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According to Fernando, the "gift" pun is common to several languages anyway.…
20 Feb 2011, 03:07
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It does not need to have been a successful recreation. Just an attempt---with a Babel-like resonance.…
20 Feb 2011, 01:54
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I guess then I will stay out of physics, and hope that he stays out of book discussions! Sorry, I had a 2-year-old on my lap when I wrote that. I meant to say, the language of t…
20 Feb 2011, 01:52
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I agree with this.…
20 Feb 2011, 01:42
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I don't think it's crazy. You don't need to find 100% correspondence. There is no doubt, for example, but that Jonas is "a" Tin Man or a descendant of him.…
19 Feb 2011, 19:57
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aha!…
19 Feb 2011, 19:42
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No question of that. But "lepton" is still a Greek word in origin. By using a Greek word out of its context (not sure if it existed at all in Greek, but since the meaning is new …
19 Feb 2011, 19:33
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Definitely. At very least, it's a broad wink.…
19 Feb 2011, 18:44
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Exactly. He's guilty of the crime of which he accuses Wolfe. I have 2 thoughts in response to that: ---if Latin is so close to English, especially from 20,000 years on, then why…
19 Feb 2011, 16:27
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Funny that the guy who complained about Wolfe's use of Latin calls himself Lepton. I am assuming he is not actually Greek, yet he resurrects this archaic language and reuses its …
19 Feb 2011, 12:27
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Sometimes that's true. And I read today of a piece of Russian Tolkien fan fiction---a novel in which Mordor is the oppressed and the elves are the oppressor. Apparently it's not …
17 Feb 2011, 01:43
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Possibly, but he was actually almost bad. There was also a fool ... There are at least two kinds of heroes, after all---those who succeed vs those who fail, of course, but also t…
16 Feb 2011, 02:15
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The woman read: "Then he went up from the plain to Mt. Nebo, the headland that faces the city, and the Compassionating showed him the whole country, all the land as far as the We…
15 Feb 2011, 22:07
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Right, and if Wolfe is being parsimonious, the right and wrong parts tell us more about the character doing the theorizing than about the problem itself.…
15 Feb 2011, 14:40
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I'm one of those theorizers, but let's try to reconcile this with what they told Silkhorn: Of the Neighbors Silkhorn said: "As for me, I have walked with them, and sat with them …
15 Feb 2011, 12:33
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Just how I see it. Except the "dimension" is merely "like" Faerie, in that its inhabitants are never really completely gone, until the time comes that they really are gone.…
11 Feb 2011, 01:14
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It does seem more like a real clue than some of the correspondences discussed here. But allusions aren't just for mixing up and tying together all the world's mythologies. Consi…
11 Feb 2011, 01:11
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I simply meant that sometimes an allusion is just an allusion. If one extrapolates a concrete theory from every allusion in Wolfe, it's like pulling a thread and unraveling the u…
10 Feb 2011, 12:28
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Exactly. That interpretation of "Neighbor" has been with me from my first reading. But I don't have any idea what to do with it. I tend to consider conclusions like these to be t…
10 Feb 2011, 03:20
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Do you actually think Erebus was sending a troopship of warriors up the Gyoll to Nessus? That had never seriously occurred to me, although it explains their eery presence. It see…
09 Feb 2011, 21:19
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??? One interpretation of the Urth/Whorl universe is that a ladder stretches from us to the Increate, with an "angel" of increasing purity on every rung. Another is that a ladder …
09 Feb 2011, 21:13
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You may be right, and these ideas are largely signs of an engineer's critique of the world. Of course, by the same token they may not be truly serious.…
09 Feb 2011, 19:00
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Not in an asteroid, no. I meant a real Whorl emergency, like rising temperatures and weather disasters that sweep the Whorl, or the collapse of the electrical power network. Not a …
09 Feb 2011, 18:56
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Right. And any leak would have been incredibly slow in terms of overall air loss, due to the size of the Whorl, reducing the urgency of a lock failure or breach. Regardless of ho…
09 Feb 2011, 13:09
