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I don't think 'prime' has anything to do with it. This is just ordinary mind-killing politics. Since people are intent on defending Wolfe, let me give a liberal example where one c…
10 Apr 2012, 03:37
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It's a right-wing concept in the same way as writing a story in which the literal Antichrist takes over the UN and uses it to prosecute his Satanic designs is right-wing. Which is …
10 Apr 2012, 00:43
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And John C. Wright, whom we have seen discussing Wolfe before, has picked it up and excerpted it: http://www.scifiwright.com/2012/03/nor-the-summers-as-golden-by-gene-wolfe/…
23 Mar 2012, 18:38
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2012/3/22 Ant?nio Pedro Marques <entonio at gmail.com>: Always an interesting statistical topic: http://andrewgelman.com/2007/03/bayesian_sortin/…
22 Mar 2012, 17:10
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I've put up the whole thing at http://www.gwern.net/docs/2007-wolfe…
02 Mar 2012, 01:10
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A much more interesting description: http://www.shewrites.com/profiles/blogs/honoring-gene-wolfe Also http://blogs.independent.co.uk/2012/01/12/qa-with-the-founder-of-%E2%80%98the…
16 Jan 2012, 23:58
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Frank Herbert comes to mind besides Wolfe.…
20 Dec 2011, 20:02
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Impressive work. I haven't read Sidon, but I re-read the others recently, and this seems like it might be right.…
17 Dec 2011, 02:45
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Another Wright/Wolfe piece: http://www.scifiwright.com/2011/11/underrating-gene-wolfe/…
28 Nov 2011, 23:44
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Interesting. I've thought much the same thing about 5HOC. I'm not sure _Home Fires_ is special in this respect here; I've noted in the past that that theme is overt or covert in ma…
23 Nov 2011, 16:16
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It has been a while, but wasn't there just one sequence of numbers which made up a Seal of Pas? If the sequence doesn't change, then none of those 3 suggestions would work (serial …
28 Oct 2011, 16:06
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_Endangered Species_'s first story, 'A Cabin on the Coast'.…
25 Oct 2011, 14:18
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It has certainly come up many times on this list, mostly in _An Evil Guest_ context IIRC: https://encrypted.google.com/search?q=%22Circus%20of%20Dr%2E%20Lao%22%20site%3Aurth%2Enet …
14 Oct 2011, 17:03
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Destroyed by the floods brought by the New Sun, I always figured.…
22 Sep 2011, 21:13
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Not quite. He said they were 'my equivalents of the Turk' to the 'stagnant political entity' of the Commonwealth. That is, Byzantium:Turks :: Commonwealth:Ascians. This is *not* th…
27 May 2011, 00:39
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It occurred to me that the sundials probably date back to Urth's interstellar empire if not earlier. Maybe they tell times on different *worlds*.…
12 May 2011, 16:30
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Actually, I've been reading the 1897 serialized novel, _Edison's Conquest of Mars_ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edison%27s_Conquest_of_Mars on Project Gutenberg http://www.gutenber…
01 May 2011, 20:20
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It's funny you bring up that particular LeGuin story - I once wrote a sort of reply to it: http://www.gwern.net/fiction/The%20Ones%20Who%20Walk%20Towards%20Acre (Well, it's funny …
30 Apr 2011, 21:35
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It's been quoted at least once before: http://www.urth.net/whorl/archives/v0012/0558.shtml It's a great quip and sums up a lot of people's impression of _The Dispossessed_ (at lea…
30 Apr 2011, 19:30
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15 Mar 2011, 15:31
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A curious update: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=R._A._Lafferty&curidH245&diffA8162212&oldidA8161910 Different address than the ad, and note that none of my links menti…
10 Mar 2011, 19:54
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Yeah, that is very high an asking fee for novels that never sold very much. ($70k invested over the remaining ~70 years of the Lafferty copyrights is *a lot* of money; I can't see …
07 Mar 2011, 21:48
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Severian's phrase doesn't include the key idea - the endlessness of writings. (Or at least, in a rather indirect way, with 'unslakeable'.) I would look instead to Ecclesiastes. It…
31 Jan 2011, 20:30
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I think this is the third time this interview has been posted.…
19 Jan 2011, 23:02
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I don't really have a point to this; I simply like the quote and think it germane: --Bosola, in response to Ferdinand. Act 4, Sc. 2; _The Tragedy of the Dutchesse of Malfy_*, John…
21 Dec 2010, 23:39
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I see it as a problem due to interpretation being a very large problem which is also very loosely specified. When someone proposes a new Grand Unified Theory of the Long Sun or New…
21 Dec 2010, 01:57
