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Spiral-shaped? Come on, this isn't R.A. Laffferty or _Tengen Toppen Gurren Lagann_. :)…
17 May 2010, 21:20
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On Tue, May 4, 2010 at 2:53 AM, Stephen Hoy <stephenhoy at yahoo.com> wrote: ... Whoa, I don't see any connection there at all. I don't remember Urashima Taro being connected with…
04 May 2010, 12:48
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While thinking about these connections, I thought to myself, what evidence do we have that Wolfe is even familiar with the Tarot? None of these connections seem especially insightf…
28 Apr 2010, 02:20
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I read that as the imagine is about Emlyn's speculation about Goldwurm's thoughts and reasons for not keeping Ambrosius around to question. I don't read it as Emlyn imagining the e…
23 Apr 2010, 20:03
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My take is that the lion-head is another Orientalism; not precisely accurate (no more than the Musashi depicted), but 'through a mirror darkly'. Lions are an extremely common motif…
20 Apr 2010, 16:57
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The latter, I think. Food pervaded AEG too - I think someone on this list quoted Wolfe as saying that the Green Goddess salad dressing wasn't important but a joke and part of a per…
18 Apr 2010, 13:13
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I once tried to read _Dhalgren_; couldn't finish it. As it happens, Delany was a guest this year at I-CON and I attended one of his panels and watched a fair bit of the Delany mov…
16 Apr 2010, 23:33
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I don't like the Doris=Lupine approach. It doesn't gel with the endgame of TSH. If the ghost is Dorpine's soul, then how do we reconcile this with Lupine selling her soul to a dis…
16 Apr 2010, 19:03
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I think it's implied pretty strongly that whomever Lupin sold her soul to, it wasn't Zwart. Zwart would hardly be telling his son to learn, team up with his twin, become a great cu…
11 Apr 2010, 03:30
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I like that transposition idea. We've been looking for a place where there's some transposition since Wolfe clearly tells us to look for one, and such a transposition wouldn't be a…
10 Apr 2010, 02:44
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Mea culpa. I thought for some reason that they were by different mothers, since that makes the story a little less bizarre. (If Rachel is the mother of both, then the story makes e…
09 Apr 2010, 22:54
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Debts. Either because Bax stole the legacy from George by the trick (and if we're going to make Jacob & Esau comparisons, though they weren't twins, Bax would be the scheming Jacob…
09 Apr 2010, 21:37
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Oh noes - he believed the last letter too? /me shakes head at Clute What happened, man? You used to be cool.…
05 Apr 2010, 17:48
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If I had to construct a 'real' story along those lines, I'd go with something like this: 1. Bax moves into the mansion 2. when he tries to regularize his squatting, he goes to Mart…
31 Mar 2010, 00:55
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Given Millie's intellectual prowess (or lack thereof), I think a story targeted solely at Millie would read much simpler than the actual story.…
30 Mar 2010, 23:08
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Found one new to me online: "Unrequited Love" http://goldenpigsy.blogspot.com/2010/03/sorcerers-house-by-gene-wolfe.html…
29 Mar 2010, 23:09
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http://fantasybookcritic.blogspot.com/2010/03/sorcerers-house-by-gene-wolfe-reviewed.html http://goldenpigsy.blogspot.com/2010/03/sorcerers-house-by-gene-wolfe.html (Both agree ab…
29 Mar 2010, 23:08
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None of these are insurmountable, and all are far more likely than the framestory in TBOTNS. (Oh, in the incredible vastness of space, the translator found a tiny object floating a…
29 Mar 2010, 21:19
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If the compiler is Bax, then why does he drop in quite explicit hints that the letters' dates have been tampered with and that Bax may be lying about how he obtained the house etc.…
27 Mar 2010, 14:57
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The hound of horror would be very checkable, especially if the archives really do bristle with stories.…
27 Mar 2010, 13:48
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I've not figured that one out either. It's not a body part, and it's apparently square or rectangular, and is likely made out of wood or metal, since paper wouldn't stand being wet…
24 Mar 2010, 19:50
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OK; I'll reiterate - how could Bax have planned the inheritance, the various events that made George willing to come, George's offer, the two pistols, Faerie, and the independent c…
23 Mar 2010, 22:53
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According to the message from George, they both make a will in favor of each other. Bax has a good reason to want to replace George and not just kill him: there will be zero questi…
23 Mar 2010, 21:21
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On pg 238, I had took that as the metaphorical use of 'hand-holding': Millie was in the middle of saying how her grades were terrible except for that professor helping her out.…
23 Mar 2010, 16:10
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John C. Wright: http://johncwright.livejournal.com/322189.html "Between the time I wrote the original post at 4.00 AM and now at 10.00, I have reached page 33. Thoughts so far: Mi…
23 Mar 2010, 13:21
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Re-reading it, the last letter becomes ever more obvious: the style is like Bax, the few hours in faerie he mentions is like Bax, the signoff is like Bax, the sudden turn-around in…
