-
re Dune, _res ipsa loquitur_ -- how many other books have a hero that gets continual access to his line of forbears following a drug trip and becomes emperor as a result. re Emp…
16 Jul 2008, 05:14
-
No, I think they are a step higher in the hierarchy of the great chain of being(s), ie they are of the order of angels/planets/spirits in the medieval worldview. Because they ha…
16 Jul 2008, 02:12
-
That was the point of the Cock and the Angel, surely?…
14 Jul 2008, 00:28
-
Especially given that the sailors mention it is quite common to get apports generated by the sails David Duffy.…
11 Jun 2008, 22:03
-
These arguments all sound similar to traditional theological attacks which give us theodicy ie how can a good God send a flood to drown everyone, earthquake to China etc; therefo…
05 Jun 2008, 23:21
-
Well as usual, YMMV. I would reverse these recommendations -- if _CoC_ is less than satisfactory in terms of being a _setup_, _The Sparrow_ made me grit my teeth for the same re…
13 May 2008, 06:25
-
I know why you are saying that, in that it seems sketchy after the density of the earlier episodes, but on rereading it I found it beautifully understated. Not really decent but…
13 May 2008, 01:37
-
Hi, I'm writing from Australia, and there used to be at least one other list contributor from Sydney, IIRC. Here, at least, every new Wolfe novel turns up in our local library, …
11 May 2008, 21:24
-
ur-text ;)…
25 Apr 2008, 22:54
-
Actually, he doesn't mention further iterations and says the maze is unicursal ;) OK. This is in the NYRSF Jan issue, only one page. Generally liked it, though found a bit Cat…
05 Feb 2008, 22:02
-
Has he reviewed it elsewhere? It doesn't go too deeply into analysis (after all it is a review), though he mentions the possibility of 3rd or 4th iterations of Chris. I can giv…
05 Feb 2008, 06:42
-
Unfortunately I am not au fait with theological thought about the Noachian Flood, but I suspect it is not usually regarded as an evil by RCs. David Duffy.…
08 Jan 2008, 01:59
-
It is, IIRC, a classic Buddhist parable (or is it Hindu? I have read it, but can't find it at the moment), so I always thought it just another example of reattribution a la medieva…
24 Dec 2007, 04:22
-
David Grove, the same guy who did _SoS_. The cover does not look much like any Howard Pyle I've ever seen. The internal illustrations will remind you, unsurprisingly, of the st…
11 Dec 2007, 21:28
-
Two things I thought about after reading this comment were: C. is unrepentant, and comments that he cannot offer absolution to others who are in that state (_Peace_ anyone?); the…
05 Dec 2007, 21:38
-
One reading is that it refers to those enemies of the Commonwealth that have their home underwater. Perhaps an overreading, but I quite liked the possibility it also referred to …
27 Nov 2007, 05:28
-
... As Agila says, I think they are reenactors. They are not in our Africa: Isangoma uses an Australian aboriginal word for fishing spear, as well as Zulu terms, and mentions sev…
15 Nov 2007, 04:13
-
I think that TWK is written (as perhaps _The Devil in a Forest_ is) as a traditional boys own adventure. It's supposed to be alluring to us young folks, didactic, and morally up…
23 Sep 2007, 06:22
-
I think that's a detail from Luria's description of his mnemonist, who IIRC had difficulty associating a profile view and frontal view of the same person. David Duffy.…
20 Jul 2007, 07:19
-
and Dan'l Danehy-Oakes answered: Well, my question about bickering of the gods is, where is the God of the Israelites? We seem to have carefully circled around there. I'm a bit …
28 Jun 2007, 02:40
-
The problem is that the scanty mitochondrial DNA evidence says they did not contribute to any modern human populations. It seems not impossible to me that they could have interb…
21 Jun 2007, 02:47
-
I do have work to do, but apparently in the Iliad... Andromaca, the fine wife of Hector (Iliad, VI, 418)...says the following about her Pelasgian father, Etion of holy Thebes, wh…
07 Jun 2007, 06:24
-
I am positive that someone stated some time ago on the list that elms were planted on graves to keep the spirit underneath at rest. However, a quick google suggests that usually…
07 Jun 2007, 06:12
-
... Yes and yes. I posted a long time ago that Wolfe has a quote from Shea (actually from Nifft the Lean) in ?Short Sun. David Duffy.…
07 Jun 2007, 04:14
-
