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Well, in Wolfe's novels vampires are very, very common. Soldier of Sidon, The Wizard Knight, and Long/Short Sun. Significantly, Typhonians were a kind of vampire (see Montegue S…
29 Nov 2010, 19:23
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We know that Jahlee copulated with humans during soul travel. What would have prevented a child from being born of such a union? u+16b9…
29 Nov 2010, 19:06
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It would be very fitting indeed for inhumi or Neighbors to have had a hand in Typhon's decision to launch the Whorl. http://urth.org/whorlmap/midas.htm (There are a lot of arguabl…
29 Nov 2010, 19:03
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This is not unlikely. I have elsewhere posited that the name of the city "Viron" is associated with the word for werewolf, "vironsusi". Wolfe would have either come across this t…
29 Nov 2010, 18:42
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Somewhere I have them more carefully detailed. But Hesphaestus was conceived by Hera without the need of a mate. When he was born, he was so ugly and so his mother threw him off …
23 Nov 2010, 14:35
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22 Nov 2010, 16:59
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I think the information came from Lemur...but, okay, he had never been on Urth either. Still, the rituals of the Charter map one-to-one with the Catholic Church. And the Chrasmol…
08 Nov 2010, 15:53
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How is there a "future" when Time collapses at the end of a cycle? In TAD alternate universes that are near one another affect each other just as if you tune the strings on a gui…
08 Nov 2010, 14:34
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Those are hardly the only two possibilities. Given that Time collapses with each cycle it is entirely irrelevant whether the cycles were "earlier" (in meta-Time) or not. For the …
08 Nov 2010, 06:04
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Are we talking about what Silk says in the first chapter of Nightside? "He would have to be firm with them, extremely firm. Remind them that the Outsider was known to esteem them…
05 Nov 2010, 22:41
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Not thought police...smugly anal. For the rest, I guess you already have my response. ~u+16b9…
05 Nov 2010, 21:15
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Sorry Ryan. That was just me distorting and misrepresenting facts as I'm nihilistically inclined to do. u+16b9…
05 Nov 2010, 21:11
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Only a aspergers-debilitated geek would be interested in policing what is a "fact" from what is an alternate reading from what is an error based on another posters erroneous read…
05 Nov 2010, 20:31
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EVERYBODY selectively reads a Wolfe novel, if they've read him long. Anyone who says he has not is selectively recalling. (I would not say such people are bending or misrepresen…
05 Nov 2010, 19:58
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Anybody who has posted to this list for any amount of time is guilty of taking a phrase as expansive when it has a more narrow reading in context. So Pot Meet Kettle. Additional…
05 Nov 2010, 18:32
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It TELLS us nothing in itself. The _why_ questions are the point. If Typhon is Spring Wind and/or the Student, what is the significance of his sons? I suspect that an epiphany i…
03 Nov 2010, 17:22
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I love this sort of post. That he is punished in the place of another, Molah Nadan is a Christ figure.…
26 Oct 2010, 15:20
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Hmmm... perhaps. But the fact that he is aware, in this event at least, that he is making these transpositions gives me pause. u+16b9…
22 Oct 2010, 18:06
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I'm pretty sure that is not the only time the Rajan confuses Hy with Seawrack. I couldn't tell you exactly where. I thought there was a time where he talks about Hyacinth singing…
21 Oct 2010, 15:42
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I think he chose it as a treasonous cognate to "Jahlee" which means "false". But Jahlee says people wouldn't like her real name there. Are we to assume they speak Sanskrit or Hi…
15 Oct 2010, 14:25
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I would suppose (for supposition is all we have, I think) that when Rigoglio thought of the Typhons, he thought of their monstrous versions in the Whorl. And though he retained t…
07 Oct 2010, 14:45
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"he saw them"…
06 Oct 2010, 17:22
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Nicely done, Roy. I'll just address your proffered questions. Isn't it because they were worshiped _secularly_ on Urth? I mean, worshiped in the sense that Stalin was worshiped …
06 Oct 2010, 16:19
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They probably made a bloody mess, but --assuming they weren't scabby on the resurrected Christ-- once you cleaned them they would probably be no more than scratches on the forehe…
30 Sep 2010, 17:35
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Not really. Or so I would think. Drive spikes through the flesh. Pull them out. You have a hole that someone could put their fingers through but the flesh would be closed up othe…
30 Sep 2010, 17:23
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Well, just a joke from Wolfe, IMO. Essentially, (so I believe) it is the same as renaming Typhon "Mars-Typhon", that is, "Spring Wind", because a scribe thought Mars from the Ro…
