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Scottish brogue, IIRC…
03 Nov 2011, 20:13
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Incidentally, what she says of her father is that he was "a pig's arse". If one sees The Long Sun/Short Sun as a single novel (as I do), this can't help but to recall Pig and his …
03 Nov 2011, 19:09
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There was a lot of push-back at the time that Wolfe would not have a "moral exemplar" (that was the term) be married to a transsexual. Of course, I didn't see a problem with it s…
03 Nov 2011, 17:24
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I believe Hyacinth is Fava (both beans...and beans were believed by the Romans to contain the souls of the dead). I think that after the end of SS, the Rajan reclaims Fava from t…
03 Nov 2011, 17:09
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Wolfe has said many times that tBotNS is about what would happen if humanity remained until it's the planet's resources have been depleted. He likened it to a family with a fabul…
02 Nov 2011, 22:18
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For me, it is difficult to get around the explanation that Silk and Pike are brother clones. The clincher for me is Silk's two-page struggle with why he called Blood "son" even t…
02 Nov 2011, 22:02
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So inquiries like this one make me realize that although my comments on this list don't go back as far as Borkski's or Mantis' or Roy's, it has been a long while now. So long, in…
02 Nov 2011, 21:51
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//I think there is little to be gained in understanding Urth as anything but is the future of our Earth. Perhaps there is some geekish appeal positing that it is the future of an…
01 Nov 2011, 19:39
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My only discrepancy with the description of the "Silk astra-projecting through time" theory is that it attempts to explain away Silk's mis-identification of himself as Pike in th…
01 Nov 2011, 19:31
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His leg injury occurs when he falls out of the window because Hyacinth is taunting him with her azoth. He only gets a cut from the gyrevulture. The Silk leg injury another examp…
28 Oct 2011, 19:28
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IIRC, It was a rabbit killed by the gyrevulture. When Silk picked it up, he was attacked. Musk what coursing his hawk with rabbits earlier or maybe later in the story. Now, you'l…
28 Oct 2011, 17:49
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Horn and Nettle could have related that Silk saw a seal with a series of numbers. The fact that they related those precise numbers could imply that Silk told them what the number…
28 Oct 2011, 15:35
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In Silk's vision, who is the dead woman in an alley off Silver Street? On the way to the market, why does Silk spend two pages speculating over why he called Blood "son" when tha…
28 Oct 2011, 15:18
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Wolfe is not at all adverse to puns rather than explicit references to mythology using *actual names*. An example escapes me at this time, but he does it. Additionally, the co…
27 Oct 2011, 20:13
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Wolfe likes asterids. Dahlia and teasle are asterids. J.…
27 Oct 2011, 19:40
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Here's the deal. The five books of Severian, and the four books of Silk (and perhaps the Book of the Short Sun although Wolfe veers into very Orthodox territory there, I think) a…
27 Oct 2011, 15:25
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They, at least, think they are. And they definitely share in the Evangelical culture. J.…
26 Oct 2011, 20:42
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CS Lewis, Charles Williams, George MacDonald, John Bunyan. Although, one does sense that Protestants prefer non-fiction. But they still represent. J.…
26 Oct 2011, 19:12
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Yeah, when I wrote that I suspected it *might* have been the other way around--but I decided to just go for it. And here's why: The events are so closely connected in time it doe…
26 Oct 2011, 18:44
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Which other stories are being manipulated? Analyzing them in detail might be revealing. IMO, the grandmother's tale is merely confirmation for what is already revealed by the pr…
26 Oct 2011, 18:15
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They are disembodied spirits (ghosts, if you will) with bodies fashioned from "dream-stuff". Thus they can die in dream-travel and their bodies remain. Their bodies that they lef…
26 Oct 2011, 15:57
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Not give the subsequent appearance of astral Oreb. Otherwise, I'd accept the appearance as a Gothic-style ghost, although a weird one. When such ghosts appear they don't typicall…
26 Oct 2011, 15:56
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In the 14th century, the Earth definitely revolved around the Sun even if only Copernicus said so. There is simply no other reasonable explanation, given the context, for Pike's…
26 Oct 2011, 15:30
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Mis-write. Thetis, not Thecla.…
26 Oct 2011, 14:35
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I think the important point of Patroclus in the story is that he dons the mantle of Achilles for a while and is then slain. In that sense, he plays the role played by Mordred and…
26 Oct 2011, 14:18
