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Wolfe has said that he's not inclined to express his faith in everything he's writes. He used OS Card as a counter-analogy. Figuratively, Severian is Christ....the gnostic Christ…
24 Jun 2010, 19:22
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I think the only manipulator who actually counts is Mr. Million. All the other clones are his test subjects. Note that Auntie Jeanine died rather precipitously after she began ac…
24 Jun 2010, 15:58
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I am pretty certain that "the child" with Phaedra is Number 6. Phaedra *works* at Cave Canem and we know the jobs available there. "Us" is Mr. Million and all the clones before a…
24 Jun 2010, 14:13
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I presume you mean The Toy Theater. The Island of Doctor Death and Other Stories and Other Stories. Incidentally, 'On Blue's Waters' is riddled with 'Pinocchio' references.…
21 Jun 2010, 19:12
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See "Sabra" in 'The Soldier of Sidon'. U+16B9…
21 Jun 2010, 18:46
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"Asopus, whom Latro calls the “river-man” (p. 6) and the “Swift God” (p. 7) is both the name of a god and the name of the important river next to the battle scene that just prece…
15 Jun 2010, 01:13
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True, but any mountain range would technically do the same thing.…
14 Jun 2010, 18:13
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I presumed that Wolfe would use the "Roman" league which is 2.22 km or 1.4 miles. It's still to tall for "several leagues". J.…
14 Jun 2010, 17:29
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One obstacle with the "several leagues" description is that that would make the wall at *least* 4.5 miles high. That's the height of the Himalayas -- not Everest but the higher p…
14 Jun 2010, 13:35
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"I asked who they are, Sieur. I know they're our enemies, that they live to the north in the hot countries, and that they're said to be enslaved by Erebus. But who are they?" CIT…
14 Jun 2010, 12:58
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Didn't Abaia's followers know of it? Wasn't that an important key in their loyalty?…
11 Jun 2010, 20:27
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I guess what I'm saying is that I think Typhon's statement only emphatically implies that Typhon is able to know telepathically (through some self-maintaining mechanisms) that th…
11 Jun 2010, 17:39
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That said, I'd prefer to travel in imaginary time.…
10 Jun 2010, 19:45
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I believe Typhon is doing some Yoda-speak here. He is saying there are powers in the sea that NOW CONSIDER THEMSELVES RULERS and he'll sort them out tout de suite. (There's some …
10 Jun 2010, 19:40
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The Eagles were a motif of Tolkien's Valinor from the beginning. It is hardly likely that when the Eagles rescued Bilbo and the Dwarves in The Hobbit, Tolkien intended that as so…
07 Jun 2010, 21:02
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Is that really obvious? The thickness of the wall suggests that it's purpose is not merely a physical barrier against ground-based assaults. Otherwise, if an invading force over…
07 Jun 2010, 20:06
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I guess I thought that Yesod was a megauniverse with Briah being equivalent to a planet within it? Is that wrong?…
07 Jun 2010, 16:14
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1) Sometimes his work is apologetic and sometimes it isn't. The Sun Cycle --the setting and heroes-- are Christian Gnostic. Actually, the setting of the Wizard Knight is Gnostic …
06 Jun 2010, 01:37
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I don't know if this is who Borski fingered, but I had presumed that they were the Scottish missionaries Robert and Mary Moffat. Robert's vision was to plant a "Garden for God" i…
05 Jun 2010, 03:00
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Or as I've heard it called "holding your chain".…
05 Jun 2010, 02:39
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It's not like you can go to the library and grab the volume called "Talmud". You could say what part of the Talmud you read it in and show off how smart you are. It would matter …
05 Jun 2010, 02:32
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What I'm saying is that Pas is as much Typhon as the Typhons Severian encountered in the The Book of the New Sun and the Urth of the New Sun. Maybe he's changed a lot from the cr…
04 Jun 2010, 21:44
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Yeah, that was DragonCon. Wolfe was really on the ball for all of his panels in that convention.…
04 Jun 2010, 21:38
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In the sense that (and in the cults where) archons are demiurges, yeah. In some cases, the world was made with the assistance of angels and this explains why the World is broken.…
04 Jun 2010, 21:29
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Last September, I sat in a Q&A with Wolfe. The following words (in their essence, it's been 9 months now) were stated: Some Guy: "Typhon managed to sort of be on the Whorl in the…