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Where is the Pie Club described as baking 'chess pie'? 'chess' is used exactly once in the story, and nothing to do with pies ("the chess and debating society types").…
09 Dec 2010, 22:28
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This is a very good exposition of the missed-chances theory (http://www.gwern.net/Suzanne%20Delage.html#missed-chances) which I should probably steal, since it's better than my, Tu…
09 Dec 2010, 04:01
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I don't remember if our past discussions went into the technical details, but it's pretty unlikely the Whorl got any significant slowdown. Useful link: http://www.projectrho.com/r…
21 Sep 2010, 17:08
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I've linked it in the past. The title is a ref to his latest: http://silkandhornheresy.blogspot.com/2010/09/i-ate-solar-cycle.html…
16 Sep 2010, 20:32
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Doesn't that quote mean that nothing odd is going on (beyond the obvious Gospel allusion or whatever)? "Iron girl" is 3 syllables by my count, as is "good fishing".…
15 Sep 2010, 18:48
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Here's someone who has written a review: http://mordicai.livejournal.com/1817587.html (Must have an advance copy.) "Home Fires is the story of a couple torn apart by war. Sh…
31 Aug 2010, 04:30
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He's referring to the practice of extending houses out into the street (just plop your timbers on top of the cobblestones, or remove the stones first, and build upwards), or just b…
31 Aug 2010, 04:28
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Hm. A future earth, an interstellar war, time travel, and love. Maybe we're getting another entry in the AEG-verse, one which isn't so 'heavily expurgated of the overarching story'…
20 Aug 2010, 04:06
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I would like to be be 'Gene Wolfe' (he is the true monarch of the books, after all!), but if that's the solution, the cipher must be fairly complex - not a straight substitution. N…
14 Aug 2010, 20:14
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Huh. I remember this from Stephen Baxter's Xeelee universe (specifically _Ring_) - the dark matter 'photino birds' were deliberately cooling the Sun to lengthen its lifespan and th…
04 Aug 2010, 15:53
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A somewhat longer review: http://thisplacehere.livejournal.com/115920.html "Wolfe is one of the greats of science fiction, but I found this story only averagely satisfying; i…
27 Jul 2010, 04:44
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I wouldn't want to defend this identification too literally; no more than I would Baldanders=Frankenstein. But I think Borges's library is all libraries; how the pages are split o…
17 Jul 2010, 05:28
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My favored interpretation in this: we all agree that Master Ultan is Jorge Luis Borges. What was one of Borges's most famous short stories? "The Library of Babel"*, containing all …
17 Jul 2010, 01:29
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I was sure that I had, at some point, remarked that Wolfe's books seemed to be getting more political (or perhaps I should say, politically incorrect?) as he got older. However, th…
08 Jul 2010, 10:28
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I don't think that this is what the founders thought, but I'd bet good money this is what Gene thinks. I've read through most of _Starwater Strains_ now, and my initial belief has…
02 Jul 2010, 11:50
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Did she? I haven't read it recently, but she's described as digging up the house for a while and searching for Maitre's hidden fortune, and only when she finally dies does Mr. Mill…
26 Jun 2010, 20:34
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On Fri, Jun 18, 2010 at 2:57 PM, David Stockhoff <dstockhoff at verizon.net> wrote: ... As someone who has watched this discussion with skepticism, I can (re)assure you: you sound…
18 Jun 2010, 19:28
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And you only tell us now, in a letter? Villainous! Surely you are the inspiration for Bax.…
16 Jun 2010, 01:06
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My mistake, that was James Wynn - same initials, I guess!…
12 Jun 2010, 01:56
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I see. Will you be extending your little anarchist free speech crusade to the *entirety* of netiquette? Or just the parts that people bring up? I ask for subject changes to match …
08 Jun 2010, 15:21
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I approve of these restrictions. I would also like to add a third suggestion: *please stop changing subjects*! I try not to complain but merely 'mute' or 'killfile' threads I fin…
07 Jun 2010, 21:06
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Ooh! This sounds like a fun Fermi problem.* We can use the Birthday Paradox to find out. One result in the Wikipedia article is that 'This is a result of the good approximation t…
05 Jun 2010, 16:27
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The Samaritans don't count as Jews? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samaritans#Religious_beliefs…
04 Jun 2010, 23:30
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Courtesy of the ebooks some have execrated, from _Endangered Species_: "No, we didn't worship the Lung-Rin. It was a symbol, that's all. In the long run, if you know what I mean, …
19 May 2010, 23:05
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