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Onomastipedia?…
12 May 2006, 23:42
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Definite interest, though I question my ability to commit time to it.…
03 May 2006, 21:10
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Stanislaus, Thank you. I _knew_ there had to be a problem with this somewhere. This is a good clear explanation. Not bad for an attorney whose first language isn't English. I wis…
01 May 2006, 06:30
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On 4/28/06, pthwndxrclzp <aquastor at gmail.com> wrote: .... oh, heck, this has nothing to do with what you wrote. I just have to ask, pthwndrxrclzp: are you any relation to Mr M…
29 Apr 2006, 06:46
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Yep. In fact, I always took this to mean that Typhon's scientists had actually _put_ the Black Hole into the Old Sun, at his behest. Why? Only speculations here -- perhaps as part…
26 Apr 2006, 20:29
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Heh. Back in my days at Berkeley, one of their Nobel winners in Physics insisted on sitting on all doctoral defenses. He would inevitably ask "What is the definition of force?" and…
26 Apr 2006, 17:59
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Welcome. It's nice that your first post is an attack on "received wisdom." There's a kind of tradition of that around here. My own take is that, yes, I think it's Tzadkiel who sa…
25 Apr 2006, 20:29
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Thank _you_! I'm not a scientist, or a philosopher, but an autodidact who reads and writes on both subjects and keeps hoping to get paid for it. So it's good to find out that when …
25 Apr 2006, 15:41
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H'mmm. I found your post interesting and compelling, except for one thing: if my "back and forth" with Christ "perfectly encapsulates" this divide, then I ought to find myself in o…
18 Apr 2006, 17:45
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Rather than coincidence, I suspect a Wolfe fan who took that address _because_ s/he is a Wolfe fan, and shares his interest in rare and unusual words.…
17 Apr 2006, 05:18
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Well, I don't want to be speaking for anyone else but how _I_ read "empirically underdetermined" is "there is not sufficient empirical data available to determine the correctness o…
14 Apr 2006, 22:07
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Heh. I grew up Episcopal(ian), meaning "Anglican without Queen and Canterbury." Neither truly Catholic, truly Protestant, or even truly Anglican -- kind of a Trinitarian version o…
14 Apr 2006, 21:53
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Oh, ayuh. In fact, the paradox is based on a kind of dimbulb definition of "omnipotence." (Oddly, you can defuse it by using a very folksy definition: "the ability to do anything o…
13 Apr 2006, 05:23
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I think Chris & I are in violent agreement here. I think this is more-or-less true; the loophole in it is, "with God all things are possible." In other words: Event X is a miracle…
12 Apr 2006, 22:18
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I see what you mean -- but I read the discussion as being about physical, as opposed to logical, impossibilities. (Chris? Comment?) I suppose that you could argue that there's a lo…
12 Apr 2006, 03:29
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Actually, this is (from the Catholic perspective) quite a dangerous course also, in that it denies miracles, and the Christian (and so Catholic, and, I presume, Wolfe's) faith is _…
11 Apr 2006, 22:16
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On the other hand, I appreciate the physics neepery. Perhaps it can be marked with a different Subject: so people who don't want to read it can skip it without missing the rest of …
11 Apr 2006, 20:32
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Purely speculation but -- Lune has a less dense atmosphere, so the surface receives more insolation. --Dan'l…
09 Apr 2006, 19:29
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It doesn't. In some external comments, Wolfe has stated that there is no real process: that this is the "do-nothing" future of Earth where we neither really solve any of our big p…
08 Apr 2006, 21:00
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Richard Dawkins is a brilliant, brilliant biologist and writer about biology, but when it comes to religion his head is so far up his ass it's sticking out his mouth. He simply doe…
07 Apr 2006, 18:21
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I also think "layering" is the right term. I don't know whether Wolfe actually believes this or not, but these books seem to suggest something I have long thought possible -- that …
07 Apr 2006, 18:10
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Okay, to begin with, it probably isn't "his" power, but that of the Outsider, Whom he serves. I doubt he even knows he does it.(The Narrator is brain-numbingly good at not knowing …
06 Apr 2006, 20:01
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This is given to us during the storytelling context. The Narrator travels into at least two peoples' stories that have already happened -- and at least one of them is quite surpris…
06 Apr 2006, 16:21
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Is it clear that more than a week passes _for Sev_? I ask because we know that at least some of the Narrator's astral travels are also travels in time... If it is "clear" that mor…
06 Apr 2006, 03:35
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On 4/5/06, thalassocrat at nym.hush.com <thalassocrat at nym.hush.com> wrote: ... well, some interesting theory-spinning. I find some of it compelling, some not. But it prompts m…
05 Apr 2006, 15:52
