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I have a friend whose in-laws believe the moon landing was faked. He said once, "The thing that gets me is...why do they think anyone would do that?" My answer: "Because it's fu…
02 Jul 2010, 16:41
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Not an outlier, I think. "The Devil in a Forest" is fine unflattering deconstruction of Robin Hood as a hero who "robs the rich to give to the poor". For the most part, however,…
02 Jul 2010, 16:35
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I take it to mean that the visor looked like it was made of gold. That works for the picture.The black could readily be scene as part of the reflection on the visor. Eh...I can …
02 Jul 2010, 16:16
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This is an ingenious method to kill a zombie thread ("Appearance of Inire"): reintroduce an old zombie thread that has already resurrected itself 3 times previously to flush it a…
02 Jul 2010, 15:24
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_Maybe_ visor color since it is not "entirely gold". But there's no requirement for Urth size is there?…
02 Jul 2010, 14:51
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The uncropped version of this picture works fine I think. It would show the flag on it's pole. One of the arguments from the conspiracists that the moon landings were faked is t…
02 Jul 2010, 06:39
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At risk of seeming pedantic, Lewis' cosmology is a little different from the Gnostic version. In the Gnostic version, the demiurge (or just as often, the demiurges) is the genuin…
01 Jul 2010, 23:12
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I think that was the point. Human degeneracy had caused them to be enslaved by their lowest instincts. Humanity ought to have been seeking to serve the ideals of Valfather and th…
01 Jul 2010, 20:33
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It seems to me that Apheta said the Hierogrammates were made by the Hieros, the humans of a previous mantanvara. u+16b9…
01 Jul 2010, 17:40
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I don't know *how* to take this discourse at all. I had no idea that "pedant" was an insult around here. I thought that was what we were all striving for. u+16b9…
01 Jul 2010, 16:44
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There's a picture, maybe an illustration --a famous one-- that I remember from my childhood. An astronaut on the moon. The Earth over his shoulder. The American flag behind him o…
01 Jul 2010, 04:56
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Are you referring to William Blake's mythology? I don't think so. I don't think Severian and Cassie are in the same literary universe. The Storm God is described as an ancient al…
30 Jun 2010, 21:55
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Another interpretation is that "Heirodules" is a grandiose term for "robots created by the Heiro race". That the Heirogrammates made and used robots is not necessarily sinful. Ki…
30 Jun 2010, 19:44
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Not that I'm bothered _much_, but --for the record-- it was Antonio who said the bit about only God being the creator. Antonio might mind. :-) J u+16b9…
30 Jun 2010, 19:34
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Corrective lenses? I presumed Palaemon is blind.…
30 Jun 2010, 17:01
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One can make robots out of flesh as well as tin, or cover the tin with a fleshy facade. The ways such creatures can be different from humans are varied, extreme, subtle, and irre…
30 Jun 2010, 15:21
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Another word meaning "slave" is "robot". Ossipago is obviously a robot, but I suppose that the "race" created by the Hierogrammates were originally all robots/androids. Personall…
30 Jun 2010, 14:24
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"We've a Fechin here that shows three girls dressing another one with flowers that's so real you expect the bees to come out of it." ~ Shadow of the Torturer Nicolai Ivanovich Fe…
28 Jun 2010, 20:25
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I say David is the "control" because N5 is actually the subject of the experiment. David and Jeanine represent "all the other people on the planet". Maitre is uninterested in the…
28 Jun 2010, 01:19
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The purpose of their education was to observe the differences in intelligence and adaptability between the clone (N5) and the "control" (David). This experiment could not be perf…
27 Jun 2010, 12:46
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When I say "acting as though she owned the house" I mean when she relinquished her duties running the family business to search for the fabled hoard. We know this only occurred, …
26 Jun 2010, 22:23
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Another hint is Number 5's dream. The dead man steering the ship has Mr Million's face. Obviously it is his own face too. But Number 5 specifically connected it with Mr. Million.…
25 Jun 2010, 14:40
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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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