30 Sep 2010, 17:18
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Well, imprints from the nails in his wrists and ankles would not be readily apparent, I think. It could be that the ability to recognize him at all was the miracle...not the inab…
30 Sep 2010, 16:48
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Perhaps Wolfe was intrigued the parallels between the Whorl and Pellucidar and decided to double-down on Burroughs. u+16b9…
29 Sep 2010, 20:43
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Should be... "I think we can safely say that the parts that are NOT in the original myths/stories are absolutely historical."…
29 Sep 2010, 19:38
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I don't know. Maybe. I was only noting how tricking divining these stories is. In the Q&A, Wolfe implied that The Chapter in "Long Sun" is the Torturer's Guild. The wolves and t…
29 Sep 2010, 15:45
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Just because the story says Frog was raised by "wolves" and Fish was raised by "shepherds" does not mean that those terms are not accurate even if --if you saw them-- you would n…
28 Sep 2010, 18:07
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Still there's presumably nothing to have prevented a non-carbon-based life form from having occurred on Earth along side a carbon-based version. On the other hand, even though th…
27 Sep 2010, 21:35
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Let me try to deconstruct just how much worse "Spring Wind=Mars" is than the other two. June is ACTUALLY named after Juno and, assuming you didn't have a parallel month, it could…
27 Sep 2010, 15:21
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Give it up Russell, you're never getting out of here.…
23 Sep 2010, 17:51
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Wolfe doesn't just create easy allegories of other stories. He is interested in mythology as he is interested in pulp literature. But even more, he seems interested in the way th…
23 Sep 2010, 15:31
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Andrew, I agree that there is intended conflation with the Romulus story. I think you are right about Juno and Rhea, but --while I agree that there is an intended to connection b…
23 Sep 2010, 15:07
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I think the etymology is not dubious at all. To me, it's a fairly overt reference. Not at all subtle. It's analogous to, say, having a story in the Brown book that refers to a bl…
23 Sep 2010, 10:20
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I'm not convinced he was rehabilitated at all. I have heard Wolfe say repeatedly that the best villain is someone who falls just short of being a hero. I think Pas is Wolfe's alt…
23 Sep 2010, 08:58
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For me, it is based on the story of "Spring Wind". I was rather surprised to discover that it was at all controversial that "Spring Wind" referred to Typhon. But I suppose there …
22 Sep 2010, 22:01
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This only means that the desire to go or stay was irrelevant. But it is simply not conceivable that there were not more people on Urth _willing_ to go (people who would gladly h…
22 Sep 2010, 20:21
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They *are* out of reach. They will never be used. They will never be seen. Their locations will never be known. They are pure ideals of their nations as Great Powers. They are fa…
22 Sep 2010, 17:45
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Also, the Whorl is not going to "just be there". It's going to leave and carry to the heavens the patriotic aspirations of the Urth. And Typhon becomes "The Calde Who Returned Us…
22 Sep 2010, 17:22
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As far as improving the life of any Urthling or colonist, it was surely a tremendous waste. As a monument it was merely tremendous, which is what one desires of a monument. To r…
22 Sep 2010, 17:16
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Let's try a different analogy. Do the governments of Pakistan and Iran need to use a nuclear weapon for their nuclear weapon projects to inspire patriotism? Imagine footage of t…
22 Sep 2010, 15:44
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Isn't this like saying that the Apollo lunar missions would never be seen by Americans or Soviets or the other nations it was intended to impress? It certainly isn't true for the…
22 Sep 2010, 15:04
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Given the reoccurring themes of transformation and an autopsy of the nature of the human soul, it is useful that one of the Whorl's gods has been already been met by the reader i…
21 Sep 2010, 23:08
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From the Urth Q&A again: Q: /What was Typhon's purpose in launching the Whorl and was the Blue/Green [solar] system the intended destination?/ -- A: Knowing Typhon as I do, he p…
21 Sep 2010, 18:48
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In the Urth List Q&A, Wolfe said: /Q: About how far, really, is the New Sun series set in our future (or the future of the previous universe)? How much time elapses between Typh…
21 Sep 2010, 18:38
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Interesting. I had remembered her as quoting Oreb. But a careful read of the last chapter and afterward, as well as a search of the book at Amazon reveals Oreb saying no such thi…
17 Sep 2010, 11:43
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Something a little remarkable is implied here, I think. Had Typhon had his druthers --Lemur believes-- the colonists would have had no memory of him or his family. The system of …
16 Sep 2010, 21:51
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