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It's also (imho) telling that he says -- using Wolfean bigwords -- that Jolenta, who brought out lesbian tendencies ('tribidism') in many women, brought out sadistic tendencies ('a…
21 Apr 2003, 23:47
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H'mmm. While I agree that RAH's writing about sex (both in the concrete and the abstract) is very little short of abysmal, it's never affected me that way: possibly because I _am_ …
21 Apr 2003, 19:09
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I wrote and Deacon Mushrat responded: Yes, yes, yes, sort of, and yes. I say "sort of" for Burroughs because he's writing outside the SF genre, using tropes from the SF/F toolbox …
20 Apr 2003, 03:39
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Oh, good lord, I remember THE HARRAD EXPERIMENT. Leon Urine, wasn't it? Or packaged to look like his stuff anyway (I remember seeing it on the racks next to MILA-somethingteen). My…
20 Apr 2003, 01:27
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You mean like the religious bigot in JOB, or the female narrators in FRIDAY and TO SAIL BEYOND THE SUNSET (and even chunks of "THE NUMBER OF THE BEAST--"? I'm just sayin', is all .…
18 Apr 2003, 17:57
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Allan Lloyd writes ... in part ... [...] Now, I haven't read all these. (I suspect that even Moorcock hasn't read everything Moorcock has written.) But I think that some of the e…
17 Apr 2003, 17:33
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Yves Menard, not at all the author of the Quixote, points out thatthe animals Isangoma mentions are South African in origin and observes that: Which is much better stated than my…
17 Apr 2003, 16:40
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Rostrum writes (excerpt, excerpt): Alternative view: I tried three times to read PALE FIRE and never once succeeded in getting more than 20 pages into it. It is, to me, one of the…
16 Apr 2003, 16:10
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Che, Thanks for the kind words about my theorizing. Or (3) Severian is accustomed to "lifting body" style "fliers." SHADOW, ch. XXI (pp.191-2 in my Timescape h/c): Into vie…
16 Apr 2003, 03:34
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This is a great topic. I have three especial favorites. They're all from tBotNS, and they're all (I'm afraid) rather long. 1. I think Wolfe isn't generally so much a writer of me…
11 Apr 2003, 05:01
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If you please, we blattidae hiss or crackle. We do not yelp. Alas, the real explanation was much more mundane and kind of dumb. Back in February, my employer changed the format fo…
10 Apr 2003, 23:42
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Aaargh. I can't _believe_ I left Tim out of my list. I even had my copy of "Earthquake Weather" in my pocket when I was making it. Last Call / Expiration Date / Earthquake Weath…
01 Mar 2003, 01:01
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H'mmm. I guess some of this depends on what you mean by "younger generation." Many of the '60s/'70s "New Wave" writers are technically younger than Wolfe. I'll assume you mean so…
28 Feb 2003, 18:25
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Really, I'm surprised nobody's mentioned either of the obvious in-genre examples: Sturgeon. Almost anything after about 1950 by Sturgeon. But even more: Le Guin. Especially TE…
20 Feb 2003, 23:09
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Marc, this is really reaching. A generation might, conceivably, be enough time for the appearance of some double-limbed monsters. No argument there. But a generation isn't -- a t…
20 Feb 2003, 20:50
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Fair enough ... I tend to use terms like "the Christian view" to refer to the mainstream views (i.e., those shared by Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy, and most of the larger and ol…
19 Feb 2003, 20:34
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Bouncing off some of Nigel's points ... I'm not quite ready to pronounce the coming of Summer, but ... Yes/no ... and likewise yes/no to the original statement that the Christian …
19 Feb 2003, 00:05
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...which was hardly my point. I was just directing attention to a bit of current science that I figured would be of interest to Wolfe readers, because of his cosmological concerns.…
14 Feb 2003, 19:30
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Probably reverse-engineering ... with data like this, I suppose they have enough information to work out the higher- order differentials (i.e., the rate change of the rate of cha…
14 Feb 2003, 18:31
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Mantis asked: Huh?!? Sputter!?! You know, the question of what sex (or age, or race, or any other physical characteristic) of the narrator never came up in my mind. Not once. …
07 Feb 2003, 18:27
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Okay, I was hoping people would wait a day or two and let one-and-all get read "Castaway" before the spoilage should begin ... but since it has, some thinks from the blattidaean mi…
07 Feb 2003, 17:26
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Oops ... and I even knew that. If I recall correctly, when Detective Comics Comics began publishing revisionist tales of the Big Red Cheese, in the late '70s, they memorialized …
03 Feb 2003, 16:44
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Adam wrote ... Aside from the well-known "The Music Man" reference, there's another thing that might be of interest ... a subtle joke known to some comix fans, perpetrated by C.C…
31 Jan 2003, 16:36
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Josh Geller wrote... H'mmmm. "Baldanders" is _from_ Borges, if I recall correctly ... and there's nothing about him that particularly makes me think of Delany, his fiction or hi…
29 Jan 2003, 20:02
