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The theory that Chris is his own father makes his existence a time paradox, and Wolfe never does this. He allows people's history and knowledge to be changed by accumulated loops,…
09 Nov 2012, 03:38
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I recently tried to access www.wolfewiki.com and found the address broken. The old address, http: www.holkar.net/pmwiki/pmwiki.php?n=Site.AllRecentChanges is still there. Does anyo…
17 Feb 2011, 17:48
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In "Home Fires" there is never a mention of months or month names. There are days, weeks, hundred-days, and years. What sort of calendar reform is this? Asimov proposed a uniform c…
26 Jan 2011, 16:55
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I have just read "Home Fires" and I was wondering what others thought of it. Much is explained, but there are several points left as mysteries. One is the true relationship between…
25 Jan 2011, 21:26
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James Morier's Hajji Baba of Ispahan, The Adventures of Hajji Baba<http://hajji.netfirms.com/index.html>is a famous book that may be a source Wolfe drew on for ideas and character …
22 Oct 2010, 22:55
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I've been looking around in CofLS and EftLS and I have yet to find any reference to Hyacinth's weight being unusually low. I seem to have exhausted all the times Silk and Hy were t…
03 Sep 2010, 05:28
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Here are some quotes about the hair-color of the dream Fava. Descriptions of her hair color when she's not a dream projection are about her wig and don't count. IGJ p. 194: "The c…
29 Aug 2010, 15:59
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For what it's worth, my forgery explanation for "Seven American Nights" (as posted on the WolfeWiki) has won a "2010 Pulitzer Prize for Commentary" on the waggish blog. He found it…
25 Aug 2010, 22:07
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I had a question about the day of the week of the final day described in "Seven American Nights." The main clue is an outdoor procession Nadan supposedly witnessed on that day: *A…
17 Aug 2010, 13:34
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A few more points about the Reis/Volcano god connection. 1) The squared coral blocks leading to the seated image of the Volcano God on his island (275) and the dark stone block be…
21 Jan 2009, 17:57
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I though it might be useful to writ up an approximate time-line of the first four days of AEG. Day 0 08:00pm next to last "Red Spot" begins (a usual play start time) 11:00pm show …
16 Jan 2009, 22:59
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Earlier in our discussion, I thought you agreed with me that Reis brought his troubles on himself. It was certainly reckless to stash Cassie alone in a place so near the center of …
07 Jan 2009, 23:44
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The government doesn't know everything. I quote: At last John said, "There are only two ways to communicate with Woldercan." The president muttered, "That we know of." Besides,wh…
07 Jan 2009, 19:09
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I don't believe Wolfe does intractable time loops, whether in "Free Live Free" or in "The Book of the New Sun." (I don't think "Pirate Freedom" is intractable either, though I have…
22 Dec 2008, 18:43
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I recently re-read "Castleview" and I put some references and comments about it on http://www.wolfewiki.com/pmwiki/pmwiki.php?n=WolfeWiki.Castleview. References: - The song Wi…
19 Dec 2008, 17:54
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// Here is an approximate timeline, based on 2066 = /Star Trek/+100 years ("One hundred years ago, men dreamed of it [space travel]. They thought there'd be a world government b…
16 Dec 2008, 22:36
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I previously posted a theory that Chris/Ignacio had killed Valentin and set Captain Burt up for betrayal by Lesage. I now think that idea was mistaken. Chris says confessions that…
01 Dec 2008, 16:23
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The discovery of the body of Valentin and his dog Francine in the cave on Hispaniola (p. 204-205) leaves the reader with a mystery. Who killed Valentin? 1. Suicide is suggest…
27 Nov 2008, 14:20
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I now think that Norma Peiper was the wife who accompanied Reis to Woldercan (p. 301). There's no need to postulate a second wife, because the timing can be made to work with one…
15 Nov 2008, 22:14
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It's interesting to try to connect the love triangles in Cassie's plays with her real life. In "The Red Spot," Brad Kingsley (Bruce Sandoz) is married to Jane Simmons (Alexis Caba…
12 Nov 2008, 19:03
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Margaret Briggs seems like a nice, innocent character on the surface -- but I suspect that she is more than she seems. She seems to be a werewolf, and she may also be a spy for m…
25 Oct 2008, 17:29
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Something very strange was going on with Cassie's apartment in this story. There are too many inconsistencies for the explanation to be typos or mistakes. I believe the answer is t…
24 Oct 2008, 15:38
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In Chapter 3, Dr. Chase takes Cassie to a mountain which he says is alive and that its wife is a "laundress." This is likely to be Maple Mountain in Ontario, Canada. According to…
16 Oct 2008, 08:20
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There's something very strange at the end of "The Ziggurat." Emery is trying to lie his way out of trouble and he tells the police that "Tamar" is an exchange student who is stay…
29 Aug 2008, 01:09
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Aldo, a young folk musician, wanders in a permanent traffic jam. Aldo meets an older singer who inspires him, and he creates a new song of revolution. * The story Ain't You …
28 Aug 2008, 05:05
