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Mark Are you sure you know what a personal attack is? Your complaint risks obscuring the real issues. If you want better discourse on this forum, then insist on it. Be specific.…
17 Oct 2011, 15:07
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I like the idea of Baldanders giving himself gills. But then who and what is he? Why is he doomed to grow so large? Would it not work just as well if he's of Juturna's race and s…
17 Oct 2011, 14:37
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Mark, Gerry has only been accused of obstructionism and the creation of straw men. These are the things that waste time and do not strengthen arguments except by chance. Attackin…
17 Oct 2011, 14:28
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Then you're objecting to something no one said.…
17 Oct 2011, 14:01
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But only the visible behavior, right? Nothing offstage, hidden from us? What am I supposed to say here? Gerry, you need to read more of what Wolfe has read. Milton's Satan is a c…
17 Oct 2011, 12:32
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True! They feared them. You win the prize! I'm not making any particular argument here. I just think Wolfe has definitely thought these things over. He might simply have asked …
17 Oct 2011, 02:56
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Please do! Huh. Yes, the frequency with which these things occur---Silk and his father, Horn and his sons---suggests that it may need a closer look as its own phenomenon, rather…
16 Oct 2011, 21:19
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Absolutely. The evidence is certainly circumstantial and not presented on an explicit and detailed level. Agreed. You need more than a single point of correspondence to establis…
16 Oct 2011, 19:44
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Apologies to Marc and all for the formatting disaster in my last post. Here's a fix. I also should clarify that the mystery of Sillk's genetic heritage and Typhon's relationship…
16 Oct 2011, 19:32
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On 10/16/2011 11:25 AM, Marc Aramini wrote: ... I don't think he just goes straight from one myth to his writing, it's too limiting. He has his own agenda, this is why I can't l…
16 Oct 2011, 19:23
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Gerry All this is very true and well put. Allusions are allusions and, unless a particular story is so well known that any hint of it carries great weight (and there is after al…
16 Oct 2011, 19:04
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I'd like to note that incest is almost by definition covert. The implication of it does its own work. See any gothic novel---including Walpole's. Either a whisper of it is enough…
16 Oct 2011, 18:38
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Why? Don't ask me. I didn't suggest it. Ask the person who suggested it.…
15 Oct 2011, 23:12
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Gerry Is training a form of books?…
15 Oct 2011, 23:08
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Thank you, Marc.…
15 Oct 2011, 11:38
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Thank you for a concrete example! But he didn't give Tartarus mechanical eyes either. Did he also not like cyborging them? Or is something else going on? No one, and I mean NO O…
15 Oct 2011, 11:36
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Right. It's as though the discussion about genetic inheritance never happened! Who said there was anything wrong? Are we not discussing theories to fit them to facts? But thank …
15 Oct 2011, 11:28
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All that means is that she was trained. You said Typhon used all tools available to him to seize and to hold power.…
15 Oct 2011, 11:24
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Before he makes him kneel.…
15 Oct 2011, 00:27
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How do you know this? How do you know? I agree. Who is to say what's unusual? Why would he?…
15 Oct 2011, 00:24
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In my example, I am not a character living in Briah. We've been through this. I agree that IF the "telnet" (still working on what to call it) survives, then the link between thou…
14 Oct 2011, 23:28
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Thanks for that---I had thought of Typhon as Satan without knowing how accurate that was. The discussion of which monarch destroyed books, repented, then collected them in the C…
14 Oct 2011, 20:31
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To me, that is all one thing, in three parts.…
14 Oct 2011, 19:58
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It may help to think of Sev as the kind of Christ who might appear to save the people of a really, really, bad, dark universe utterly cut off from its creator.…
14 Oct 2011, 19:31
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Yes. That's why Severian is not Christ. You'll find a fuller discussion (several of them) in the archives.…
14 Oct 2011, 19:21
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Bingo. That's why he's a Christ figure.…
14 Oct 2011, 19:11
