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From: David Stockhoff The first read is that a mystery woman appears at the lake. The second read is that Severian raised her. Neither read involves an enchantment. There is n…
18 Dec 2011, 02:15
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From: David Stockhoff Sure, but you seem to be saying that it IS what happened too. If you’re not, what’s the point in your fix? What exactly is the status of this “other narra…
18 Dec 2011, 01:04
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From: David Stockhoff At the cost of having to assume Severian’s power is something considerably different and weaker than what we thought — i.e. when he resurrects someone it wa…
18 Dec 2011, 00:34
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From: David Stockhoff It doesn’t betray him — it is destroyed saving him. But that’s by the by. That’s a circular argument. “Dorcas is like Sleeping Beauty. Therefore she was…
17 Dec 2011, 23:54
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From: Lee Berman In Wolfe, those who play roles tend to become what they play. - Gerry Quinn…
17 Dec 2011, 21:21
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From: David Stockhoff But I wasn’t confused. Whatever my state of literacy, I was well aware that faerie lore is nebulous and contradictory. What *actually* happened is that I …
17 Dec 2011, 15:52
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From: David Stockhoff In which case demanding that I express my thoughts on what an amnesiac Neighbour consciousness inserted into a human body might sense as odd in terms of fai…
16 Dec 2011, 22:16
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From: Lee Berman But Valeria and Typhon have elements of Sleeping Beauty too, if you want to define “elements” so loosely. This is a point I feel the need to make repeatedly: i…
16 Dec 2011, 21:49
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From: David Stockhoff I have never abused anyone for bringing it up (it must require a hard neck for you to accuse me of abuse in this thread). What I have done is asked you to …
16 Dec 2011, 21:05
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From: Lee Berman You should consider my lack of denial an expression of contempt for the accusations, rather than an admission of malfeasance. I recognise your tactics, certainl…
16 Dec 2011, 20:51
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From: David Stockhoff You’ve accused me of illiteracy twice recently, if I recall correct. On both occasions, you were attempting to make far-fetched correspondences between fai…
16 Dec 2011, 20:31
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From: David Stockhoff It does form a good basis for a thrilling story, with unequivocally virtuous characters for the audience to identify with, and villains who may be despatche…
16 Dec 2011, 16:59
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From: Lee Berman The fox expressed dismay when the scorpion stung him halfway across the river. A wiser fox would have recognised the scorpion for what he was and treated him wi…
16 Dec 2011, 14:28
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From: David Stockhoff I *don’t* us a 100% test. I explicitly brought up the idea of gradations in the degree of correspondence. The point I making is that the supposed fairy-ta…
16 Dec 2011, 14:02
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From: David Stockhoff That’s not what I’m saying at all. I’m saying that fairy-tale logic seems to work in the region of 0%. That’s the opposite of one-to-one correspondence. …
16 Dec 2011, 02:57
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From: Craig Brewer Talos would be the best example of that category for me also. You could argue for ghosts, but Ash and Apu Punchau are the products of time travel, and Malrubi…
15 Dec 2011, 23:27
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From: Dan'l Danehy-Oakes You are right about technology as magic, but I don’t think that BotNS maps well onto fairy stories. Not every story containing magic is a fairy story, o…
15 Dec 2011, 22:57
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From: Lee Berman You said: “a sword, a giant, a sleeping beauty, magic, palaces”. But none of those are really much like their fairy-tale counterparts. The sword has no magic p…
15 Dec 2011, 19:23
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From: Lee Berman Certainly there are fairy-tale elements. But we are also left in no doubt about the deep-future background against which these tropes must be interpreted. The …
15 Dec 2011, 14:34
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From: Daniel Petersen hyperbole! What I was trying to say was that in series that are best at a first read, the spoiler effects (and their opposite) that come with reading them o…
14 Dec 2011, 15:11
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From: Ant?nio Pedro Marques Same here. If you’ve read Vance (say) beforehand, you’ll know what’s going on (of course in _The Dying Earth_ magic did rather dominate tech, but at …
14 Dec 2011, 13:50
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From: Ant?nio Pedro Marques Given that Wolfe is best on a re-read, it’s logical that there can’t really be a “best” order! I would recommend the short stories to begin. Also, P…
14 Dec 2011, 13:36
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From: Antonin Scriabin Standard lull, I reckon. - Gerry Quinn ...Just wondering if that Linked-In request somehow threw the server for a loop, resulting in the lapse in activ…
13 Dec 2011, 17:25
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From: Larry Miller Yes. A bit too implausible I thought, but seemingly Potto had a copy made. Of course it could be that he has access to special purpose chem bodies. Does it …
06 Dec 2011, 14:22
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From: David Duffy It’s been floating around since antimatter was theorised / discovered. It’s very difficult to test because you really want a heavy antimatter particle with no …
06 Dec 2011, 14:19