I first read _The Fifth Head_ back in high school, and was blown away by the complexity and density of ideas. I knew I didn't understand half of what was going on, but you can *…
02 Jun 2007, 22:04
-
Aeneid is more like it ;) Keep up the discussion! Maybe we can circle back to Wolfe by way of _On Fairy Tales_, being a Catholic writer, and secondary creation. David Duffy.…
17 Apr 2007, 02:34
-
This list seems to have been a bit quiet lately on Soldier, so I'll add in some half digested thoughts about the scroll. A few spoilers The prophecy that Latr…
05 Apr 2007, 07:19
-
The "British Museum Dictionary of Ancient Egypt", which I am perusing to try and work out what the McGuffin-scroll could be, says (presumably straight-faced): "Many of the [Egypti…
28 Feb 2007, 00:35
-
This has been gone over a number of times in the last few years, here and elsewhere. The attitudes and actions of the characters in his books are always completely consonant with …
20 Oct 2006, 01:05
-
This was just reviewed in the Australian (www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,20557436-5003900,00.html) "And unlike many good literary biographies, this one is unlikely to…
20 Oct 2006, 00:14
-
Well, _A Boy and His Dog_ got made into a movie... David Duffy,…
17 Oct 2006, 01:32
-
I've previously commented that I think there are images/ideas from Van Vogt, but in Short Sun, notably Venus/Earth, transmigration one way/rocket the other in _Null_A_. They are i…
08 Sep 2006, 22:13
-
Not actually in Chapter 1, and previously discussed on the list -- the epigram. Severian is the watchman holding the shortest watch? The pistol as a theme or symbol: something so…
08 Sep 2006, 21:45
-
Hi, welcome to the list! (though I should add I am more a regular reader than participant). I like the comparison you make (list snipped). I would have thought "as above, so belo…
06 Sep 2006, 01:56
-
Agia says IIRC that the cave was suggested by her locally recruited sidekicks, so Sev would have nowhere safe to escape to. David Duffy.…
23 Jul 2006, 22:37
-
I see this also as a nod to _Childhood's End_ David Duffy.…
21 Jul 2006, 00:08
-
I fear this will be worse than a discussion about the definition of science fiction. Maybe we should concentrate on objective measures of "bad". Just in the last month or so, I h…
16 Jun 2006, 04:06
-
FWIW, does anyone else remember the back-to-back review of Donaldson and Wolfe by either Clute or Watson or Greenland in Foundation around 1983: it quite favourably compared _The O…
10 Jun 2006, 11:36
-
If you read through the archives (somewhere in 1999), you will find Gilligan's Island has previously come up, in a sterling example of practical hermeneutics... David Duffy.…
17 May 2006, 21:29
-
The intro was also reprinted in NYRSF. Of course Wolfe is an author of military SF too, and fits his own criteria ;) David Duffy,…
17 May 2006, 01:07
-
For one terrible moment, I thought you said Pern. David Duffy.…
02 May 2006, 06:46
-
This reminds one of the various female Aelf in Wizard-Knight.…
28 Apr 2006, 13:14
-
I think Wolfe has spent a lot of time on this, starting with meditating on implications of the split-brain patients and of psychosurgery (where there are induced changes in what we…
18 Apr 2006, 22:04
-
I think relativity holds in the NS-SS-LS universe. Wolfe posits the presence of FTL and time travel, and makes the breakdown of causality from our point of view a feature: allowin…
11 Apr 2006, 21:54
-
It seems perfectly possible to me that the present plant life can strike one as pale when seen up close, but their underlying green visible en masse from a distance. But only scie…
10 Apr 2006, 04:42
-
Hey, this is the conceit of Mitchell's _Cloud Atlas_. David Duffy…
07 Apr 2006, 07:19
-
04 Apr 2006, 00:28
-
I was rereading _The World of Null A_ recently (it wasn't as bad as I was expecting ;)) and noticed a couple of interesting parallels. One is the setting on Venus, which I had com…
07 Jan 2006, 06:31
-
This is not that inconsistent an interpretation. So what's so good about being human ;)? Presumably a soul, but how much do you need, and are there lesser benefits? David Duffy.…
09 Dec 2005, 04:57
-
Probably for the same reason as historical anthropophagy, to get spiritual/magical power. Traditionally, you want to eat the bravest of your enemies, IIRC. Coming back to the Ael…
08 Dec 2005, 10:50
Urth Net