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Rose lost her hands due to amputation required from some slow flesh-destroying disease. Leprosy, to take a guess. When she visited Blood at his foster home when he was a child, s…
19 Apr 2011, 15:57
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Well, in "Exodus of the Long Sun", in chapter 14, "The Best Thieves in the Whorl", page 313 (HB version), Siyuf is having a discussion with Mint. Marble is not there. A paragraph…
19 Apr 2011, 14:47
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Correction: Marble is a chem. Although she used to have facades that looked generally realistic or possibly very realistic, they have long-ago worn away. Rose is an old bio with…
18 Apr 2011, 22:55
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I think it is in Exodus of the Long Sun. There is a passage where "Mint" is mistakenly says "Marble" and another in a different place where "Marble" is mistakenly says "Mint". It…
18 Apr 2011, 22:40
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When I get home, I intend to see if the Marble/Mint mix-up in the "The Book of Long Sun" was replicated in the "Epiphany of the Long Sun" re-release. Wolfe seemed quite annoyed b…
18 Apr 2011, 21:17
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Additionally, e) Almost all of what he sees and hears that he considers important and also his interpretation on that. However, 1) some things he describes that he considers in…
18 Apr 2011, 19:18
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Well...Dorcas is a water nymph, and by extension a siren. One issue that might be important is that Valeria is, in a sense, Sev's "first girlfriend". He meets her before he met T…
18 Apr 2011, 19:03
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IIRC There were tribes in which Modred was viewed as a hero. There was a story of Arthur attempting to get rid of Modred by putting him and all the infants of Britain into basket…
16 Feb 2011, 13:16
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Remember that Mohammed grew up in a Christianized society. The Koran takes some divergent paths from Orthodox Christianity but, for example, it accepts the virgin birth of Jesus …
15 Feb 2011, 21:51
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I don' think so. It was a common misunderstanding based on (I think) St. Jerome's translation. In fact, I believe there was a commonly held myth is some places that all Jews has …
15 Feb 2011, 21:01
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Tomayto tomahto. Alexander the Great also didn't _actually_ have horns either (and Mars is a farmer not a soldier). The point is that according to Islamic and Berber tradition, h…
15 Feb 2011, 19:09
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Ah, yes! I had mentioned that elsewhere, but forgot to mention it here. Moses *does* have horns which is why he and Alexander are called "the two horned ones" in the Koran. u+16…
15 Feb 2011, 18:47
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Well, it would be nice if Wolfe had worked such a connection into the story. He's pretty good about that sort of thing. I haven't detected it, but it might be that I've failed to…
15 Feb 2011, 18:21
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I think it is a really interesting theory that an astral body will eventually starve if the traveler does not return to his corporeal form. It has the benefit of explaining why t…
15 Feb 2011, 17:51
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We have so little to go on regarding Ol' Barnacles. I've always wanted to connect him to the Rajan--sort of a Severian-Apu Punchau-style encounter or a Pike's Ghost encounter. Un…
15 Feb 2011, 16:13
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Actually, it is not at all uncommon for Wolfe to spend paragraphs of a hand-wringing over theories that are wrong but alert the reader to a puzzle to be solved. An obvious exampl…
15 Feb 2011, 14:37
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Another difference is that the eidolon becomes an independent branch of the original. From that moment, there are two of the original. This is not the case for the dream-traveler…
14 Feb 2011, 21:13
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So? My friend's American kids call their aunt "Tia". Various familial terms used within the Wolfe household mean nothing. There are plenty of people with French surnames in the U…
14 Feb 2011, 18:57
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The increasing scarcity of chems would conceivably cause this. Just as, when the Black Death depleted the population of Europe, it doomed feudalism since the serfs (slaves) gaine…
14 Feb 2011, 16:50
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A. Yes, but his meaning is not as simple as that, as is obvious in the fact that an astral body can bleed to death. When the Rajan said he wasn't afraid because "I'm not really h…
14 Feb 2011, 16:19
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It has always seemed likely to me that "Gene" (if that is the ultimate spelling) is an assimilation. Originally, the name was Jean. This seems implied by the Aunt Jeanine's name,…
14 Feb 2011, 13:12
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And they have sexual desire.…
12 Feb 2011, 06:54
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No. They are not merely corporeal bodies. They are a lighter. They don't need food. But the DO have blood! The Rajan bleeds. The inhumi attack him for his blood. They die from ph…
12 Feb 2011, 06:48
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I don't think it is likely Silk would ever have lived his life as a humble augur. Assuming Silk is the one Tussah was thinking of when he said "my son shall be Calde after me", h…
12 Feb 2011, 03:45
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Oh. And, by the same token, the swords and guns the astral travels conjure are entirely lethal. u+16b9…
