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Well, I'm way behind in all the gritty details of this debate, but (that's where you all stop reading - ach, well)... Just because Wolfe is no Card (is that a pun?) doesn't mean he…
14 Mar 2012, 22:36
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Great if so. (That surely doesn't happen too often on this board, ha!) -DOJP 2012/3/12 Ant?nio Pedro Marques <entonio at gmail.com>…
13 Mar 2012, 22:18
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'Though I think a Christian should be able to defend the OT *also* in strictly Jewish terms.' Agreed. That's partly why I'm not down with the OT God is just the best they could c…
11 Mar 2012, 18:22
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'Those of us who stand by the whole canon should be ready to defend it with more than just saying the people who wrote it were savages.' I tried to take a tentative stab at that i…
11 Mar 2012, 01:55
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The only thing I would add to Craig and Marc's comments is the qualification that I think some of Wolfe's characters *do* actually experience genuine redemption, but that it's neve…
10 Mar 2012, 17:47
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Ok, Craig, at the risk of sounding sycophantic, I just have to shout an 'amen!' yet again to your perceptive observations. I guess I'm the president of the Craig Brewer Fan Club. …
10 Mar 2012, 09:14
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Will you let us know if your piece makes it in to the online journal so we can look it up? -DOJP…
08 Mar 2012, 22:20
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All that may be allusively there in Wizard Knight, which would be exactly what we've come to expect from Wolfe. Pagan practices finding their 'correction' and true 'fulfilment' in…
08 Mar 2012, 21:53
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I think maybe this is the classic interview where Wolfe talks directly about some of his Christian beliefs in relation to his fiction. The interview's conveniently broken into lin…
08 Mar 2012, 20:31
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Hey, I thought you didn't want to discuss this! :) The *larger* summary of the doctrine of God from the entire OT could not possibly be accurately represented by a summary of the …
08 Mar 2012, 20:07
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Yeah, Lee, apologies on seeming to make a blanket association with you and Dawkins. I only meant in your seemingly similar readings of the OT. Other than that, you're nothing lik…
08 Mar 2012, 16:30
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Yes, He had some nice moments. It was nice when he didn't make Abraham kill his son and nice how he saved Noah's family and some animals when the rest of earth had to die. (pleas…
08 Mar 2012, 14:14
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Yes, Jerry, I confirm that I think Christians can (and ought to) embrace God as 'dark' in ways distinct from implying evil - this is in poetic counterpoise to the passages about hi…
08 Mar 2012, 13:20
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Lee, I'm not the least offended - my passionate response to you is from a desire to see a* good reading* of the Bible and theology. And, brother, you should not be 'comfortable' w…
07 Mar 2012, 21:22
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Wow. That *was* lovely. And awe-inspiring right at the end. (Would have been even more so if I'd not seen the illustration first.) If Gene Wolfe wrote that recently, he has mos…
07 Mar 2012, 21:05
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In the Old Testament, God is a self-proclaimed angry God. A jealous God who acknowledges the existence of real, rival gods. An unforgiving God who viciouly slaughters those who dis…
07 Mar 2012, 14:57
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Yep, what he said. On Tue, Mar 6, 2012 at 11:06 PM, Andrew Mason <andrew.mason53 at googlemail.com…
06 Mar 2012, 23:08
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Furthermore, the Christian God is deeply merciful at his core and perhaps that too is 'dark' and 'scary' to people who would give everything to neither receive that mercy nor be me…
06 Mar 2012, 23:06
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Uh, I think you guys may be getting a little confused here. The Christian God is Good in a 'dark' and even 'scary' way because he is HOLY. There is no 'nastiness' or 'meanness' i…
06 Mar 2012, 23:02
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Yeah, I'm trying to remember if* any* god or goddess comes out well in that series...…
06 Mar 2012, 21:57
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That sounds good but it just isn't what I am seeing in the Sun Series. BotNS ends with the worship of a pantheon of gods based on normal people from the past, with demonic fish wom…
06 Mar 2012, 20:47
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in the Sun Cycle, where we may see female beings of power, but they are ultimately trumped and always seem to be stuck in a primarily sexual mindset (Kypris, etc) Except, except,…
06 Mar 2012, 19:41
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Yeah, Lee, the whole point in Wolfe is for there to be few and oblique Christian references that are completely outnumbered and out-everything-elsed that still end up subverting th…
06 Mar 2012, 18:46
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*if we didn't already know going in that Wolfe was a Catholic, we wouldn't be making these conclusion. It is only because we know he is a devout Catholic that we put more emphasis…
06 Mar 2012, 16:51
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Aw, come on, guys. It's not too hard to know which is 'primary' for Wolfe. And that doesn't have to take away from the enjoyment of reading for those who disagree with Wolfe. I …
06 Mar 2012, 14:35