04 Jun 2010, 21:13
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Okay. But I'm talking about the particular famous demiurge of 1st & 2nd c. Christian Gnostics. The one who was supposed to have spoken to Moses. The one I think Typhon/Pas models…
04 Jun 2010, 20:48
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Or to put it even another way: A demiurge is a god who presents himself as The God. He's yet he is the creator of the world, worshipping him does not lead to salvation/enlightenm…
04 Jun 2010, 20:30
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This was a brain-dump. And I've never go around to editing it, but this was my take linkages between The Long Sun and Revelation: http://www.urth.org/whorlmap/apocalypse.htm…
04 Jun 2010, 19:57
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Well, it works for that too. Like I said, one could argue that the religion on which the Chapter is based is not the Catholic Church, but I think that is quite cumbersome and dis…
04 Jun 2010, 19:50
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Absolutely. I hoped that was obvious. Sorry if it wasn't.…
04 Jun 2010, 19:42
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That's what a Visitor _would_ say. Are you watching out for homeboys?…
04 Jun 2010, 19:33
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Well, the concept of needing to confess to a priest as a path to absolution is pretty Catholic, I'd think. If Wolfe only wanted to play with familiar motifs, why include the plot…
04 Jun 2010, 19:29
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Taoism too, right?…
04 Jun 2010, 19:22
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You could just as well ask "How Catholic is the Catholic Church?" Obviously there are parallels with other religions in this or that aspect. It's the whole package that is at iss…
04 Jun 2010, 19:21
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On the other hand, it is possible for a "Catholic Church" to have been established in the Commonwealth without a Jesus (complete with crosses) merely in correspondence to the vib…
04 Jun 2010, 19:04
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True for just about any character in a Wolfe story.…
04 Jun 2010, 17:38
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Doesn't Wolfe undermine the idea that Urth's universe has no Jesus in "The Book of the Long Sun"? Lemur told Silk that Scylla founded the Chapter as a "parody of the state religi…
04 Jun 2010, 17:36
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There's nothing inconsistent about incest between the important characters of Gnosticism (the influence of Egyptian philosphy and myth ensures that). Norea was said in some writi…
04 Jun 2010, 17:07
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Green has an interesting explanation of how this works in There Are Doors. The various dimensions of There Are Doors with some worlds "closer" to each other than others are (lik…
04 Jun 2010, 15:26
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Well, for starters, the Gnostic Christ does not save anyone individually. He saves mankind as a whole through the example of his enlightenment. This is closer to the salvation of…
04 Jun 2010, 04:47
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I think the contention (for me) is that although #1 is true I do not think... 3) Wolfe necessarily sees Severian as a *figurative* stand-in for the Jesus he believes in. The fi…
03 Jun 2010, 23:12
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On the other hand, the intended parallels do pile up. To once again quote Castle of the Otter/Castle of Days: "Many of us have read so often that he was a "humble carpenter"...The…
03 Jun 2010, 20:09
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Well, even more so then.…
03 Jun 2010, 19:56
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He had this vision during his enlightenment by the Outsider (presumably the Increate). Surely the Outsider is the Lord of all the Universes, and could offer a vision from any of …
03 Jun 2010, 19:49
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Pax Romana…
24 May 2010, 17:26
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I suppose it *might* be ideal. But ideal solutions, by definition, are usually impractical. You have cops, but then you have to have judges when someone says the cop reacted impr…
24 May 2010, 16:47
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Well, it is true that a righteous society is a free society, but I guess I understood the issue to be what happens When Subject Lines Go Bad.…
24 May 2010, 15:54
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But then we have to endure threads on the rules of good subject lines. I think it is better to keep the list in line by modeling good behavior rather having self-appointed cops. …
24 May 2010, 15:15
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I have, in the past, attempted to change the subject lines of threads as they moved OT. Maybe half or less of the participants followed. If the particular email that prompted the…
21 May 2010, 14:59
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He has recommended Robert Graves' "The Greek Myths". He's implied that he has not finished "The White Goddess". "Only enough to know he was crazy" was sort of how he phrased it IIR…
20 May 2010, 14:56
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