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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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Just digging out from under almost two weeks' worth of emails, and=20 fascinated by all that's gone on on this list ... it occurred to me that the Blushas debate has been going on …
01 Jan 2003, 00:17
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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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Ummm. If (as Marc more-than-hints) the evidence for what Wolfe has, mysterioso, revealed to him urks in the neighborhood of sentient trees in tBotNS ... ... then I can't help won…
19 Dec 2002, 16:57
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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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Ummm ... I don't think it did. Silk had an experience which took place outside of Time, i.e., in Eternity, the perspective from which the Outsider (==the Christian God) views spac…
16 Dec 2002, 22:19
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I don't see any reason we can't have a "Muskrat" and a "Zibethicus."=20…
12 Dec 2002, 20:35
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Ah, bravo! Another appreciator of the great American humorists --=20 mine own nom du Viron coming indirectly from Don Marquis, I salute you, sah.…
11 Dec 2002, 20:34
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Jerry F knocks my reconciliation to the Blushas theory into a cocked hat. Mmmm. This is a difficulty, isn't it? Marc, do you have an answer for this? Cause I sure don't.…
10 Dec 2002, 21:50
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Odd. I did not receive this. Indeed it is. And while I have not seen any specifically Wolfean responses to the Nigeria scam, members of this list might be amused by this Lovecraft…
10 Dec 2002, 16:55
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And simple embarassment might also have caused Mantis to exaggerate the degree of his "ambushment." Actually, I'm more interested in his self-description as a "housewife" ... 8*)…
04 Dec 2002, 18:03
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Oops. I fergot all about that... Okay, I'll buy that. Ummm, he was only mostly-dead? (If he was completely dead, they'd have gone through his pockets for loose cardbits.) The pi…
04 Dec 2002, 17:41
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(This is a somewhat artificial post ... I've self-edited but left in some weird stuff to indicate how my thought processes went.) Among other things, Marc points out Okay ... Th…
04 Dec 2002, 16:15
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Well ... Increate stuff. ;*) Well, all "valid" baptisms ... I wouldn't care to make the argument that, say, John's baptisms (at least prior to Jesus' showing up) necessarily broug…
03 Dec 2002, 23:28
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Oh, aye. Actually, it seems fairly clear that the first showing of the Narrator & party in Nessus does take place the same day as the drowning/baptism/whatever: as someone pointed …
03 Dec 2002, 23:11
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Marc writes: I believe that this forces us to grant as a "least hypothesis" that the Narr's astral travel ability includes the ability to travel in time to a space-_and-time_ loc…
03 Dec 2002, 17:11
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Jerry Friedman wrote... No I didn't! Gawrsh ... a real physicist. That's what we need around here. Me, I can just about wade in Meissner, Thorne, & Wheeler without getting my fee…
03 Dec 2002, 01:04
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It would, but I'm not. The question then becomes whose speed is relative ... when you say that which coordinate system are you saying is "at rest?" At rest relative to what? Are y…
03 Dec 2002, 00:39
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Um, no, Mantis ... in a world that obeys Einstein's rules, "time" is equally [ob|sub]jective in any inertial reference frame; more specifically, "time" on the Whorl cruising at NA…
02 Dec 2002, 23:13
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Jerry F wrote... Agreed, so far as that goes; but the question (as I hope should be clear) was intended from (OK, I really do not understand this use of the word "deictic.") The…
02 Dec 2002, 23:03
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Hardly a fair comparison. The two couples in "The Number of the Beast--" are all the same Person. (That's not a slam; that is what RAH _intended_ ... if in doubt, go reread the p…
02 Dec 2002, 22:05
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Well ... that's still rather more than the couple of dozen LY I thought of ... it seems then that Urth's red sun probably is _not_ particualrly visible from the Bleen system.…
02 Dec 2002, 19:09
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Mantis reminds me of this .... ... I tend to think that the _Whorl_ most likely has a boost of << 1 G -- probably .01G or so. Reasoning: the Cargo know enough about the skew of gr…
02 Dec 2002, 18:28
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Roy C having written: Ahem ... While I have no idea whether Crush knows this or not, Gene Wolfe holds the same hypothesis. Once upon a time, moments before I first joined this lis…
02 Dec 2002, 17:19
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And several people responded, beginning with Jeff Veyera: That explains _where_, but not _when_ -- if Scylla-in-Oreb "guided" the Narrator and company back to Urth then, just li…
02 Dec 2002, 17:08
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A few teensy points. Actually, this statement makes almost the same error that led to "Wolfe wouldn't have his protagonist commit incest." In fact, Mr Wolfe's religion serves a…
26 Nov 2002, 22:24
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Charles, I didn't mean to direct my Ahem at you; you are hardly the first to get involved in the orbit trap in discussing the mechanics of the Bleen system. I've seen some of our …
26 Nov 2002, 18:23
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Okay, let's take this one step at a time. Suppose that Blue is Urth/Ushas and Green is Lune. Okay, let's suppose that. That means we have to allow astral time travel. Then we ha…
26 Nov 2002, 17:24
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Ahem. It seems to me that we can explain the difference in climate between Green and Blue, without resorting to a radical difference in their respective orbits ... for example, …
26 Nov 2002, 17:17
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Crush writes ... While I do not feel competent to interpret it, it seems to me that a constant theme of identity (and especially the ambiguous nature of identity) runs through mo…
22 Nov 2002, 21:21
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Crush wrote... Agreement: I understand/understood this* as based on the holographic model of memory. In this model, we postulate memories as stored not in a specific "location" b…
20 Nov 2002, 22:52
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That Subject: line sounds like a pirate trio, eh? Whoa, hee-haw, hold on there boyo! Y're making _far_ too sweeping a statement here. I believe that most of the list would conc…
19 Nov 2002, 22:53
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SMERSH, short for "Smyert shpionam" ["death to all spies"] -- the Soviet spy agency which stood in counterpart to the US's CIA, and against which James Bond fought in the original…
19 Nov 2002, 17:44
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Roy C. wrote... [...] I like this, and the variations that have been suggested on it, but I perceive one hole that needs plugging ... We repeatedly see an inhum[u|a] more-or-le…
19 Nov 2002, 17:41
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