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Sorry. On another list I'm dealing with a serious anti-Catholic who seems to think that Jack Chick tracts are Revealed Truth. A bit of the defensiveness seems to have slipped acros…
19 Apr 2002, 23:22
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I'm not sure what this means, but it appears that Number Five does something no previous Gene Wolfe has done. In the conversation in which he discoveres the nature of Mr. Million, …
19 Apr 2002, 22:50
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I made a numerological reflection relevant to 5HC: Well, yeah. The Arabic numeral system simply wasn't around when John had his vision. Still, I misdoubt whether the standard tra…
19 Apr 2002, 22:16
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Rostrum asks: And Nutria responds: I wonder about this also ... In my favorite passage in SHADOW, the conversation with Dorcas in the boat on the lake, is the interesting remark …
19 Apr 2002, 19:55
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Wow. Hartshorn said: Yes, this is very clearly _one_ thing these books deal with (and 5HC doesn't, which is a strike against its inclusion). Now, there I (as Wolfe's fellow-Cath…
19 Apr 2002, 19:55
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Adam and Nutria say a great deal of what I was going to say, in response to Nigel, and frankly better than I imagine I would of said it. I agree with the fundamental point that t…
19 Apr 2002, 17:45
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Huh? Don't know the essay in question. I suppoese I really ought to get hold of the Lexicon some time ... I was just following up (albeit in an indirect way) on my thought about th…
18 Apr 2002, 17:12
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(etc.) Omigod. It's the Drazi. "Green!" "Purple!" "Green!" "Purple!" (H'mmmm... "Truth is a three-edged sword" sounds very Lupine, doesn't it?)…
18 Apr 2002, 16:02
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Mantically speaking, More plausible than you might think. The famous Civil War ironclad battle was not, as often reported between the Monitor and the Merrimac, but between the U…
18 Apr 2002, 15:43
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Nigel observed: and I insist that this is a case where the author either is -- I was going to say "lying" but let me say instead "being deliberatly disingenuous" -- or doesn't kno…
17 Apr 2002, 23:56
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Marc asks: According to the Locus Online obit (http://www.locusmag.com/2002/News/News04Log.html) Writer, editor, and critic Damon Knight died shortly after midnight, on April 15…
17 Apr 2002, 20:09
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Okay, I don't think I am up for a corvid sandwich at this point, but only because of my rather cautious wording above: I said you are supposed to think that #5 is a clone of the "…
16 Apr 2002, 19:54
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This is why I said it was full of Derridean play. It doesn't have to be intended by the author, only visible to the reader. While I have a lot of reservations about a lot of pomo-i…
16 Apr 2002, 00:28
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Just started rereading 5HC. I'll respond to this (quite possibly by devouring my share of crow) after I get through the first novella.…
15 Apr 2002, 17:18
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The dedication to THE FIFTH HEAD OF CERBERUS reads: To Damon Knight, who one well-remembered June evening …
15 Apr 2002, 16:58
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More: you are to think that he is an n-th generation clone of our own beloved Gene Wolfe. (I believe it was John Clute who gave a canonical list of arguments for that being Number …
15 Apr 2002, 16:58
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Jerry -- Hey, I said I'm no orbital mechanic! I remembered that the E/M system orbited a mutual center which wasn't the center of the Earth; obviously I was a bit off about where …
11 Apr 2002, 21:11
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I'm no orbit mechanic, but that seems unlikely with a six-year period, and _very_ unlikely to cause the inhumi to be able to cross only for a short period. Oh. Good. Ahem. We do…
11 Apr 2002, 18:26
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I agree with Rostrum, that was a really nicely-done "intro to Wolfe," especially for the (presumed) target audience of folks with no more than a casual knowledge of or interest i…
10 Apr 2002, 15:53
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Okay ... we have two textual data from SHORT SUN: 1) We have the third-hand report that Green at conjunction is 30,000 leagues away from Blue. 2) We have the direct report that…
09 Apr 2002, 15:44
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Marc (and, yes, somehow the latin form _does_ suggest itself) asks: Unfortunately, that doesn't seem to fit very well with the way Wolfe does things in general. He goes out of hi…
08 Apr 2002, 20:36
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Marcus Araminius did write: I'm pretty sure the inhumi qualify as "alien," whether Green is Lune or not. (And really, it isn't _that_ hard to remember: he is an inhumu, she is an…
03 Apr 2002, 22:22
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So...what _is_ the Cumaean? The following evidence is of interest; it comes from the scene immediately before the manifestation of Apu-Punchau, when the Cumaean has cast Merryn, …
02 Apr 2002, 16:56
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Marc, This is amazing. I will definitely be looking at this when I reread "Short Sun." This may be the most useful model of these books I've seen to date, and it seems to have tr…
30 Mar 2002, 00:30
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Marc, Your argument (deleted) has convinced me that your theories regarding the trees are worth serious attention. I will make this one of my foci in my next reading of the "Short…
29 Mar 2002, 17:18