23 Mar 2010, 13:01
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I would point out that all the entries in Google Books are either not available or cut you off at roughly half the contents - usually around 150-200 pages, I'd guess, based on how …
22 Mar 2010, 19:19
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I did notice Wolfe explained more of the onomastics than usual. I wonder how much we could possibly deduce about Goldwurm. We aren't told a heck of a lot, after all. Here's one o…
20 Mar 2010, 03:46
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I'm not sure. I just set it down, and while it's more readable than _Fifth Head of Cerberus_ or _Peace_ or _An Evil Guest_, I don't know whether I enjoyed it or not. I kept waiting…
19 Mar 2010, 21:27
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Well, even if we take Cassie at her word - I knew a woman who was in her 40s for an awful long time - we can do better than that; the cop who picks up Cassie guesses (pg 29) 'Forty…
17 Mar 2010, 16:25
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That'll teach me to go with Super Saver shipping on my preorders - it's not predicted to arrive until the 23rd!…
16 Mar 2010, 19:24
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But this isn't really magic, and in magic payment is usually to 'outside' entities; the powers are like a loan. Cassie isn't borrowing anything from anyone; the star power, as Gide…
15 Mar 2010, 20:22
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Checking the PDF leads me to http://www.revolutionsf.com/fiction/eastersunday/01.html Which definitely puts itself forth as by Gene Wolfe. The style is similar, but the twist stri…
08 Mar 2010, 01:00
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Dan Simmons, in the introduction to the first story in _Prayers to Broken Stones_, tells a funny story about Harlan Ellison wherein he gives much the same advice.…
05 Mar 2010, 21:22
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Gah! What kills me is that I know Gene probably only has a decade or two more at most (if he was born in 1931 that puts him at ~79), which means that time is short if I ever want t…
04 Feb 2010, 17:29
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This is my interpretation. 1. Baden gets sick in Uganda, and becomes an impediment and danger to all the other Agency workers doing good useful work there. 2. The agency doesn't w…
08 Jan 2010, 19:22
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It's pity because she knows he doesn't deserve the job but he's getting it for old time's sake. Like nepotism. It's not pity like sending a man off to die. When one does that, one …
07 Jan 2010, 00:13
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OK then. But we're not given any feeling like 'go there, stay, and shut up'. We really are given the feeling of a not-so-efficient aid agency pensioning off a worker in a cheap is…
06 Jan 2010, 13:39
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I thought that too, but that suggests a different sequence, in which the president offers to legalize it and split the proceeds with Reis. Given all the uses of gold transmutation …
06 Jan 2010, 01:00
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Which would be? Woldercon? The intuitive arguments are for exactly the opposite: if your lifespan is indefinitely long, you jeopardize indefinitely many years with violence or ris…
04 Jan 2010, 21:19
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On Mon, Jan 4, 2010 at 11:24 AM, James Wynn <crushtv at gmail.com> wrote: ... Ah, but why should we assume that she's much older? If we can accept Cassie's musing that Cassie is m…
04 Jan 2010, 20:52
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Re-reading the passage, it mentions *photographs* of Pavlatos. Going by the same logic, this is even more damning. Portraits are very easily faked or altered, but photos take effor…
04 Jan 2010, 15:23
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... I'll take it by 'Casey' you mean 'Cassie'. I had the same thought too (not sure whether I glanced over some Urth emails that primed me to it), but I ultimately rejected it. W…
04 Jan 2010, 13:52
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Seconded. Reading through, the very first time, even before the rumbling was mentioned, I thought, 'Didn't I read a story with that already?' I didn't even need to look up Doctorow…
04 Jan 2010, 05:50
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On Mon, Oct 20, 2008 at 4:42 AM, Mr Thalassocrat <thalassocrat08 at gmail.com> wrote: ... I favor the Squiddies. We are told that they are arrogant, they are loners and outcasts, …
04 Jan 2010, 05:50
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I'm still catching up, since I *just* got it and read it, but it is without a doubt an ATF reference. There's even a Waco allusion in there!* * If I'm not reading too much into th…
04 Jan 2010, 05:50
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Fortunately, that's not quite it - even Borges's Library of Babel doesn't contain itself. (Something of a contradiction.) What I think you're referring to: "There is …
23 Nov 2009, 17:45
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Well, besides all the many gobsmackingly obvious parallels, I believe Wolfe in interviews has said as much (I'm sure I've read him say Ultan=Borges in some of the interviews in _Sh…
23 Nov 2009, 16:11
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It would be nice, but it's hard to do. I mean, if I were reading through _Shadow_ again and I saw the Kafka ref, I wouldn't say 'hm, I wonder if that's on THE LIST already; I'd bet…
22 Nov 2009, 02:49
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Well, Vodalus isn't really a rebel, and she's only associated with her sister, but anyway; that seems like a possible reason, but that's terrible - the method of execution chosen f…
21 Nov 2009, 22:03
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