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This should be the motto of all Wolfe interpreters. --Dan'l…
05 Apr 2006, 15:34
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OK, I'm missing the referent here...…
04 Apr 2006, 18:54
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5. The world in which Latro lives will prove to have a twin world with shape-changing or personality-stealing denizens. (Or has this already happened?) 6. Latro will meet a…
04 Apr 2006, 18:16
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Welcome aboard. Oh, usually abacination for a first offense. Do you mean, "Do I need to be careful about posting spoily stuff?" or "Do I need to worry that posts here will spoil …
04 Apr 2006, 18:11
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What James said: plus, the idea that the Commonwealthers thought that they came from equatorial lands, where one would cast "no shadow" at noontime, when in fact they came from nor…
31 Jan 2006, 00:48
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Okay, Chris, you're right (and I should have remembered the bit from Wounded Galaxies); certainly there's nothing preventing the Ascians' speech from _also_ being a nod to _Ninetee…
30 Jan 2006, 22:09
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True as far as it goes -- but we do know that Loyal to the Group of Seventeen understands the language of the Commonwealth. He continues telling his story unperturbed, without seem…
30 Jan 2006, 19:39
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Please tell me you're kidding? Huge, Lovecraftian monsters under the sea, in caves, and in the Antarctic. The fated hero with the magic sword who rises to become King of the Unive…
30 Jan 2006, 19:31
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h'mmm. I guess the point, for me, is that Newspeak is both more and less radical than Correct Thought. More radical in that it attempts to limit the vocabulary (and to a lesser ext…
30 Jan 2006, 19:17
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though, because I hadn't been aware that the Chinese had attempted to force their population to communicate *only* through these little sayings in order to ensure correct though…
30 Jan 2006, 06:12
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...sigh, here we go again... Folks, the Ascians are _not_ speaking "a sort of Newspeak." They're speaking a parody of Chairman Mao Thought, the logical end-result of people runnin…
29 Jan 2006, 23:53
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As I've said before, Wolfe's major project since at least _tBotNS_ seems to be creating situations in which a non-Christian cosmology is embedded into a larger, ortho-Christian con…
10 Dec 2005, 21:20
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Not to mention the alzabo and those who use the elixer made from its glands. This is an _extremely_ common theme in Wolfe: rising to become something higher (Severian, Able); seeki…
10 Dec 2005, 21:00
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Dan R asks if anybody would And David D responds Uh, no. The Osterlings are described in the list of names in TK as "People who eat other people to become more human." This is in…
08 Dec 2005, 17:30
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On 12/5/05, Chris <rasputin_ at hotmail.com> wrote: ... Chris, Thanks for your support. It's good to see that I'm not the only one who can see what I saw in that remark. Noneth…
05 Dec 2005, 23:44
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1. If the remark was intended as levity, I apologize; there was nothing in the context that caused me to think so. In context - as a response to this statement: which was clearly …
05 Dec 2005, 23:41
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That is a sign of the arrogance I'm speaking of. I mean the arrogance of assuming that you can make broad statements like that about worship, as if all worshippers worship for the…
05 Dec 2005, 20:46
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Don't parade your arrogance. There are those who simply seek to serve something they perceive as higher, better, or more important than themselves, whether it be a god or a nation …
05 Dec 2005, 17:44
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Sorry if this has already been said, but I'm catching up on a week-and-a-half worth of email (just back from Alaska). Emily Dickinson's poems are generally written in the same me…
13 Aug 2005, 15:20
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I agree. If it's available POD (even spiralbound), and is being revised, then I say leave it at that. There is no need to ask for a GNU-type license.…
22 Jul 2005, 13:43
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[...] Well ... and for what it's worth ... the scene is also familiar, at least to those who have read Proust, because it echoes a great deal of the 'Ouverture' from "Du Cote de …
06 Jul 2005, 08:45
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Nicely done, Roy. Just one point I would add... Very true, and this also provides aid and comfort to my point that Scylla is not "the same" as Cilinia - that she most likely has g…
28 Jun 2005, 08:41
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Yes, I agree that the ... unreliable narrator, who is in complete denial about his own identity ... does indeed seem very confident about this. --Dan'l…
27 Jun 2005, 15:40
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Ummmm .... no, Sev's immediate predecessor did, and got his nuts nipped. --Dan'l…
27 Jun 2005, 09:27
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She was a child when she was scanned. She has spent three hundred years with him in Mainframe. I don't claim that she has "grown up" in that time, for I don't know whether that wo…
26 Jun 2005, 16:36
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