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Then who is Helen? Presumably Agia. Is Dorcas then Thecla, Achilles' mother (whose might by Tethys by another name (a name that means "grandmother")? Or is she Doris, the mother …
26 Oct 2011, 14:08
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I'm not prepared to show that Wolfe has woven elements of the Illiad into the life of Severian, but it would be very much like Wolfe to do that. And Hector, and as the nemesis of…
26 Oct 2011, 13:48
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Dream travel is time travel. Remember Pike's ghost? Sent from my iPhone…
26 Oct 2011, 13:23
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The cover on the original Operation Ares paperback pretty good. The cover on the original paperback for tIoDDaOSaOS was better than the one with the purple skull. I preferred the…
25 Oct 2011, 18:38
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The cover of Starwater Strains is surely my favorite.…
25 Oct 2011, 17:57
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His short story collections typically are better, but I agree that none are as good as this. Probably, the collections are not as bad because Tor doesn't expect to make a lot of …
25 Oct 2011, 17:29
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http://liamkruger.tumblr.com/post/11311695396/heyoscarwilde-gene-wolfe-once-did-a-story-about "Gene Wolfe once did a story about astronauts that had birds inside of them. " Which…
25 Oct 2011, 17:00
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On 10/25/2011 10:24 AM, Marc Aramini wrote: Yeah, what these guys said. The interesting thing about this is that for the Aelf, humans are the next level "gods", so Able i…
25 Oct 2011, 16:13
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IIRC, the lowest god flees at the end of the conversation and we see his back, so we know he is a liar.…
25 Oct 2011, 14:46
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Yes. In fact, the Long Sun/Short Sun are single novel. J.…
21 Oct 2011, 10:25
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I have read it, although, it been years since the last time. http://urth.org/whorlmap/chras-writers/default.htm The thing I liked about the theory was that you were dealing with …
20 Oct 2011, 21:29
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And yet, we are told that the Rajan's staff was an inhumi and that at night he spoke to it. It's unexpected, even puzzling. But there it is. Somehow clever clever Gene has worked…
19 Oct 2011, 22:17
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It certainly means Silk was named by or for Tussah. Just as Chenille was. It tells us nothing about his "ancestry". Of course, the most significant argument against a familial con…
13 Oct 2011, 22:34
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Well, I've always kind of suspected something like this. 1) But you still have the "son not of my body". If Auk is the *actual* son and intended heir, then how is he not the son …
13 Oct 2011, 22:19
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Innocents Aboard is probably my favorite short story collection. Although Strange Travelers contains one of my favorite short stories: Counting Cats in Zanzibar. Fifth Head of C…
13 Oct 2011, 17:20
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But this is not a problem if is Silk is a clone of the SON of Typhon. Even if Silk and Tussah were genetically identical--a possibility I leave open but unexplained--there are a …
13 Oct 2011, 17:10
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We don't really know who the voice is supposed to be. Umm....For Silk and Mucor to be embryos, they must have been on the market for at least 25 years. That's not "recently". We …
13 Oct 2011, 03:46
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Tussah's murderers assume he procured an embryo and intended that the child would preceed him. But they must surely have assumed he made some sort of make a supposition that Tuss…
13 Oct 2011, 01:32
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Okay. I got confused for a minute. So--sorry if you answered this, someone asked you but I don't see the answer-- how/did they end up as non-sentient reptilians with an egg-layin…
12 Oct 2011, 20:28
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Well, just sharing selected genes would not really make Silk a "son of Typhon". That would be true of any cousin of Typhon or any chimpanzee (as Gerry pointed out). Now, yeah, i…
12 Oct 2011, 20:23
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There are indeed lots of references associating the trees on Blue to Neighbors and vines to inhumi. When you see that Wolfe is overlaying the Neighbors with Fairie mythology--and…
12 Oct 2011, 20:11
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If the vines are non-sentient, then how does the Rajan converse with it? J.…
12 Oct 2011, 19:51
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Unfortunately, for the resolution of the puzzle, the book says far more than you appear to be aware of. Including that a character in the Short Sun series identifies the Rajan's …
12 Oct 2011, 19:48
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I think this implies that that he has systems that have kept track of affairs while he's been dead. He's received the update and now comprehends the current political state of th…
11 Oct 2011, 18:02
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There are two big questions in the Whorl cycle that I think we are supposed to resolve but I see zero solutions to them: 1. The relationship between Silk, Tussh, and Typhon. 2. …
11 Oct 2011, 17:53
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