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well, hard-headed, certainly...…
02 Mar 2012, 19:15
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Aye, Dan'l, Wolfe is undoubtedly ludic in his writing, not least in this multi-level interplay of mythologies (pace Quinn). -DOJP…
02 Mar 2012, 17:41
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Yes, thanks for that, James. I'm not at all surprised to find Wolfe referencing a 'pagan' myth and absorbing it into the 'myth' of Christ, which he as a Catholic would take to be …
02 Mar 2012, 15:05
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Ah! Thanks for pointing this out. To be honest, Wizard-Knight was what got me properly into Wolfe and I hadn't yet really read the Solar Cycle and other works to see his themes a…
28 Feb 2012, 17:47
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Sorry, I should clarify that I didn't detect any overt Judeo-Christian elements (especially compared to other major Wolfe works) except Michael. But, yes, as has been mentioned, th…
28 Feb 2012, 10:11
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It's been some years, but for what it's worth, the world struck me as more Gnostic - which, as I understand it, is about the opposite of a 'most high and most low are really the sa…
27 Feb 2012, 18:36
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Yeah, the writing style is different than the earlier Suns. But I really like it. I really like Horn's character developed through the journal entries. It's a mounting trilogy t…
09 Jan 2012, 19:30
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Ah, that's very helpful. I really need to study what 'magic' might encompass. All these are plausible, but I would not normally have called 'inherent power' a magical quality. T…
21 Dec 2011, 23:16
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Ok, Jerry, so I think you, like me, have 'magical' as a subset of 'supernatural' or 'paranormal'. But, if not in terms of spells, etc., then in what sense are these phenomena 'mag…
21 Dec 2011, 09:02
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Uh, yep, looks like it. (Hey, I've got my teenage daughter reading her first Wolfe over the holidays - Innocents Aboard. She's loving it so far. She read the opening of 'The Leg…
20 Dec 2011, 23:41
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Yep, David, you were one of the 'others' I was thinking of. -DOJP…
20 Dec 2011, 23:35
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Thanks Jerry. Yes, I wasn't clear in the essay. I meant 'magical' in the spells and incantations sort of sense. If you're explaining the Inhumi and alzabo phenomena in non-natur…
20 Dec 2011, 21:24
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Alas, nor have I, Antonin! I was speaking of people's comments online. -DOJP (The friend whose comments I shared that started this thread lives across and ocean from me - when I…
20 Dec 2011, 21:16
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Wow, wow, wow. I can't tell you all how pleased I am that my pagan-gods-fulfilled-in-Christ comment didn't bring down a firestorm. Quite the reverse! It seems all who've comment…
20 Dec 2011, 21:13
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On this note, I want to weigh in on something I've wanted to comment on for a while. Surely Wolfe sees all other heroes and legends and divinities and rites and so on finding thei…
20 Dec 2011, 10:09
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On the other hand, I often find those who love Wolfe's ornate verbosity in BotNS don't like his more bare and minimalist style in the other books. I think he's an unspeakably tale…
20 Dec 2011, 10:00
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Ok here's the passage. Severian is speaking I believe (chapter XXI in SotL): "What I was going to tell you was that the existence of that relic seems to have given some people th…
19 Dec 2011, 20:07
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Ha, thanks, Lee! (You just got on my good side - let's see how long you can stay there, heh heh.) The rest of your post is unfortunately beyond me. I'm not that intimate with th…
19 Dec 2011, 19:51
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Thanks, Dan'l. I'm usually the type that at least tries to start at the beginning and slog my way through chronologically. We'll see.... -DOJP ut it didn't do much for me. I re…
19 Dec 2011, 19:31
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Yeah, I've been hearing about all these books and Stephenson's skills for a while and am totally hooked in already. I also saw him do a brilliant Google video talk and heard a rec…
19 Dec 2011, 19:08
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Oh yes, Antonin: happens to me all the time. Dan Simmons, for example, writes a very compelling yard in perfectly capable prose. But if I read him too close to an immersive readi…
19 Dec 2011, 18:40
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Yeah, that part's brilliant, Dan'l. Oh and now I remember the line well into SotT (Chapter XVI 'The Rag Shop') that really awoke me to the fact I was reading a great writer: 'If …
19 Dec 2011, 18:36
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You know, it's funny. The first chapters of SotT did *not* terribly impress me as to writing style when I first tackled BotNS over a decade ago. There was nothing *wrong* with th…
19 Dec 2011, 18:25
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Yes, so many truly wonderful lines and passages. I remember loving the really robust mountainous language at the beginning of SotL, starting with the sentence: 'Thrax is a crooke…
19 Dec 2011, 18:08
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Actually, I should just paste it here for ease: ' The other way Wolfe is generally different than Tolkien is that most of his world-building is in authentically *science fictional…
19 Dec 2011, 01:42
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