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William Ansley -- First, I defer to your analysis (and your copy of _Peake's Progress_); my impressions were from a copy of _Sometime, Never_ that I haven't read in several year…
30 Jun 2001, 15:31
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William Ansley, quotha: Well, it isn't really supposed to be an ending, nor was the "trilogy" intended to be three books long. Peake was dying (in great pain) when he wrote _Tit…
29 Jun 2001, 08:38
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Do we have to argue about _everything_ around here? (Stumbles backward at the deafening massed roar of YEEESSSS!) Oh. Okay. Well, then, in that case, may I point out the word "g…
28 Jun 2001, 09:58
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Is it just me, or would Vodalian Alzabo Feast make a great name for a band? Oh, dear... "shot down" is just too harsh. "Disagreed with," please. Or if I did shot you down I apolo…
27 Jun 2001, 09:55
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I don't know about PBS, but if this is the British series of a couple years ago, see it. Modulo some simplification, they got the plot of the first two books right (they only do th…
25 Jun 2001, 09:00
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Subject: Re: (whorl) The Narrator's mistakes What's next? "More of the Narrator's Greatest Mistakes" "Well, That About Wraps It Up for the Narrator" --Oolon Cobblatid *This is…
22 Jun 2001, 15:08
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Stipulated with the reservation that I don't personally _like_ it. Enthusiastically endorsed. Either stipulated or not stipulated. I'll happily stipulate that you know what you …
22 Jun 2001, 09:25
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Am I the only one who occasionally wonders if Horn had a brother named Hardart? I thought so. --- Okay, Mantis: I think you've made your point with the little table, i.e., "it's …
21 Jun 2001, 16:33
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Yep. And the idea persists in the Christian tradition well beyond the time of the apostles: an excellent example being a set of works which were probably by a Syrian monk in the 5t…
21 Jun 2001, 09:19
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Me: Wombat: Wellll, as I said, I sort of come from a mid-'70s headset about all this stuff. Been there, wrote the story, sold it to Forry. Howzabout "Journeyman Torturer Mary S…
20 Jun 2001, 11:38
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Adam writes: Stipulated: within the completely fictional universe of discourse, the third-person narrative sections of RttW are fictional(ized) accounts of the activities of the N…
20 Jun 2001, 08:40
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William, William, William... I don't know how to tell you this, but this list is a fannish activity, or, as they used to say -- do they still? -- "fanac." Granted, it's the kin…
20 Jun 2001, 08:23
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Me on parasitism: H'mmm. Perhaps rather than "energy" I should've said "power"; in any case, my point is that fanfickers don't have to create things like characters and settings, …
19 Jun 2001, 15:23
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Responding to my use of the term "parasitic," his No, no. I meant the word in a strictly technical sense; the existence of fanfic is completely dependent on, and draws its energy…
19 Jun 2001, 11:22
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Or pfui. With all due respect to the various people who've used this term, I'm just about apoplectic from not shouting at you about it, and now I will. Look. Whatever _tBotSS_ i…
19 Jun 2001, 09:10
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And more of Mr Friedman: To respond to that I'd have to know (or at least make an educated guess at whether Nabokov himself was familiar with/skilled at the kind of reading SF req…
18 Jun 2001, 17:07
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Well ... yeah. That's the point, innit? What I've been trying to convey: I "think" Wolfe's text offers a (willing) reader some sense of the experience of trying to get at the "r…
18 Jun 2001, 16:46
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Quoth Jerry Friedman: This is certainly possible, and does in fact happen in RL, but nowhere near as often as it introduces them. *This is WHORL, for discussion of Gene Wolfe's…
18 Jun 2001, 08:50
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There have actually been at least half a dozen books published under that title now, including a collection of H.R.Giger's horrid-lovely artwork. --Dan'l…
17 Jun 2001, 09:58
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I deeply agree with Anna June (and Adam) on this point. It is an accurately descriptive term -- though I don't know whether it applies to Spong in particular. Within the context o…
15 Jun 2001, 13:17
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I must disagree on theoretical grounds. The discourse of SF uses rhetorical devices -- and the tactics of the unreliable narrator, the "editorial" comment, and metafictional devi…
15 Jun 2001, 10:15
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I think the usual form is "Experience is what you get right after you need it," which I've seen attributed to Robert Fripp, but it's probably older than that. Socrates. It's all i…
15 Jun 2001, 09:21
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Summary: Anna June gets it, Adam doesn't, and Rostrum... Quoth Adam: While I agree provisionally with you so far, I would note that one of the reasons I believe in the Gospels i…
14 Jun 2001, 11:08
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While you're right, you are right in a way that, well, sort of misses my point. The issue here is _not_ how a hypothetical Bluish reader might respond when faced with the Books o…
13 Jun 2001, 15:32
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Nor do I; but I think even more that it doesn't much matter. Oddly enough, I wasn't thinking of this project as apologetic. Rather, I was thinking of it as experiential -- taking…
11 Jun 2001, 17:14
