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Actually, no, I hadn't thought of it that way; just the idea of a made thing becoming in some way greater than its maker ... the desire to do which is, itself, pretty much the ur-s…
08 Sep 2006, 01:40
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A little over half, I think, though it's been a while. Odd thought, though ... given that Frankenstein's given name is "Victor," but he is in the end the victim...…
07 Sep 2006, 01:47
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No, I don't think it's hard at all -- we know that Vodalus's people have been watching Severian and the krew; we know that Vodalus visits the city occasionally. As a spot check, we…
06 Sep 2006, 18:55
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Occurs to me: are Vodalus and the Doctor the only people in the Book with cane-swords? And does this imply a connection I'm not seeing?…
06 Sep 2006, 15:05
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... so ... IGJ can't be reconciled with SotT at all?…
05 Sep 2006, 20:14
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Eh. Not bad, not great. For an amateur piece (that's what it says), pretty good, actually, though the imagery doesn't work for me.…
05 Sep 2006, 20:13
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We're given another explanation for the missing guard in the BOOK OF THE SHORT SUN.…
05 Sep 2006, 18:58
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Actually, I'm pretty sure that Severian is Captain of Apprentices for only one year; if I'm right, we'll come to the appropriate reference as we go through the book. And he has ver…
05 Sep 2006, 18:57
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It suddenly occurs to me, reading various responses to various comments, that the "carrot" remark may suggest that the dead are buried vertically rather than horizontally, perhaps …
05 Sep 2006, 18:52
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I think this is an excellent idea. At the risk of repetition or contradiction I will go ahead and make my comments before reading others'. So pulling out my old copy of SHADOW, and…
05 Sep 2006, 18:45
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I don't think that's a good idea, Yogi. The Ranger won't like it.…
03 Sep 2006, 01:36
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Ranjit, Thank you for clarifying. I wish you'd jump in more often!…
01 Sep 2006, 19:42
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Yes, but they don't speak English very well there. My problem is not a generic love of grammar for its own sake but a deep love of the English language. This is undeniably true. N…
01 Sep 2006, 19:31
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So are "D'oh!" and "Bling-bling." I'm a bit of a lexicological conservative, and don't like the use of a noun as a verb, at least where there's a perfectly good and commonly known …
01 Sep 2006, 14:57
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Whereas I get twitchy when I hear or read the word "author" used as a verb...…
01 Sep 2006, 00:37
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No, you're quite right; he could have been gone from three seconds to three decades, or less, or more. But the point is not to argue that the Penult _did_ skip a couple of decades;…
30 Aug 2006, 23:42
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Jumping in to be a pain in the ass. It ain't necessarily so, Roy. In fact ... I think you've just pried open an important argument for the pro-Appian camp. How long was the Prede…
30 Aug 2006, 05:05
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The question was asked, how we could tell how long an Autarch might live with alien medicine et al. The short answer is, we can't... ...but... ...I think that even the highest c…
29 Aug 2006, 00:01
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What it is I don't have an answer for. But I have several ideas on why his name might be concealed, beginning with the possibility that he may be one of Severian's grandparents.…
28 Aug 2006, 20:35
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Thank you.…
28 Aug 2006, 17:52
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When writing real letters on paper. It's something of an art that I don't want to vanish from our culture. (And, see, I _do_ bottom-post when it makes sense to do so!)…
28 Aug 2006, 17:52
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Jeff, I top-post, as a general rule, only when I don't think there's a need for interleaving (an ugly word; I coined the word "coinscription" to describe the way we write inside e…
28 Aug 2006, 05:03
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25 Aug 2006, 19:24
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That story establishes, if I'm not mistaken, the following: 1. Odilo the Steward tells the story in the fifth year of Severian's reign. 2. Odilo is not a young man (he has known I…
25 Aug 2006, 16:38
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Why do people keep referring to Severian's immediate predecessor as Appian? Is there some reference I've missed? I thought Appian was rather further back in the history of the Comm…
24 Aug 2006, 17:41
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B, I have always taken "my childhoods in the Citadel" to refer to the many lives he remembers as heir to the line of Autarchial memories. The business about changing personality …
23 Aug 2006, 19:22