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Heinlein would approve. But in that case the internal control systems would already have failed and there would be nothing to protect. Who would the rebels threaten? Where would …
09 Feb 2011, 13:02
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Stunning. So in the case of the asteroid and Earth, it's not that the asteroid turns around, but that it falls behind until Earth catches it. Damn. 105,000 miles is still danger…
09 Feb 2011, 12:32
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True, if you assume Typhon saw a primary threat from without, or any threat at all. But perhaps like any tyrant he focused his attention on the threats from within (thus his elab…
09 Feb 2011, 12:26
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Magnificent! Like Kim Stanley Robinson doing Heinlein.…
09 Feb 2011, 02:07
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It's a stumper. Perhaps we know more about the planets of FHOC, and this would shed some light on what Wolfe considers possible. ???…
09 Feb 2011, 02:00
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I will look for it---thanks!…
09 Feb 2011, 01:57
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There couldn't be series of hatches in the cooling tunnels, some open to space, some less so? There couldn't be airlocks all over the place? It was built by humans---it would hav…
09 Feb 2011, 00:16
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The Whorl is a large place. Like Tzadkiel's Ship, it seems almost to contain a universe, not a small planet. It has a cargo full of sheep, as well as bays of clones and embryos t…
09 Feb 2011, 00:06
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And sci-fi is a religion.…
16 Jan 2011, 21:20
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Points for difficulty, but a deduction for trying too hard. (^-^)…
15 Jan 2011, 16:49
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Right. Interesting! A bit of foreboding. The theory is that Severian is the son of Catherine, the wife of the Castellan and lover of the inn-keeper, Whosis?…
15 Jan 2011, 03:08
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"Corn" meaning "grain" but perfectly extendable to "maize" .... that grain with yellow silk. I had the very same thought my very first time. We both must have read it somewhere …
15 Jan 2011, 03:02
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The boy Severian, who was not his son but shared his name. As for Severian's actual guilt in the matter, I don't agree with him myself, but Severian seems to consider himself cul…
14 Jan 2011, 21:45
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Indeed, he does not indicate that he is unable to perform sexually, ... just as one would expect of a man writing his autobiography. Nicely done!…
14 Jan 2011, 21:42
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Interestingly, both are possibly related to fertility---but the irrigation cultures handed down more of our mythical material than did the slash-and-burn cultures. So I agree there…
14 Jan 2011, 19:47
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True. But (1) there is Valeria (2) we have no evidence Severian knew what would happen if he succeeded---though one can certainly find grounds to suspect he did, not least the fact…
14 Jan 2011, 17:00
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He must really want it, then, or has little interest in an heir. I suppose this is what the whole process of building his character toward respect for the highest authority points …
14 Jan 2011, 15:46
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Perhaps Witz can work something up for you with the Conciliator in the central seat. Maybe 2 feet by 4 feet?…
14 Jan 2011, 15:03
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Sure! That's straight from /The Golden Bough/, a book of sheer nonsense that is sure to set your brain on fire. Keep a small fire extinguisher handy. ;) Yes, that kinda makes se…
14 Jan 2011, 13:00
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Yes, the missionaries were Frankish. The Saxons had only recently converted. A very good summary. Of course they weren't less legitimate. But did they uplift humanity toward god…
14 Jan 2011, 03:15
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Sorry, it was the siege of Capua the pair of friends entertained themselves by watching. Sorry, not the Saxon rite, but the Saxons' rite. I don't know what it was called. It m…
14 Jan 2011, 00:47
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So why not /before /the galaxy-spanning days?…
13 Jan 2011, 23:01
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Must have been a different Anselm. I'll check that. Well, it's your source against mine. ;) However, since my source is recent, its relative correctness is irrelevant. Wolfe woul…
13 Jan 2011, 22:59
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I agree that it feels like that.…
13 Jan 2011, 22:46
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I have long been trying to figure out specifically what, if anything, Wolfe was trying to get at with his depiction of a man who becomes a god called the Conciliator. I recently …
13 Jan 2011, 22:33
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But they taught us that in third grade!! Ohhh...…
13 Jan 2011, 20:06
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