and what they real…
29 Jul 2003, 18:55
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Josh said: I always liked that, though it really reminds me something similar I read around the same time but cannot remember. I am tempted to say that it was something from Bor…
29 Jul 2003, 18:46
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Baldanders was the Typhon That Could Have Been, this I think is explicitly intended. All in all, the allegorical element is so strong with Baldanders, Talos, and Jolenta that my…
29 Jul 2003, 05:24
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I would definitely be willing to participate. The timing and location would be important, of course.…
26 Jul 2003, 21:32
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None of us could be happy to hear this. But, at the least, we can try to be as understanding as Wolfe himself, who was there and has more reason to be offended than anyone (to un…
26 Jul 2003, 10:35
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Sorry, I didn't mean to imply that Palaemon would have been used in its place. I suppose what I'm saying is that one's affection for a "favorite" tends to be at the expense of th…
18 Jul 2003, 21:42
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I agree, in light of the points brought up by several people today, that Malrubius' ghost literally being Silk in astral form is too problematic to hold on to in that form. Manti…
18 Jul 2003, 18:57
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Interesting quote, and goes along with something I'd wondered myself. But looking at it from the flip side, do you think it might be possible that, when Severian refers to the gh…
18 Jul 2003, 06:09
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Civet replies: Except for the fact that Horn has probably met only *one* other writer and seen *one* other original book (aside from his own) in his entire life. The things we k…
15 Jul 2003, 15:57
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