-
Many animals can live in conditions where their eggs can't successfully hatch. How, then, do you account for their appearance in great numbers at conjunction? I disagree. I think…
23 Nov 2011, 18:39
-
Green? I know that there is a theory floating about that their claim to fly between the worlds is a lie, but they _do_ tend to appear in great numbers during conjunction.…
23 Nov 2011, 18:17
-
Not that I'm buying this model, but that problem is easily overcome. Silk/the Rajan constantly underestimates himself. He _believes_ that he needs an inhumu to dream-travel, but he…
23 Nov 2011, 17:46
-
And he was voted most likely two?…
23 Nov 2011, 17:44
-
Alternatively, how many people ARE Tzadkiel? A very different question...…
23 Nov 2011, 17:37
-
Well, we are told pretty directly that they (inhumi) can only breed on Green.…
23 Nov 2011, 17:28
-
Ummm...I don't think Silk was bleeding before Hy's casket long before the events of Horn's journey OBW, or even during them. Reasoning: Hoof/Hide have become significantly older by…
23 Nov 2011, 16:47
-
Oh, what a lovely essay! And also his one on "underrating GW." Wright hits the nail on the head.…
23 Nov 2011, 16:43
-
I don't know whether the inhumi _are_ the lianas or not, but I think it's beyond clear that there is _some_ vital connection between them.…
22 Nov 2011, 17:45
-
No, but when he was twelve he amazed the scholars and priests in the Temple with his knowledge and understanding.…
19 Nov 2011, 00:35
-
The old boatman carries a staff? I didn't remember that.…
18 Nov 2011, 21:24
-
Note also that at times Severian uses Terminus Est as a staff. I think Wolfe just likes staves.…
18 Nov 2011, 19:29
-
Whew. I'm going to have to read this a few times and digest it. I'm printing it out for reference.…
18 Nov 2011, 19:12
-
Marc, I'm beginning to get a glimmering of what you're talking about. Is it possible for you to lay out what you believe is going on, in a fairly brief and linear fashion? I've re…
18 Nov 2011, 18:20
-
So.... the lianas becoming animals is a parody of the Eucharist?…
17 Nov 2011, 22:40
-
Okay, if we are proposing that the Bleen/Grue system has a biology where plants grow up to be animals, what's the plant form of husses? (Hi? Huxen?)…
17 Nov 2011, 21:41
-
I think that having them all in the same city would make it easier for him to coordinate the various parts when it came time to resuscitate himself. But your idea of "a thousand Au…
17 Nov 2011, 21:18
-
Why not? Viron is, after all, "Scalding Scylla's" own city. It would be the last place she would look for him to hide.…
17 Nov 2011, 21:07
-
Um. Dionysius?…
17 Nov 2011, 19:54
-
I don't see this. Wolfe is perfectly free to reference mythologies in a syncretic way. In fact, given some of his statements on gods and fairies and such, I suspect he is _obliged_…
17 Nov 2011, 19:28
-
Yes. Delany suggests that one of the discursive powers of SF is to literalize metaphors -- i.e., "her world exploded," which would be a muzzy metaphor in mimetic fiction, in SF mig…
17 Nov 2011, 18:55
-
But the fact that Pas is dead at that point seems to me to make it unlikely that he could possess Oreb, no?…
17 Nov 2011, 17:28
-
Say... Why doesn't Pig talk like Silk?…
17 Nov 2011, 17:15
-
Of course, it is possible that the pseudogravity (centripetal force) of the Whorl is less than one gee, so that giants can grow bigger on land...…
16 Nov 2011, 21:38
-
Not to be difficult, but. In the theory that the apparition of Pike is actually an astrally-travelling Narrator, when, precisely, is he supposed to have done this?…
16 Nov 2011, 21:11
-
Now I'm going to have to do some Nashian verse, aren't I? This is a poem to celebrate Gene, who writes books that are difficult and modern but rarely obscene. Some people dislike …