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And Rostrum queries: Not right now -- I will be rereading the Short Sun in a couple of months & (if I remember!) will post this. Nothing so specific -- only that there seems to b…
28 Mar 2002, 19:49
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Modulo some meaning of the word "closely," I think we can all agree with this proposition, yes. That's where my credulity falls down and goes boom. I simply fail to see any connec…
28 Mar 2002, 16:47
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"Well World," I think. Yeah, I read those too -- Chalker as a writer is about a step above Piers Anthony: he _recognizes_ he's writing potboilers (unlike Anthony, which regards its…
27 Mar 2002, 19:17
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Well, 17 is a big number for Discordians (also 5 and 23). -----Original Message----- From: Michael Straight [mailto:straight at email.unc.edu] Sent: Wednesday, March 27, 2002 9:02 AM…
27 Mar 2002, 17:08
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Yes, that was me. And some of the defenses were good, but miss the point -- which, however, Andy himself _does_ get: that (in his own words) "there is no *compelling* reason to bel…
26 Mar 2002, 20:43
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Or, more simply, trees with very thick bark to protect the heartwood from giant termites (or whatever). --Dan'l…
26 Mar 2002, 18:08
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Jerry Friedman wrote... Well, yeah. But it was (at the time) the only explanation that had been offered. I have since offered a very silly retrovirus -- one capable of having a ne…
26 Mar 2002, 18:06
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... and you know what? This is the best argument I've seen for the WHORL returning to Urth: Tzadkiel (or Tzad's masters) rerouting it to repopulate. It still falls a smidgeon short…
26 Mar 2002, 17:57
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Matthew Malthouse interjects a bit of realism to the discussion: Bravo. The play's the thing -- or, rather, the novel is. Wolfe may be following yet another basic convention of…
26 Mar 2002, 17:41
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Hartshorn wrote (very cut): True; but my point was simply that the alien creatures in tBotNS seem to be Urth-compatible enough to live and feed there. Indeed, the degree of compat…
26 Mar 2002, 17:33
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Ummmm... well, "The Small Assassin" was written _well_ before '60, and (if I'm not mistaken) appeared in Bradbury's first collection, "Dark Carnival." Indeed, a number of Bradbury'…
26 Mar 2002, 17:08
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An analogy to an outside source, with no citation of the text at hand to invite compare with that outside source, hardly constitutes "textual evidence." If there's a controlling B…
26 Mar 2002, 00:57
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Well, this is at least plausible. But is there any _textual evidence_ in its favor? While this is clever, it entirely evades the questions actually asked about the genetic issues.…
25 Mar 2002, 22:16
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A summary of objections to the theory that Blue = Urth. Others may wish to add any that I've missed. I. The cosmographical objection. The WHORL, a slower-than-light ship, set ou…
25 Mar 2002, 20:06
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Mantis proclaims: Very well. Perhaps it's simply because these (along with "With the Lafayette Escadrille") were my first Wolfe encounter of the Gene kind, but I'm rather fond o…
21 Mar 2002, 20:37
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Jerry F., responding to me... Well, maybe I was wrong from that perspective. I think the gravity issue does it, though... I can weasel this a bit, by observing that the ring make…
14 Mar 2002, 22:27
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G. Willikers done wrote (in part): I'm going to take a slightly different tactic from my esteemed fellow-insect here, and speak to what (in my reading) the BotNS (and indeed the…
13 Mar 2002, 17:26
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... for which I am frankly grateful, because it seems to me to drive the final nail into the "Blue = Urth" theory's coffin, based on past discussions herein. Then Jerry F. asks: …
13 Mar 2002, 17:07
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Jerry Friedman wrote, and I'm going to snip and cut mercilessly to avoid a 90% quoted posting... Not, so far as I can tell, in your math. Possibly. My immediate guess would be th…
12 Mar 2002, 00:10
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Actually, you don't need to go to Boulle for this, Mantis ... there's lobotomy in tBotNS. Remember the zooanthropes?…
07 Mar 2002, 19:28
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A Fool Rushes In... Yeah. She goes off with the Narrator and the others to the Whorl. Ummmm... Actually, I suspect this is a reversal of what we've seen in several other places,…
07 Mar 2002, 16:25
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And Matthew responded: I may be wrong, but I seem to recall a passage -- and it's about time for my periodic rereading of tBotNS (which will probably wind up being a period reread…
06 Mar 2002, 16:40
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... I am thus far in agreement ... Alas, it would disagree far more with these studies - while the "two brains" do indeed appear to have independent "behavior" and possibly even i…
05 Mar 2002, 17:30
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Hoom. First I should apologize for the Subject line followed immediately by "Jeff Wilson, come on down!" It occurred to me only after I hit "Send" that, in that context, my pun o…
05 Mar 2002, 17:20
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Jeff Wilson, come on down! You wrote... I'm not at all sure that this is true. (Well, it might be true of Rudesind specifically, but I'm speaking of "others of his society"), f…
04 Mar 2002, 22:59
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