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The flower used by Juno to conceive Mars is unidentified. Robert Graves posited that it was the "whitethorn" -- a type of European hawthorn with medicinal uses that Graves assert…
23 May 2011, 19:00
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Additionally, check out the story "The Tree is My Hat". It takes place on Cassie's island. (that's what Wolfe called it).…
23 May 2011, 18:30
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Interesting. This is the same way I say "The Story of Frog" should be read and "The Story of the Student and His Son". But because the "answer" hasn't been provided, people contin…
23 May 2011, 18:17
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Spring Wind is Hercules? You justify this with supposed comparisons to *Zeus* rather than Hercules? And you have a problem with flimsy evidence? My evidence is based on the clear…
23 May 2011, 18:12
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Right. "NOT likely".…
23 May 2011, 16:15
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Exactly. But the significance of that back-story strikes me as something unique to Wolfe. That Weer is dead (and not dying and crazy). That Sandwalker is a Shadow Child, and the…
23 May 2011, 16:06
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Jason, I rather than a response, I recommend to you this essay as a starting place: http://www.irosf.com/q/zine/article/10536 Wolfe seems to deliberately write his stories with mu…
23 May 2011, 15:29
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This is true of all history. That, I think, is a lesson we are expected to learn from Wolfe's first person-narrative fiction. J…
23 May 2011, 15:13
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The Gospels and Suetonius are history. Their numbers were not selected by an author unless it was God. There's the difference. J.…
23 May 2011, 03:14
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Why call Juno, Rhea Silvia, and Mars by direct cognates and call Romulus and Remus by Frog and Fish? There's no "Fish" in the "Jungle Book". I think it is an easy call that Ymar …
23 May 2011, 03:09
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Well, my objection is this. It seems to me we agree that the term "megatherian" is *related* to the giant alien powers--because Abaia is called a "Great Beast". The only doubt i…
23 May 2011, 02:54
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Reading Wolfe is a very particular skill. I never recommend "The Book of the New Sun" as anyone's first Wolfe novel, but his other stuff is not much easier. It's just that their …
21 May 2011, 23:59
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Yeah, but I get that its aesthetic. It's just that it still leaves open the question "Why 17?" "Who did they rule?" We at least know something of monstrous undersea rulers. A ref…
21 May 2011, 05:36
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No. In the Commonwealth they call them "great beasts". Um...It's tougher than recognizing the Silver Surfer as Jesus or the Soviet Union in 'Animal Farm', but not that terribly h…
21 May 2011, 04:54
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I think it was this that sort of irked me: So should we assume that "The Lives of the 17 Megatherians" refers to 17 very famous giant sloths? Here's the deal: 1) Abaia is calle…
20 May 2011, 22:32
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Gerry, I think your responses to Lee's points were argumentative without touching on the point he is making. The point is: Why are there 17? Why did the Ascians choose to have 1…
20 May 2011, 19:38
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Sergei, This one went through. urth at lists.urth.net is the right one. However, if you use multiple accounts make sure you are SENDING use the account you used to subscribe to …
20 May 2011, 17:36
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Somehow I think an Ascian book is more likely to be a book of political history. Even if there are only four at Severian's Time (which is not required although I like it for reas…
19 May 2011, 22:50
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Not for *some* followers of Abaia (I extrapolate that all of them saw it that way). In "Urth of the New Sun", Severian meets sailors--followers of Abaia--who oppose Severian as t…
19 May 2011, 20:55
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The caloyer says in _Claw_ in his prayer to the Increate : "You, the hero who will destroy the black worm that devours the sun; you for whom the sky parts as a curtain; you whose …
17 May 2011, 20:11
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Yeah. And if we had negative energy and negative mass, we'd probably be going backwards in Time anyway. J.…
13 May 2011, 19:56
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I don't see why this seems unimaginable. The vibration rate of a quartz crystal is no less random a time-keeping sequence than the cycle of the Urth around Sol. A sun-dial that m…
13 May 2011, 19:18
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I don't think that is what Sev is saying. He is saying "Although Gurloes sent me, my training is PRIMARILY received by Palaemon...but not entirely. I consider myself Palaemon's a…
13 May 2011, 19:11
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For the same reason, I always thought the problem was with "us apprentices". But this is really a style issue rather than a grammatical one. Perhaps it was a pet-peeve of style g…
13 May 2011, 14:23
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Sure they do. It's the yearly cycle of the sun. And that cycle (and fractions of it) can be used to synchronize anything. But I got the idea somewhere that the actual mathematics…
