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Some, at least, of the references to lame characters in Tim Powers' books refer to the Fisher King. One can certainly find some echoes of the various Fisher King myths in BotNS, b…
16 Jun 2011, 20:59
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Indeed, the whole idea that the Ship tacks across the photon winds... Apheta: "The worlds are very far apart. If one of our ships goes from one to another as fast as the starligh…
08 Jun 2011, 18:49
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The mirror experiment described won't help in propulsion (it causes accelerated mirrors to emit radiation, which would slow them down). In any case the emissions were a function…
08 Jun 2011, 15:32
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I agree with Roy and Mo. They are on Urth watching a transport descend from the Whorl to pick them up. The sentence in the paragraph about the darkness may be imperfectly formed…
02 Jun 2011, 13:56
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It's still not settled. But here we have the situation of visible stars that are a very short distance away and in the same galactic milieu. If time were going 2-6 times slower…
01 Jun 2011, 16:27
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Anything is possible in SF. But it begs the question of why the evolution of stars seems to progress at the same rate everywhere! - Gerry Quinn…
01 Jun 2011, 15:12
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The only evidence that it travelled at relativistic speeds is the seemingly greater passage of time on Urth since the launch. In BotNS, Severian gives the impression that Typhon…
01 Jun 2011, 14:49
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He says it will be visible to everyone. "Soon it will be evening," he said. "If we still haven't gone, we'll go up onto the roof of this house. Standing on the tiles I will point …
31 May 2011, 17:39
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It's not easy to turn a relativistic asteroid! And it doesn't seem like they stopped anywhere en route, so why waste all that energy? If Typhon wanted to repopulate Urth at a la…
31 May 2011, 17:33
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I don't know. There are twenty or so dim red stars in our sky, but most are variables. Still, even if there is only one, I don't see why he should assume that that particular s…
31 May 2011, 14:59
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It's described as black. That gives it a minimum mass of something like 10^18 tons and a temperature under (say) 500 C. So it's not what we think of as a mini black hole, and i…
30 May 2011, 23:23
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From: James Wynn On 5/30/2011 3:12 PM, Gerry Quinn wrote: I think you are over-interpreting here with regard to the name - or half the name - of Spring Wind.. Why do any s…
30 May 2011, 23:13
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[I can't interleaf my response due to the formatting.] I think you are over-interpreting here with regard to the name - or half the name - of Spring Wind.. Why do any scholars ne…
30 May 2011, 20:12
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- I find it hard to see why he would pick on a particular red star. I disagree, it is not a very obvious point. Hard to know. I don't think he does either, but then again 350 y…
30 May 2011, 18:36
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Standard theory (you can find it in Wikipedia etc.) has the temperature of a black hole inversely proportional to its mass. A solar mass black hole has a temperature of about a …
30 May 2011, 18:21
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I don't think the issue of small black holes matters to BotNS - the black hole described is absorbtive, and thus large enough to have a low temperature. In the context of black …
30 May 2011, 00:48
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Interesting quote, but I don;t think it really proves anything about the size of the sun. It looks big on the horizon, just as the Moon does. But Hoof hasn't really said anythi…
29 May 2011, 21:00
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I agree with Jeff that the red giant idea has a lot of problems, especially when really the only thing it is needed to fix is a likely small slip by Wolfe with regard to the visi…
29 May 2011, 16:41
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I don't think it really contradicts Typhon's words, not strongly anyway. He says something like "there are powers in the sea, that would rule", but he might simply not have both…
28 May 2011, 20:48
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True enough... but in most Wolfe including all of the Solar Cycle, we only have the narratopr's word for *everything*. One has to ask why he should lie, or make a mistake? And …
28 May 2011, 18:42
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I got to thinking about the distance from Urth to Blue today and after looking up some stuff I found a problem. On Blue, SilkHorn explains to prospective astral travellers that th…
27 May 2011, 23:53
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The incoherence of introducing Ymar is not all that brutal if one does not try to closely analyse the story as a realistic history. Perhaps Wolfe underestimated how hard readers…
26 May 2011, 15:12
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Very good points. I knew there was something wrong with Ymar being a contemporary of Typhon, but I couldn't put my finger on what exactly. - Gerry Quinn…
25 May 2011, 21:39
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But UotNS didn't exist at the time, and wasn't intended. In my view, there is no substantive evidence that either Typhon or Ymar play any role in the Tale of the Boy Called Frog…
25 May 2011, 14:59
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The story of the Boy Called Frog, which clearly originates in a synthesis of Romulus and Remus combined with The Jungle Book, has also incorporated snippets of other mythologies …