12 Feb 2011, 02:57
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Let's say rather that they are different. Not real implies that they are merely virtual. They don't need to eat but they DO bleed. The Rajan is attacked by inhumi after his blood…
12 Feb 2011, 02:55
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I made a typographical error in the OBW quote...I'll repost the whole message for clarity. ---------------------------- All good, Roy. Few additional things... A person in soul t…
11 Feb 2011, 21:35
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All good, Roy. Few additional things... A person in soul travel lighter but he still has mass. He is subject to gravity. He also bleeds and receives harm. When the Rajan is climb…
11 Feb 2011, 20:57
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"Like a new born baby it just happens every day" ~ The Rolling Stones, Paint It Black…
11 Feb 2011, 19:03
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Dude! You should post this.…
11 Feb 2011, 17:32
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I suggest to you Michael Andre-Driussi's "What Wolfe Expects of His Readers". http://www.irosf.com/q/zine/article/10536 Initially, Wolfe did not intend to write "Urth of the New …
11 Feb 2011, 17:30
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I think it is a little more complex or simpler than either either of these. The Whorl and it's purpose were on the whole wholesome because no one is Evil Person in the sense that …
11 Feb 2011, 17:12
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Oops! Wrong direction, Craig. Although, that Concept of the Mind sounds interesting, so I'm just lucky that way I guess.…
11 Feb 2011, 16:40
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I understood it as a gladiatorial sport. It seems to have had a ritualistic element. Each space on the "board" represented actual mountains. So once again, there is a Roman theme…
10 Feb 2011, 20:54
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I'm not sure I would call it "bizarre". Perhaps I'm missing something. I didn't find it in the least inscrutable. I think thematically it's a Liberation story. The characters are…
10 Feb 2011, 20:28
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Clipped. Should be... If the the Rajan can astral-travel, so can the Neighbors. It is certainly not a HUMAN ABILITY.…
10 Feb 2011, 17:34
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"Pike's Ghost" went to Pike's room, wore his callote, made noise. The fighters with the Rajan on Green fought and killed inhumi there. If the the Rajan can astral-travel, so can …
10 Feb 2011, 17:20
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I get what you mean about allusions, heaven knows. But I think this is different. We know the Neighbors left for some actual place, and the Neighbor says the _some_ of humanity c…
10 Feb 2011, 14:02
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Point taken. But Sinew, who mutinied against his father on Green, would not be seen as the same personality as Krait either.…
10 Feb 2011, 04:17
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I've thought about that regarding the Rajan and his association with Dionysus. It is Quetzal's parallel association with Dionysus that confirms for me that he was ensouled by Tus…
10 Feb 2011, 03:33
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There's a lot to like about this. My biggest problem has to do with the expedition being captured and enslaved by the inhumi. Without a thriving Neighbor colony on Green, there w…
10 Feb 2011, 03:28
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Dream-travel involves Time travel. The Rajan's appearance in the grandmother's tale proves it. The appearance of the astral traveling Oreb and the Rajan (as Pike's ghost) proves i…
10 Feb 2011, 02:40
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If they left when the Whorl arrived, it was more like 60 years ago, that is, around 40 years before the Exodus. However, your point is taken. I was overly glib in that response. …
10 Feb 2011, 02:35
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Except that it is difficult to imagine--based on the information available-- how they would do that. On the other hand, it is easy to see how they could have done it by infecting…
09 Feb 2011, 21:17
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Yes, what do Neighbors and sentient inhumi look like during soul travel? Honestly, I think the Neighbors that the resurrected HORN encountered were in astral form. There's a spec…
09 Feb 2011, 19:46
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Corrrection: The Rajan believed it necessary that the Neighbors ONCE had space ships. Indeed, it does seem logical that the Vanished People did not use dream-travel to travel to …
09 Feb 2011, 19:36
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It is, at best, inferrable. But it is a totally unnecessary presumption. Impossible. The inhumi must return to Green to lay their eggs. In your scenario, they would have to relea…
09 Feb 2011, 19:22
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Hmmm... crazy idea, but perhaps this is a good reason to reconsider one's reading regarding WHETHER the Neighbors transported natural-state inhumi to the Whorl. Perhaps this is a…
09 Feb 2011, 18:27
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Or, like a good engineer, we would assume that they accomplished the task with the methods at hand. Well, we do know that inhumi-powered dream-travel can get the Neighbors betwee…
09 Feb 2011, 17:55
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Because (unless someone can identity a Neighbor-ship) the only method of travel native to this system is via inhumi. I mean, if this were a story set in Polynesia in 1550 and some…
09 Feb 2011, 16:14
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