14 Nov 2011, 22:00
-
Or, maybe, Ogden Nash.…
14 Nov 2011, 19:45
-
Well, he translated it, which is kind of like writing a whole new poem. (Traductore, traduttore.) But even FitzGerald is a bit early for modernism, I believe.…
11 Nov 2011, 21:11
-
I think that's a very Western, modernist view of poetry, to which Khayaam probably did not subscribe.…
11 Nov 2011, 19:56
-
I think that one thing that has been missed in all this is that we are told that, under the dying Old Sun, the stars are visible at midday. So the "stone that puts the stars to fli…
11 Nov 2011, 17:38
-
No, Horn physically travels to Green and dies there.…
10 Nov 2011, 18:07
-
Because people move between Blue and Green and would have noticed the difference.…
10 Nov 2011, 18:00
-
Where? He repeatedly calls it the "hue" that is darker than black.…
10 Nov 2011, 17:42
-
I don't think Green can be Urth's past, because that would put Blue somewhere in the Solar System's past, and I don't think that works.…
10 Nov 2011, 17:23
-
Where did he say this? In the one interview I recall, where he said anything about it at all, he denied that _the pair_ Green and Blue mapped to any of a number of planet pairs. Bu…
10 Nov 2011, 00:55
-
I have no problem with this. The only question it leaves open, which Wolfe's note doesn't help with, is in what _sense_ "Green is Urth." I suppose the electrical joke is possible, …
09 Nov 2011, 19:42
-
This is absolutely correct. There is clearly a _relationship_ between the tower-lander on Green and the tower-lander in Nessus. But what that relationship is remains indeterminate.…
09 Nov 2011, 19:32
-
Ummmm .... Nessus and the City of the Vanished People?…
09 Nov 2011, 18:35
-
Ummm, yeah. Just look how well that worked out with the Khmer Rouge...…
08 Nov 2011, 16:25
-
Actually, the phrase usually refers to movie screens. It comes from the "silver lenticular screen" which was in common use in the Olde Dayes of Movies. But I don't think that chang…
04 Nov 2011, 19:21
-
Let's be more parsimonious about this. He only has to show that his methodology is superior to yours. Still, a challenge worthy of a word-warrior.…
04 Nov 2011, 17:47
-
I don't see the connection. Severian (Wolfe has made clear in interview) is an _imitatio Christi_, not a Christ. But why would this keep the Outsider from being the One God of the …
02 Nov 2011, 20:19
-
Man's got a point. Perhaps "when" is not one of the mysteries we're intended to solve -- and really, other than satisfying our SF-nerd, anal-retentive desire to nail everything dow…
02 Nov 2011, 16:40
-
We know that the Sun is not dying naturally, that a black hole has been planted in it. But I believe that a few thousand years would be too short a time for _that_ to make the desc…
02 Nov 2011, 16:27
-
I have no problem with hundreds of millions of years. On the other hand, I suspect that orogeny can take place much faster than that given the right stimuli; and a technocosmic cul…
02 Nov 2011, 16:23
-
Once again. TBotNS is far enough in the future that mountains containing the ruins of long-buried cities have risen. This is not on the order of 20 or 30 thousand years; it is mil…
02 Nov 2011, 15:52
-
Excuse me -- when was this? He was stabbed in the side with a spear, but I don't recall a stab in the thigh.…
29 Oct 2011, 17:07
-
Resonance with the Fisher-King, perhaps? Or Tamurlane?…
28 Oct 2011, 17:56
-
Oh, and. Madeleine L'Engle and Susan Cooper (both Anglican/Episcopal), Connie Willis and Dr Seuss (Lutheran), Steven King and Jack Williamson (Methodist), and Orson Scott Card if y…
26 Oct 2011, 20:11
-
Oh, I am so _embarassed_ not to have thought of Cordwainer Smith...…
26 Oct 2011, 18:44
Urth Net