24 May 2011, 14:29
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Thank you. Obviusly I make the comment from my own perspective, thinking - but don't we all even if modesty makes it hard to say - that I am a reasonably good reader of Wolfe, o…
24 May 2011, 13:37
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Because the story of the actual doings of Frog is the story of Romulus. (The story of his ancestry is also that of Romulus.) The section involving the Senate of Wolves is from t…
24 May 2011, 00:38
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When I looked up the story, Mars and Hercules were given (perhaps incorrectly) as the two main alternatives for the father of the twins, and Hercules appealed to me because Sprin…
23 May 2011, 19:42
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The ellipses you place there disguise a jump of twenty or thirty lines, and a slight change of context. I am *not* disputing (as you try to insinuate) the fact that parts of the…
23 May 2011, 18:21
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----- Original Message ----- Yes, that certainly seems the source for those bits. It is also alliterative, as with Romulus and Remus.. Ah, yes, looked it up now. That certainl…
23 May 2011, 18:05
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From: Jason H Yes, I think the oblique descriptions of events are the tricky bit. Wolfe also likes the notion that the attentive reader should only need to be told something onc…
23 May 2011, 17:01
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I'm not familiar with details of the Jungle Book - are their parts of it in the story?. In any case, we don't need it to identify Frog and Fish, because the story of Romulus and…
23 May 2011, 15:35
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I would call it sarcasm rather than reductio ad absurdum. Perhaps I should not have put it that way, but I was making a real point. Type 'megatherian' into any online dictionary…
22 May 2011, 18:25
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Yes, I agree. Fiction first, science second. Ah, I see. - Gerry Quinn…
22 May 2011, 14:24
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Because they are great and beastly. It's one of various things they are called. They would call large wolves or something great beasts too. What they do *not* say are things l…
22 May 2011, 14:22
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Okay... but my other points were all pretty cogent! You can't really identify them so exactly. No one term or word means just one thing, so you simply can't have the same connec…
21 May 2011, 02:27
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I don't have my copy of UotNS to hand, but I remember stuff about bells ringing etc. The gravitational effect of a flyby from a massive object would not set bells to ringing. S…
21 May 2011, 01:46
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I don't agree - see my last paragraph. I am not dismissing the idea of a connection from the start - just arguing that there should be some indication of what sort of connection…
20 May 2011, 20:23
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I don't see this as problematic. We don;t know much about the Group of Seventeen, but we know where they live, or lived: "Where the Group of Seventeen sit, there final justice is…
20 May 2011, 18:44
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Okay, that certainly suggests it - though might Baldanders be referring only to people in particular parts of the world? I thought the phrase referred to a possible invasion of t…
20 May 2011, 18:01
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What is the basis for saying the flood is universal? It is not predicted to be such in Dr. Talos's play - he says in fact that new continents will rise from the sea. The old Au…
20 May 2011, 13:31
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First, I don't think the 'seventeen megatherians' were anything to do with Erebus, Abaia etc. The number doesn't particularly match, but more important than that, we have a book…
18 May 2011, 10:42
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I can search but it doesn't show me the pages. That's beside the point, though. Weren't you trying to show that travel via a wormhole is time travel? I don't think your illustr…
14 May 2011, 23:08
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I'm not sure your figures are right here... If these are the lengths observed by the native (as it appears), then the rest length of the train is more like 1,400,000 km. The mai…
14 May 2011, 15:08
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----- Original Message ----- From: Derek Beyer To: urth at lists.urth.net Sent: Monday, May 02, 2011 6:03 PM Subject: (urth) How *we* can get a special new "retro" editi…
02 May 2011, 17:21
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I think the story vividly and memorably points up a rather difficult ethical issue, which most makers and/or purveyors of moral/ethical systems would like to be able to ignore, g…
01 May 2011, 14:03
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From: Bruce Hayles GW: I've read that book before; I've read it as realism many a time. It's a John Updike kind of book. I've read that story so many times ... now I read a book…
30 Apr 2011, 11:17
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But the actors will be too old to finish it! - Gerry Quinn…
29 Apr 2011, 07:45
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----- Original Message ----- From: Matthew Keeley To: The Urth Mailing List Sent: Friday, April 29, 2011 1:24 AM Subject: Re: (urth) Fw: scenes from movie "Death of Doct…
29 Apr 2011, 01:37
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Definitely yes, Gwern, you always have interesting links! I haven't read _Home Fires_ yet, so I can't comment on it! - Gerry Quinn…
26 Apr 2011, 09:15
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