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From: David Stockhoff Surely the fact of it being one of the Latinate names that can be associated with saints of either gender makes it a twins? name in BotNS? Of course it doe…
04 Dec 2011, 20:38
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From: David Stockhoff But we do get a hint that it’s typical of a twin: **************************************** "She was your sister, wasn't she?" He nodded. "We were twins. Bi…
04 Dec 2011, 15:24
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From: Lee Berman The above is a circular argument. We have no reason to suppose ab initio that Rudesind and Dorcas’s husband resemble Father Inire, even if they are old and shor…
04 Dec 2011, 14:25
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From: Ant?nio Pedro Marques I’m not sure it matters — surely the main question is whether the name does imply a twin? Certainly the book seems to be suggesting that a twin siste…
04 Dec 2011, 14:10
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From: Lee Berman A good point. You would expect them to know her. Definitely a strong point against her having been a witch. It seems not unlikely that devotees of Vodalus and…
04 Dec 2011, 01:37
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From: Lee Berman Why the fear of posting it, if all posters but I would consider it evidence? Curious that you did not mention those implications. But <shrug> they have been st…
03 Dec 2011, 23:28
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From: Larry Miller I don’t have any strong feelings about the matter — I just think that IF Severian has a twin sister and IF she is a character, Merryn seems most likely. Becau…
03 Dec 2011, 18:48
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From: Lee Berman What evidence? The waitress wasn’t an actress (two statements of hers indicate it) and there’s no indication that she hadn’t worked elsewhere as a waitress befo…
03 Dec 2011, 14:49
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From: Lee Berman Merryn might be Severian’s age for all we know. We know there is something odd about her age; she looks both old and young, and one or other appearance must be …
02 Dec 2011, 20:59
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From: Lee Berman And we have no reason to doubt it. But of beautification or the like, she says: “it is not a task of the kind the Cumaean undertakes, save in great need”. It i…
02 Dec 2011, 16:06
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From: Lee Berman Fair enough — I had missed that. Jeff makes a reasonable point about Rudesind (easy to imagine the old guy exaggerating Inire’s lifespan) but I think it’s proba…
02 Dec 2011, 15:44
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From: Lee Berman It’s clear enough — they didn’t take sides in that fight. Though they probably knew how it ended, as Baldanders himself guessed, I think. But all those angels,…
02 Dec 2011, 02:04
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From: Lee Berman Indeed, it seems likely that these are the cousins in question. Reluctantly or not, they seem willing to help both humanity and others; Severian interrupts one …
01 Dec 2011, 22:51
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From: Lee Berman I merely state it as a fact: there are few if any indications that Inire is not who he appears to be. The same applies to many other characters. Wolfe rarely t…
01 Dec 2011, 17:24
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From: entonio at gmail.com No dia 2011/12/01, ?s 14:47, "Gerry Quinn" <gerry at bindweed.com> escreveu: I think tech went downhill, but I don’t see it as relevant to the decor…
01 Dec 2011, 15:41
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From: Lee Berman There is no reason to suppose either that there is one word for all, or that each portal has its own word. Something in between is most probable. In any case, …
01 Dec 2011, 14:47
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From: Lee Berman I don’t recall us being told anything much about Inire’s history, one way or the other. Clearly he has been influential for some considerable time when Severian…
01 Dec 2011, 14:20
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From: Lee Berman Severian: ?What a delight it was to discover the treasures those same predecessors [the Autarchs] had left behind. As for the words, they are kept fresh in the …
01 Dec 2011, 02:14
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From: Larry Miller He talks about his predecessors, and uses the magic Autarch words to get in. - Gerry Quinn…
30 Nov 2011, 21:37
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From: Larry Miller Or of any of the many other things he found in his quarters. They were, however, the quarters of earlier Autarchs, even though they had not been used for cent…
30 Nov 2011, 21:10
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From: David Stockhoff On 11/30/2011 9:20 AM, Brian wrote: Since we all agree Wikipedia is never wrong ;), I'll just stick with their definitions. Mandragora is the genus of …
30 Nov 2011, 16:32
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From: Lee Berman This argument is just silly. Why would the artist put in two penises to refer to the two heads, when he has also drawn the two heads, and twice over? As for s…
30 Nov 2011, 13:18
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From: David Stockhoff [Which head?] I find it hard to disentangle this post, but I suspect we agree in general on how Silk relates to Pas, even if we don’t quite understand each…
30 Nov 2011, 12:34
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From: Marc Aramini Something struck me in that paragraph. When you mention Silver Silk, are you saying that the Silver/Silent aspect of Silk is what leads him to ride quietly in…
30 Nov 2011, 12:29
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From: Gerry Quinn By the way, I accept that none of the explanations proposed for Silk seeing, or thinking he sees, Oreb are very good. I just don’t think the situation warrants…
30 Nov 2011, 12:15
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