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Actually, you were right on target. Blish was an atheist through the fifties -- but one of those atheists who _wants_ to believe, if you know what I mean? And, like most rational…
11 Jun 2001, 12:57
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Rostrum, again: Well, either him or another Hellenized Hebrew of the same name ;*) Luke/Acts is a special problem, imo, in this particular flavor of Scripture scholarship. While …
11 Jun 2001, 09:42
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To my: Adam S. asked, Neither; I refer to (1) the fact that they simply do not correct some errors that they themselves seem to think are obvious, instead marking them with "si…
11 Jun 2001, 09:19
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William Ansley referred to Thank you! Well, actually, what I had in mind was the major universe of discourse in which the BOOKS OF THE [FOO] SUN take place, but if the term is m…
11 Jun 2001, 08:50
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This will wander a little off the Lupine track, but trust me, it's heading straight back there. Some points of Rostrum's screed got my head working, and I've got a basic thesis o…
10 Jun 2001, 15:39
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"Unanswerable" is, of course, moot; we can have no definitive answers, but we can have answers which satisfy us, individually if not collectively. Actually, at least one questi…
10 Jun 2001, 11:40
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... so am I. This is a case where I am looking at a repeated pattern and saying, in nerdish tone, "This _means_ something," but am not yet clear on just _what_ it means. I haven'…
04 Jun 2001, 14:49
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Oh, I suppose ... a few ... Given the change in the Narr's astrally-projected "appearance," I suspect that, yes, there is a change in his or their "soul" somewhere, somehow, in …
31 May 2001, 16:24
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Alga: This is cool. Whether or not it is an actual "reference," it's interesting to observe a few contrasts - aside from the non-accusatory nature of Silk's enlightenment, for exa…
29 May 2001, 13:00
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I presume it was a reference to the ram's horn or _shofar_ blown in the Temple on the High Holy Days (Yom Kippur?). It is generally agreed (among those who believe in the Fall to …
23 May 2001, 11:43
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Mr Friedman, You wrote, Post it ! Post it !!!!! *This is WHORL, for discussion of Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun.…
18 May 2001, 15:26
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Don't like it, but have to agree. (Side note -- Lilith is often identified with the Greek snake-women, lamiae, which adds flavor to this.) Right. Realistically, _none_ of this ma…
17 May 2001, 15:54
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Roy wrote that the NP Ummmm... that _was_ his inauguration. There was no big hoo-hah with both houses of Congress looking on reverentially, and no inaugural ball (which would have…
11 May 2001, 14:11
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... what to read till the next Gene Wolfe book comes? (And by the way, does anyone -- Wombat, this question has your name written all over it -- know what he's working on now? "T…
11 May 2001, 09:47
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Well, he's been through some kind of inauguration, but I can't find any statement of his being elected. OTOH, there's no direct hint that he wasn't. He's worried about some futur…
09 May 2001, 15:22
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Oolp -- well, if you're going to go that long (I have trouble thinking of a couple of these as "short shorts") don't neglect "The Detective of Dreams," my single favorite Lupine te…
04 May 2001, 10:15
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Nah. I'll nit-pick over semantics at the drop of a hat. Fair enough -- though on the "trustworth scale" I was setting up, I think it would be more-or-less equivalent to #4, scene…
03 May 2001, 09:06
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I disagree; it is not a reasonable hypothesis, and I make no such assumption. Bhere's a pretty simple hermeneutic principle here: I do assume by default, unless there is some sp…
02 May 2001, 08:27
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"John-Paul Wellcoat" wrote (in response to me): Generally, I'd like to see an author portray a _character_, and not a scenery-chewing melodram villain. I need to believe that a vi…
01 May 2001, 09:32
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They're not "hypothesized," dammit. The Neighbors _say_ so, in RETURN. (Don't ask me for a page cite, though; my copies of SHORT are out on loan and won't be back for a while.) T…
30 Apr 2001, 08:46
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And Alga responded: As well as (say) PKD does in the VALIS triplet? (Of course, PKD's gnosticism is as quirky as anything else PKD wrote...) Millions? Billions. Sagans. Okay, …
30 Apr 2001, 08:42
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Au contraire: I am in fact too sophisticated _not_ to be offended by religious bigotry, whether it favors or disfavors mine own belief-system. I find, e.g., books like "This Prese…
27 Apr 2001, 09:10
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Good catch, good call. I'm afraid I also have to abandon my own theorizing about a grand communion of humans and human-inhumi, in favor of what you say; in which case the "grand …
26 Apr 2001, 13:35
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In response to my: This is true -- but I'm not sure it's relevant. While "Love One Another" may not be The Secret, it clearly must be related to The Secret; slaughtering the entir…
26 Apr 2001, 10:21
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PatNutRit: No, no, a _thousand_ times no! Horn says clearly that it will not, that it will reduce them to mindless beasts. (Of course, you might consider that a form of "destructi…
26 Apr 2001, 09:05
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