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I have two. 1. I'm pretty sure Wolfe is an admirer of Dickens. Dickens's plots are utterly coincidence-driven. (E.g., the fellow who catches Oliver, but not the Dodger, turns out …
19 Aug 2006, 21:39
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Oh, it's fantasy all right. If you're just plain allergic to fantasy, skip it. If you like the very best (like LotR), grab it NOW.…
18 Aug 2006, 18:38
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I'll have to be a bit cautious about this: I found it far more _engaging_ than any of the Solar books (though Long Sun came close). I was privileged to review THE KNIGHT for the NY…
18 Aug 2006, 15:31
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Hooray! Someone who agrees with me about TWK!…
18 Aug 2006, 05:13
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I'm reasonably sure that Wolfe did not create this complex, beautiful work without a clear idea of what it all meant (I don't mean symbolically, at least not necessarily; I mean wh…
14 Aug 2006, 22:58
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Okay, I'll have to check that out; I haven't read very much of the apocryphal stuff except for a few Gnostic gospels. Thanks for the pointer.…
11 Aug 2006, 05:31
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B, Yes, there is a definite development of monotheism in the course of the Bible, especially if you go through it in the order it was written rather than the order it appears in a…
10 Aug 2006, 05:25
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Well, that's the rub "Not recent" at the time the Mishnah was compiled could be any time before the Diaspora.…
10 Aug 2006, 00:49
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"At least?" Now, how would we know that? The earliest place such a myth is likely to be documented is in one Talmud, which dates to ... well, depends on whether you're talking abou…
09 Aug 2006, 22:33
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On 8/8/06, Roy C. Lackey <rclackey at stic.net> wrote: Text deleted, but ... Certainly the grand scale. I'm not 100% on "sin," but it's certainly ugly. No, I just screwed up. Th…
09 Aug 2006, 18:22
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A brief followup, a couple of things I meant to mention but didn't quite fit in. Regarding the role of real pagan gods in a Christian world, consider what Lewis does with them -- …
08 Aug 2006, 20:17
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Thank you. I'm no scholar either; I'm a dilettante, an _amateur_ in the very best (I hope!) sense of the word. But one of my _aimees_ is Catholic theology, and it seems pretty cle…
08 Aug 2006, 20:14
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Yes. With the possible exception of "sinned on a grand scale" -- is producing the Hierogrammates actually a sin? It's clearly part of a huge _trap_, but that's another issue -- thi…
08 Aug 2006, 18:43
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B -- I certainly did read your post regarding "the need for Ushas"; I thought I had responded to it! Perhaps not. I'm having a kind of weird time right through here, between depre…
07 Aug 2006, 18:30
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b writes: ... ummm, not in any Bible I've ever read. God means to wipe out all life on Earth, then gives Noah & family a reprieve. Though Noah "walked with God" and all that, he i…
06 Aug 2006, 18:55
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and b responds: Yes, the same principle applies. However, I think Tony may be overstating the power of the principle; or perhaps I'm misreading him. As he says, "...something is d…
31 Jul 2006, 18:09
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H'mmm. I see some interesting things. One St. Severian was a martyr whose flesh was torn off his body with iron rakes - i.e., tortured to death. He was a Roman Senator, which may …
27 Jul 2006, 17:04
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Ummm, I can't speak for anyone else, but I don't think Wolfe deliberately misleads, just goes too far in not giving things away, something like a reviewer so cautious about spoiler…
26 Jul 2006, 22:55
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Agreed. I suspect that he _does_ but that we haven't worked out the relationships yet. I'm certainly not familiar enough with the ancient saints to do this. Well, yes, but also b…
26 Jul 2006, 18:20
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In medicine, "teratoid" means resembling a teras, or grotesquely deformed. (A teras is a deformed embryo.) An online version of Webster's defines "teratoid" as "resembling a monst…
25 Jul 2006, 17:14
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More than anything else, I think it's a matter of not wanting to give the game away -- he has repeatedly claimed that everything we need to know is there, and he doesn't want to te…
25 Jul 2006, 17:09
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Good heavens, who _accused_ you? Accusation is for bad things. Lupine obsessions are just part of the game, something to be aware of and allow for, not to avoid like the plague. Cl…
25 Jul 2006, 02:10
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ARCs usually have plain paper covers with only some type giving the publishing information and noting that it is an ARC.…
24 Jul 2006, 18:59
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I definitely recall an OT passage -- the one Oreb's name is taken from. Can't think of a NT passage, but it's been a couple of years.…
23 Jul 2006, 17:06
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