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A good film but a lousy adaptation. IMO.…
22 Oct 2011, 16:54
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He-He-Hethor?…
21 Oct 2011, 21:28
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While I remain extremely dubious here, one can see the outlines of a grand unification theory based on the already-mooted idea that humans and human descendants are the only true s…
20 Oct 2011, 21:28
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Don't forget margarine. And legend has it that mayonnaise was invented _for_ Napoleon. He liked to have his chefs dedicate a new dish to every major town he conquered, and mayonna…
20 Oct 2011, 20:00
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I can't make that leap. Dorcas's husband is the man she is mourning at the end of tBotNS. Inire is not dead, but her husband is.…
20 Oct 2011, 03:28
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No, but I believe that if they were going to call a thousand days a "year," they would've called a hundred days a "month;" contrariwise, if they were going to call a hundred days a…
19 Oct 2011, 20:11
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David, Gerry -- I agree with both of you. Knowing about the Proust connection is not necessary for understanding and enjoying "Suzanne Delage." However, if you do know it, it pro…
17 Oct 2011, 20:56
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I would say that this is an Earth- (or Urth-) centric idea. The distinction between "plant" and "animal" need not apply on an alien world.…
16 Oct 2011, 16:06
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Ummmm, not so much -- when Severian writes the BotNS, the events of UotNS haven't happened yet. I suspect that it just went out of business.…
22 Sep 2011, 21:23
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H'mmm. I've liked his art since his run on "Thor." Granted, he's not in my top ten or anything but his art definitely gets the job done.…
11 Aug 2011, 18:01
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Hunh. Not the ones I'm familiar with. Simonson art, eh...…
11 Aug 2011, 17:55
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If they're the ones published in the '80s by Pacific/First Comics, they're very true to the stories.…
11 Aug 2011, 17:48
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Well, *almost* every Moorcock -- there was his ERB ripoff written purely for money. I can't go quite that far. It helps to understand that there appear to be two writers living i…
11 Aug 2011, 17:02
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I on the other hand was not surprised to learn that I'd read the overwhelming majority of these -- 76 of 100, and that's not counting a few that I started and gave up on.…
11 Aug 2011, 16:50
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People, it's just a popularity contest...…
11 Aug 2011, 15:40
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If you like that aspect of JRRT, you should definitely check out Steven Erikson. He is an anthropologist/archaeologist rather than a linguist, but he uses his own areas of expertis…
08 Aug 2011, 16:40
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H'mmm. I would never have thought of that but it sort of works. I really enjoyed Anathem for what it was -- an alternate-world novel with a reasonably interesting premise. When th…
05 Aug 2011, 16:09
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Ooooh. Vance's "Demon Princes" are classic villains.…
05 Aug 2011, 16:07
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I thought of him but decided he'd been ruined for me in the second/first trilogy.…
05 Aug 2011, 15:52
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Vladimir Harkonnen. 2011/8/5 Ant?nio Pedro Marques <entonio at gmail.com>:…
05 Aug 2011, 15:33
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The thing about the Malazan books is, they're both huge-scale and minutely-detailed. This seems paradoxical, but it isn't; Erikson is dealing with huge cosmic concepts, but dealing…
04 Aug 2011, 15:32
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Boy, that was surprisingly hard. I had to make a list and then cross off till I had only 10 left, and I might have chosen a couple of others on a different day. I wound up voting …
03 Aug 2011, 20:14
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I don't debate that tBotNS deserves to make this cut. I would argue that THE FEMALE MAN equally deserved it.…
02 Aug 2011, 19:55
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Sigh. Not a single book by a woman made the list.…
28 Jul 2011, 15:27
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It's clearly a list based on what's currently new on the stands. Given that, it isn't a bad list.…
05 Jul 2011, 22:42
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Oops, brain fart. I meant ... "if you haven't read New Sun."…
23 Jun 2011, 15:46
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I agree. But is it better if you haven't read "Short Sun?" (I *think* it is anyway, but I haven't experienced it in that order.)…
22 Jun 2011, 20:19