12 May 2011, 20:35
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I understood that only traveling @Lightspeed that was contrary to relativity and that that was the problem wormholes were supposed to circumvent? Unless space-time is determinis…
12 May 2011, 18:32
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I would think you could. Any regular tick-tock could analogize a time using a different synch. It would be incredibly complex though since a day somewhere else would be represent…
12 May 2011, 17:59
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The Dying EARTH of course... heh heh…
10 May 2011, 18:58
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Pleasure I get from The Dying Urth stories is the irony and subtle humor. It's the way that whenever Cugel is about to be outsmarted, he refers to himself as "Cugel the Clever". I…
10 May 2011, 15:59
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All *comprehensible* art is derivative. Language is metaphor and metaphor is by definition derivative. Irony is derivative. Homage is derivative. Response is derivative. Humor i…
10 May 2011, 14:48
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Actually, that was to Sergei.…
06 May 2011, 15:03
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Mo, That's interesting observation. What specific ideas did you find unconvincing? Have you seen the movie "The Lives of Others"? The only thing that *might* be unconvincing to …
06 May 2011, 15:01
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Wolfe, Vance, and CS Lewis are genre-busters. They need a category for themselves. I suppose Burroughs' Mars stories would go there. Maybe some of Bradbury's stuff. The new Docto…
02 May 2011, 21:50
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Ah. Sorry Wes Craven. Brain-fart. As for the lasers...well, I just liked the way it sounded. (Incidentally, the ST movie didn't use lasers either as far as I remember). J.…
01 May 2011, 19:01
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Okay. But starting from Wolfe's view of Realism vs SF, was there actual value in telling it as a SF story? I'm not planting a flag. I'm just exploring Wolfe's argument. Personal…
01 May 2011, 05:11
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"Lasars" was only intended as a cipher for a SF. "ST" is at its core a fictionalized military service memoir. Honestly, I was only attempting to consider SF literature from the PO…
01 May 2011, 04:11
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I think Wolfe's problem with it was that there was no reason not to have written the story in the Realistic genre. It was a Naturalism story with SF scenery. Pointless. It didn't…
01 May 2011, 00:15
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Well, I understand that Wolfe is saying, among other things, that Naturalism and Realism address solely what *is* as opposed to What Might Have Been and therefore cannot state au…
29 Apr 2011, 22:43
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Interesting. You'd think they could at least package it for the Scyfy channel or IFC. Maybe the owners are holding on to it until one of the actors wins an Oscar. Or maybe a bank…
28 Apr 2011, 22:33
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Did this movie ever make it out into the world?…
28 Apr 2011, 16:18
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I'm pretty sure that Viron's culture is South American--presumably that of the Commonwealth. The "ball game" is based on the Nahuatl game. It's an analogous Catholic culture. St…
22 Apr 2011, 18:45
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Perhaps if this were Orson Scott Card, I would think you were on to something. J.…
21 Apr 2011, 16:28
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Well, Wolfe was specifically asked about the Mint/Marble typos. Has anyone done so regarding this one? I think it would be a good idea. It is true that it occurs in the first 5 p…
20 Apr 2011, 15:28
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Essentially, an unreliable narrator is someone who: a) has motivation to distort the truth b) is obviously debilitated somehow in his perceptive/interpretive ability There must …
19 Apr 2011, 21:44
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Ah okay. Then I do not believe the *strong* version to be a true definition of an Unreliable Narrator. Verbal is merely making up most of the story. He is "unreliable" only in th…
19 Apr 2011, 20:00
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What then would be an example in literature of a 'strongly unreliable' narrator? J…
19 Apr 2011, 19:18
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Looking at that link again. I should say that I no longer believe Molybdenum's unused parts ever went anywhere except the attic in the cenoby. They had to be there for Rose to co…
19 Apr 2011, 17:01
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I'm glad it helped, David. My answers to a lot of your questions are implied by my explanation at the link I gave. I'll take a shot a few of them anyway. 1) I believe we are ti…
19 Apr 2011, 16:48
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I don't understand the reason for perpetuating the error. But in the List Q&A Wolfe confirmed that the Marble/Mint mix-ups were typos and that he was very annoyed about them. He …
19 Apr 2011, 16:38
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Looks like I cut my own response. To continue: "Consequently, it is reasonable to assume that the Roche/Drotte mix-up could be a typo and that copyrights and Library of Congress …
19 Apr 2011, 16:01
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