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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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That's very reasonable, given the same-initial clues we have elsewhere. Also: 1) "In real life Donny Duke was small and swishy..." p. 53. The assassin is a "little bit of a thing.…
15 Oct 2008, 15:24
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Randolph Carter and "The Dream Quest of the Unknown Kadath" are heavily referenced in Wolfe's story "Game in the Pope's Head" in "Starwater Strains." Carter seems to be an alias gi…
15 Oct 2008, 14:53
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Marc, Your article is fascinating and I agree with nearly all of it except for the "Urth is Green" which seems to me a stretch too far. (I know that Gene Wolfe once said this, b…
22 Sep 2008, 12:07
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*Pedro* *Periera wrote: * Toward the end of OBW, the Rajan was surrounded by inhumi and feared for his life. Soon after this, he met someone in the woods (a Neighbor or the Outsi…
18 Sep 2008, 16:06
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James, I actually did note that theory in my post, very briefly, as dismissed it as follows: Perhaps I was too hasty. We have evidence that an astral-projecting Silk can be mis…
18 Sep 2008, 11:36
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Wolfe once offered evidence for his theory in an interview (http://members.bellatlantic.net/~vze2tmhh/wolfejbj.html): If you read the anthropologists about the Indians they will …
04 Sep 2008, 12:02
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Hi Tim, welcome to the discussion. The fact that the Hierodules have beautiful faces under their two masks doesn't really help indicate their true nature, in my opinion. It stil…
31 Aug 2008, 13:04
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It looks like he just isn't thinking clearly, which is understandable. He doesn't believe his wife is dead, because he whispers to Tamar that his wife will not want a divorce af…
29 Aug 2008, 11:36
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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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I posted on this a few months ago, in April: And later Helen Algmin wrote, and I replied: / My last comment on the "Clue" connection: We do know one murder in full Clue-style: …
28 Aug 2008, 04:59
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I don't think the quality of Wolfe's writing has gone down, but perhaps he has toned down the puzzle elements in his later stories so there is less for us to discuss. Another pos…
22 Aug 2008, 08:43
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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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As the corrected poster, I would like to say that I didn't mind too much. I would rather have had feedback on the substance of my post, but it was an interesting response anyway …
14 Aug 2008, 11:40
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All right, I said "an inhumi" a couple of times in there. I meant it as a gender-neutral shortcut for "an inhumu or an inhuma." People often use the plural for gender-neutrality in…
13 Aug 2008, 18:07
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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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I'm about the only active contributor right now other than Mo, though I saw a new registration recently. What about the Gnu Free Document License? That's what Wikipedia uses, so …
08 Aug 2008, 20:38
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That's a good observation about the pit being made up of Neighbor trees. There had to be a strong Neighbor presence for Horn to be resurrected there, and that probably enabled hi…
02 Aug 2008, 11:46
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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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On reflection, that part of my theory is weak because Hoof should have seen Silk's astral form change appearance before they left Urth. Instead, I'll blame the shadowy presence t…
01 Aug 2008, 11:21
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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 Latin phrases Valeria gives are direct quotations of mottoes found on famous sundials. See my recent post on "Valeria" for details. The phrase "terminus est" can be found…
22 Jul 2008, 04:39
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Paul B wrote: I'm sorry, this is dead wrong. The actual phrase was "[the bells] toll the deaths of continents". Baldanders knew perfectly well what would happen, and he explain…
18 Jul 2008, 17:04
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Valeria's family was connected with Typhon: "They had waited, at first, to leave Urth with the autarch of their era, then had waited because there was nothing left for them but w…
18 Jul 2008, 05:00
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Paul B wrote: Even considering the physical implications of your suggestion, you make a preposterous claim here without any evidence. Presumably a white hole is the only way to r…
17 Jul 2008, 18:02
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I've been holding back on this discussion because of time constraints, but I would like to weigh in. I think that the bringing of the New Sun was a good thing, but I can't agree wi…
17 Jul 2008, 15:54
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b sharp wrote: (Dave Tallman do you really see The Cumaean as a kindly old woman in contrast The Cumaean seems quite compassionate -- she nursed Jolenta, a stranger she had no re…
08 Jul 2008, 22:10
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Here's another possibility: the word "called" might connect with "caller" (as Hethor is designated by Father Inire in his letter). Hethor used mirrors to bring alien creatures to…
08 Jul 2008, 05:31
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As Einstein once said, "Make things as simple as possible, but not simpler." I've made this mistake myself, but Hieros and Hierogrammates are not the same. Hieros were human-cong…
08 Jul 2008, 04:46
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Sev says in Citadel XXXIV: "...they (the Hierogrammates) look both forward and back, and in so looking they have discovered us.... The Hierodules they have found too, and formed mo…
07 Jul 2008, 21:10
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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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Yes, if Inire is really playing all these roles he must be lying. Likewise he can't be a full-time painting cleaner as Rudesind. He must also know perfectly well where Dorcas is …
05 Jul 2008, 15:46
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Another detail you can work with is that Palaemon trained Master Gurloes. The dates and ages seem to imply that Palaemon was a master of apprentices, then a journeyman exile (dem…
05 Jul 2008, 15:39
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The two rows of aligned nunbers made me think of the "sign of addition" that Silk was always making. Maybe adding the numbers would get something. 5553 8783 4223 9700 34 2221 04…
05 Jul 2008, 12:57
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Hi Paul, thanks for posting. I can see how it works when I write it out symbolically (a, b, a+b, a+2b,...). It looks like Maytera Marble's mistake -- possibly from her aging memo…
04 Jul 2008, 13:20
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I didn't claim the changes Silk made were drastic enough to prevent Sev from being the one to bring the New Sun. That could still happen in this timeline. What could happen is th…
04 Jul 2008, 06:46
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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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Does he also have a wry neck (torticollis, a condition in which the head is held stiffly to one side)?…
02 Jul 2008, 08:40
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I agree with that simple literal explanation, but I was looking beyond that for a symbolic meaning. They both appear and disappear to each other, which I speculated could refer t…
02 Jul 2008, 08:06
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Roy C. Lackey wrote: Dave takes the mention of the names of two people who are not even in the The extra trip or trips back in time are not extra-textual: "Often I have dreamed o…
01 Jul 2008, 22:58
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There are two different legends for St. Pelagia. ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Pelagia) Saint Pelagia is an Antiochene saint, a virgin of fifteen years, who chose death by a…
01 Jul 2008, 18:12
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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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There is another level of clues in the play that I take as direct hints from Wolfe to the reader. Saint's names with significant history are of this type IMOP. I looked up the na…
01 Jul 2008, 10:34
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Actually, I can have it both ways very easily. We know for a fact that Sev saw a woman in the loggia near the Path of Air, and certain details about her. We also know that the pl…
01 Jul 2008, 06:51
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I think that reference was to the copy he sealed in a lead casket and lauched into space/time. There was another copy, the one he sent to Master Ultan's library. Well-connected peo…
30 Jun 2008, 17:35
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In the Commonwealth, long prison sentences are usually the result of confusion and neglect, as witness the waiting room prison in the House Absolute. Sev says something similar abo…
30 Jun 2008, 17:08
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