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Actually, they were first proposed by Paul M.A. Dirac in 1930, so no problem there. The positron was conceived of as a "hole in the Dirac sea" before it was recognized as an anti-e…
08 Jun 2011, 17:46
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I think what they really reflect is a great deal of handwaving on Wolfe's part, and a not insignificant quantity of willing suspension of disbelief on the reader's part.…
08 Jun 2011, 17:13
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Eeeeeyeah, but . The calculations below don't take dilation into account. I'm just sayin'.…
02 Jun 2011, 19:36
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You haven't hung around with SF fans very much, I take it. Let me assure you that if there is any scientific wonkiness in an SF story, there will be someone (quite possibly someon…
01 Jun 2011, 16:59
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I suspect the landers do use fusion technology, but we really don't know. I believe the Long Sun is powered by Illudium Fosdex.…
31 May 2011, 18:34
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2011/5/26 Ant?nio Pedro Marques <entonio at gmail.com>: "I do not like it. There are too many notes."…
26 May 2011, 17:36
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Yeah, no. I don't see Sev travelling down the timestream to tell the old man, "Hey, Grampa, you know Gramma? Well, I screwed her all the way to Thrax."…
25 May 2011, 17:05
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No, it seems clear to me that Wolfe indicated in the original quartet that the coming of the White Fountain/New Sun would bring vast Urthly devastation, floods and the rising of ne…
23 May 2011, 17:29
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Antonin, Welcome to the list. Yes, this topic _has_ been talked about, and you might find some interesting debate on it in the archives. But the fact that someone else came up wi…
23 May 2011, 17:26
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Sorry, Lee, but I must disagree with this. It seemed obvious to me that Dr. Talos' play was supposed to be taken as unknowingly prophetic (in the same way that the High Priest in t…
23 May 2011, 16:50
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I'm guessing you meant to write "not likely." At any rate, I want to think that anything we can't resolve is not (in any ultimate sense) important to understanding what Wolfe want…
23 May 2011, 16:12
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Interesting. My favorite speculation is a bit different -- the Group of Seventeen rules the Ascians on behalf of the Megatherians, and one is "possessed" by each of them.…
20 May 2011, 20:40
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Nyeeeaaaaugh, not so much, if you take Dr. Talos's play at all seriously... As for the destruction of the Megatherians: I suspect that they are caught in the upheavals of the new …
19 May 2011, 20:45
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Actually, I believe this prayer is Trinitarian -- noting that there are three parts to it. The "hero" is indeed Severian, standing in for the Second Person The one whose breath w…
17 May 2011, 20:46
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If I recall correctly the spoiler for Tipler cylinders was Hawking's proof that it would require negative energy in some areas of the local spacetime.…
13 May 2011, 19:43
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If Severian meant that, he would probably say "Master Palaemon teaches mostly us apprentices" -- or, more properly, "mainly." The hanging adverb, separated by a comma from the rest…
13 May 2011, 18:44
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Well, that was my point... If there's FTL travel then some aspect of relativity is untrue. But: taking relativity at face value, there is no such thing as "time travel" -- or for…
12 May 2011, 18:03
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I don't see how you could do that - a sundial is limited to a 24-hour cycle (during about half of which it isn't showing anything).…
12 May 2011, 16:34
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As usual, women are grossly underrepresented in these lists. I voted for Joanna Russ and Hope Mirlees.…
02 May 2011, 17:25
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Elsewhere in tBotLS, Silk has an insight that strikes me heavily. I can't recall where it is, but it occurs to him that the purpose of free will is to give us the grace of consenti…
13 Apr 2011, 00:12
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Okay, you don't write any of that. But are all your characters exactly like you? That's the logical consequence of not writing what you don't have "direct, subjective experience of…
09 Mar 2011, 17:06
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But SF is all about writing the Other. If you can't write a female character, how can you write an alien?…
09 Mar 2011, 16:58
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Somehow, I doubt that either Gaiman or Wolfe has $70K to toss around. I could be wrong. But neither of them is in Stephen King/JK Rowling territory.…
07 Mar 2011, 22:46
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