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Gerry, his people didn't even know how to speak out loud. Why would he want them to read? An emperor wants to keep knowledge to himself and his servants.…
14 Oct 2011, 19:05
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I agree. One "big question" that such a story would answer is: can there be ethics without God (including Christ as proof of God's yadda yadda)? Since Wolfe is not a Protestant, …
14 Oct 2011, 18:52
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Great point. Why do you think this? WE would. Would anyone on Urth? Anyway, perhaps there was some reason why Typhon might want to narrow the gene pool---I mean, marry his sist…
14 Oct 2011, 18:41
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Nice! I must read this book. Etaoin Shrdlu, btw, was an old typesetter's joke. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ETAOIN_SHRDLU…
14 Oct 2011, 18:34
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No, but if you think about the character and his motivations and mode of operation, it fits. Of course, one could just as well argue that it is a conflation of Hitler's Germany …
14 Oct 2011, 18:30
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So, since that is in fact the context of our discussion, no more significant in any way whatsoever. No conditions at all and regardless of any talk of enhanced embryos who have p…
14 Oct 2011, 18:28
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I'd think he would have thought of that earlier, being a smart guy, but it's all good.…
14 Oct 2011, 16:24
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I think the fact that the Translator refers to the future supports this flexibility. I think there are two simultaneous, opposite, and complementary approaches to successfully i…
14 Oct 2011, 16:00
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I'd only comment that at some point what might be complementary technologies become redundant technologies, and a story becomes inefficient and chokes on its own, er, waste. Abs…
14 Oct 2011, 15:51
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The thinking machines? Yes, they seem to run together as a plausible history.…
14 Oct 2011, 15:47
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Significant in what sense? If I ruled worlds with all those tools you list, and then you found out I was psionic (without using a psionic helmet), would that not strike you as s…
14 Oct 2011, 15:46
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Well, if it's an iteration, it's going to be similar. The iterations get "better." It's complicated by the fact that (AFAICT) Severian is in the future of that iteration which i…
14 Oct 2011, 14:54
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On 10/14/2011 1:22 AM, Jerry Friedman wrote: Okay, I've got some time. In the real world, I'd say a surgical implant was the obvious possibility. How can producing different pro…
14 Oct 2011, 14:14
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Depending on exactly how the mirrors work, time dilation from frequent travel through them could explain Inire's stated apparent longevity for his short-lived species. Which, btw…
14 Oct 2011, 01:50
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For one thing, it has been noted that the Moffats lived before air travel, yet there is a plane. This and other twists (more than I can now recall) make the scene more and less t…
14 Oct 2011, 01:16
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The Outsider, I'd guess.…
14 Oct 2011, 00:04
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Do you have a page or a quote for this? I'd like to read that passage. I agree that these two clues are classic Wolfe.…
13 Oct 2011, 23:27
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I am suddenly reminded of the Wizard of Oz. It's something he might have said (although he didn't).…
13 Oct 2011, 19:28
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That's certainly a good precedent despite the exception. It has an admirable simplicity. The catch is the strength of the connection. I agree with James that mere adoption seems…
13 Oct 2011, 19:04
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Now that's interesting. Was Auk the heir of Typhon, but somehow (the Outsider?) Silk rose up instead? Could Tussah have been wrong, or else right in a more tenuous sense than we …
13 Oct 2011, 18:51
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As far as cloning, recall that your son gets only half your DNA. Cloning (100%) is not needed. I've argued this for three days, of course. To me, "cloning" need not be taken too …
13 Oct 2011, 18:39
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There is quite a bit, yes. But almost none of the technology is described in a direct, straightforward manner, especially in TBotNS. Even bits such as Typhon's explanation of ant…
13 Oct 2011, 14:44
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Sure, but can you at least put forth an alternative theory that explains what is special about Mucor, and Mucor's embryo, etc. Otherwise, we're not actually even disagreeing. It …
13 Oct 2011, 14:26
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Sure. It's not clear how they would accomplish even those things, however.…
13 Oct 2011, 12:21
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