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The main character of "In Looking-Glass Castle" is named Daisy. In "Through the Looking-Glass," Lewis Carroll gave a diagram that related characters to chess pieces. The name "Dais…
19 Aug 2008, 17:52
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With what we know about the inhumi, Mucor, and astral projection from the BotSS, we can revisit the sequence leading to the appearance of Pike's ghost in LotLS. There are several …
13 Aug 2008, 17:35
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In RttW, Silk has a dream about driving in a carriage with Scylla, Mora, and Fava. Abruptly, Fava turns into a painted doll with Chenille's dagger between its ribs. Right after tha…
01 Aug 2008, 20:24
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Jill and Jimmy, brother and sister, are delivered by bus to the house where their father is supposed to be. It seems to be empty, except that the television in the front room is on…
30 Jul 2008, 16:01
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OBW starts with: "It is worthless, this old pen case I brought from Viron. It is nothing. You might go around the market all day and never find a single spirit who would trade yo…
30 Jul 2008, 11:40
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I think Wolfe is being tricky about the supposed "translation" of the whole solar series. The common language of the Whorl seems to dervived from English. We can tell because there…
22 Jul 2008, 16:24
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All the interesting discussion on how to forge Terminus Est leads me to think of another question. Sev dropped off his plain rose thorn in the past. Centuries later, it shows up in…
07 Jul 2008, 20:44
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In CotLS chapter 5, Maytera Marble/Rose thinks "... as predictably as the sixth term in a Fibonacci series of ten was an eleventh of the whole." This is peculiar, because the Fibo…
03 Jul 2008, 20:43
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In RttW 19, there was a client of the torturers called Tigridia. She was on the third level, where people were "yelling and screaming all the time." Her only physical description…
03 Jul 2008, 09:29
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Rudesind said "An artist--a real one--came by where we lived. My mother, being so proud of me, showed him some of the things I'd done. It was Fechin." How do you parse this last se…
01 Jul 2008, 17:22
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In the BotLS, people and animals are frequently "possessed" by the gods. The technology to do this existed in Typhon's time. In the BotNS, there are hints that the something simi…
30 Jun 2008, 08:18
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In Eschatology and Genesis, the Contessa Carina has three maids. She calls on Solange and Kyneburga. Her maid Lybe is present with her. I found their saint's legends on the net. …
27 Jun 2008, 06:04
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In Shadow X, Thecla quotes: "Here Rose the Graced, not Rose the Chaste, reposes. The scent that rises is no scent of roses." In http://www.bibliomania.com/2/3/255/1183/23925/1.htm…
23 Jun 2008, 05:45
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Here is my take on the story "The Most Beautiful Woman on the World" from "Endangered Species." The setting seems to be a Mars terraforming mission. A rift and a connected valle…
21 Jun 2008, 12:34
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How many people who read this story thought of "Alice in Wonderland"? In particular, the Cheshire Cat? 1) The cat is gray with stripes of darker gray, like Teniel's illustration o…
16 Jun 2008, 05:07
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If Peter Palmieri is Peter Pan, where's Captain Hook? Not far away -- the narrator, Peter Palmer, has plenty of Hook imagery about him: 1) "great, stone-beaked, hook-billed snapp…
05 Jun 2008, 04:10
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The feat of reconstructing the entire "Book of the New Sun" from memory is sufficient to prove to me that Severian had a photographic memory as he claimed. Nobody would even atte…
31 May 2008, 23:55
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I was rereading some stories in "Endangered Species" and I had a question: what is Tim wearing in the final scene? There are two possible answers: 1) Swimming trunks. He swam out…
26 May 2008, 22:53
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Magus<http://www.infinityplus.co.uk/nonfiction/intgw.htm> :* * *GW*: "Hour of Trust" was inspired by a Damon Runyon story, "A Light in France." It's basically an early WWII story,…
20 May 2008, 15:41
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Here is some more evidence I found. Here some are other errors (other than Nadan drinking alchohol) in what I believe is the forged part, the account of the final day and night: …
13 May 2008, 15:59
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Here is my reconstruction of what really happened, day by day. 1. Saturday Nadan arrives in Washington. Angers Mr. Tallman by pointing out yellow water. Begin…
10 May 2008, 12:16
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Here are more indications that the forgery theory is correct. 1) Did Nadan tell anyone he was keeping a journal? He told the curator, "I had been writing a great deal before I ca…
09 May 2008, 04:40
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I found more evidence for the forgery theory in SAN: "I carried with me the bottle we had bought, still nearly half full; and before she pinched out the candle I persuaded her to …
08 May 2008, 19:59
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Since I proposed my own theory for the supposed "missing night" in SAN, I should address some of the other theories. They are full of excellent analyses, but in the end I decided…
08 May 2008, 11:50
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The story ends with "Do you think this is his handwriting?...Perhaps. Perhaps." And perhaps not. This adds K+1 to the abstraction. Nadan's account is already unreliable because …
07 May 2008, 05:32
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