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Rostrum asks: One of the most fabulously useful resources on the Web is the Online Books Page at http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/ an attempt to keep up and index all books an…
27 Jan 2003, 17:08
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I think "more" -- in that he's not asking to have Seawrack back on the terms Horn-in-Horn's-body had her before; he is (I think) asking the Mother for her freedom.…
27 Jan 2003, 16:48
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I think rather "actual 'supernatural' beings," though not necessarily gods. -- I put the word "supernatural" in quotes because I believe, and I believe that Wolfe either believes o…
24 Jan 2003, 17:09
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Don't see why not ... I was trying to keep my list Merkin.…
24 Jan 2003, 17:07
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Not to mention _Time and the River_, _A Man in Full_, and _You Can't Go Home Again_. But while we're at it let's not forget ... Gary K. Wolfe (SF critic) L.E. Wolfe (author of t…
24 Jan 2003, 16:56
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Not so; Dionysius also died. Frequently.…
23 Jan 2003, 00:33
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Not necessarily ... consider the Hebrew calendar, which has twelve lunar months and adds a thirteenth "leap" month when needed -- it's needed in seven years out of the calendar's …
21 Jan 2003, 16:41
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[...etc...] Yes: Chesterton once observed that -- paraphrasing from memory -- "Catholics agree about everything; it is only everything else we disagree about." A Catholic's appr…
21 Jan 2003, 16:18
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Ryan writes ... It seems to me that membership in an organization and belief in a religious faith are two quite different things. Obviously it is possible to be a Catholic and not…
20 Jan 2003, 23:25
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To Anthony's: Nutria respondeth: ... an interesting point. I'd noticed some of the obvious contrasts, but thinkin of it as a BotOS had not occurred to me. Yeah, may he finish it;…
20 Jan 2003, 19:13
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Yes: an excellent description of the method of the type of writing you are using the term "catholic fabulation" to describe -- and, I think, one of the earliest bits Lewis wrote …
20 Jan 2003, 17:32
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For those who do like CW, may I recommend (if you do not already know his work) Tim Powers? The closest living writer to "carrying on the Williams tradition," except that he is, in…
20 Jan 2003, 17:06
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By that logic, it shouldn't be Catholic either, in that you can write it and not be a Catholic. (Besides, I don't think anyone can really _be_ a Christian ... it's an ideal to atta…
17 Jan 2003, 22:40
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I guess I don't understand why "Christian Fabulation" won't do here, which is why I like the idea of just calling it "CF" and leaving the "C" semi-ambiguous. Though "CatFab" has a …
17 Jan 2003, 18:52
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Those books, and especially "Mere Christianity," preserved me in Christian faith at a time when I was particularly prone to falling off. I find them far less, ah, persuasive now, …
17 Jan 2003, 17:43
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Northern Ireland, actually... Well, there's a quibble, and one that shows him to be very High Church indeed: in "Letters to Malcolm" he indicates, if not a belief, at least a _des…
17 Jan 2003, 16:52
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No, he was a high-church Anglican. He wrote about "mere Christianity" because he (correctly) regarded the "basics" of the Christian faith as more important than the differences be…
17 Jan 2003, 16:39
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Hartshorn declaimed: Well, that's _one_ way of looking at it. A Catholic perspective might be a bit different -- either mumbling about "foreshadowing," or, more constructively, su…
17 Jan 2003, 16:00
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Just a data point: I was working for TPC at the time -- the official break-up was 1/1/84. If that helps. (There was a mini-break-up on 1/1/83, when certain parts of the national c…
17 Jan 2003, 01:31
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Bingo. In Wolfe's words, from that same interview: "He is kind of dumb, but he is a nice guy... "In There Are Doors I wanted to do something that I think has only rarely been …
16 Jan 2003, 18:33
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Well, I didn't exactly argue with your conclusion, but I'm pretty sure I came back with the suggestion that the leatherskin is some kind of crustacean -- my first thought was a lo…
10 Jan 2003, 16:42
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[...] Oh, hey, get a grip here. This is parlously close to namecalling ... this is a pretty flame-free sort of a list and I, for one, would like for it to stay so. I might add: …
06 Jan 2003, 23:19
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No, shells are animal parts or products, and so "Shell" would be a male bio's name.…
19 Dec 2002, 17:25
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Snipping wildly. Correct. A few pages later, when he explains to Blood that he is the help sent in response to Pa. Pike's prayers, Silk begins by saying that he saw Pike praying f…
18 Dec 2002, 16:19
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H'mmm ... I occasionally make my brain hurt by trying to understand this stuff, the idea of a Being with an eternal nature becoming incarnate in-Time and the idea of creatures with…
17 Dec 2002, 18:35
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"You may be right about this, and certainly I would not go so far as to say that you were wrong, but still ...!" (Place _that_ quote for double credit.) What makes me think that S…
17 Dec 2002, 17:53
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