Posted from 2 addresses as Jeff Wilson, Jeffery Wilson clueland.com, Jeffery Wilson
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SHADOW, VII: "At last the time would come, to men and women alike, when instead of a journeyman with food, Master Gurloes would appear trailing three or four journeymen and perha…
06 Aug 2010, 01:03
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The initial population would involve such extreme artificial selection from across a huge pool that I would hesitate to call it Darwinian evolution alone. you'd also need genetic…
05 Aug 2010, 15:51
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The Commonwealth has poor nutrition and health care by our standards, and Master Gurloes remarks on how this affects the growth of the apprentices in SHADOW. The autocthons (nativ…
05 Aug 2010, 15:35
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This may or may not be an "acquired" trait so much as a flexible phenotype. There's also jazz like epigenetics and reversion that can effectively undo the adaptation in a small num…
05 Aug 2010, 15:22
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Yes, but "Lamarckism" is not a product of Lamarck himself. Inheritance of acquired characteristics is an ancient idea in one form or another, and Darwin allowed something like it…
05 Aug 2010, 08:11
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I don't believe that this is the whole story. They are still the Seekers of Truth as well as Penitence, and some interrogation takes place, if I remember correctly, including the o…
05 Aug 2010, 00:09
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Like a ship running aground, sure. His desperation of his existence as the destroyer of Urth may have given him some extra heedless speed until he overshoots the early end of the…
04 Aug 2010, 17:10
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We don't know for sure. The business about moving in a direction not seen before suggests that movement om higher spatial dimension is involved. The power of the New Sun may not b…
04 Aug 2010, 01:09
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...and it explains some of Inire's interest in young people, mwah-hahaha!…
03 Aug 2010, 23:35
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Another possibility is that the Autarchs add memories of freshly dead Commonwealthers of some merit or useful perspective. As memories fade with succession, they may feel the nee…
03 Aug 2010, 02:49
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Where do the children and farmwives come in?…
02 Aug 2010, 21:37
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I've been pondering that hazard of succession. If Vodalus can keep Thecla's body fresh for days in an ice cave, and the mandragora remains even slightly animated after centuries un…
02 Aug 2010, 19:31
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For such a prominent feature of the book, there's so little said about the succession of Autarchs that any detail we can glean is important to solving any number of attendant mys…
02 Aug 2010, 16:28
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Which imperial dynasties did you have in mind? Holy Roman? Austro-Hungarian? Egyptian? There's a few more, but my Lexicon may have drifted into the Void. There's Ymar, Sulpicius…
02 Aug 2010, 10:10
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Giant. Robot. Warriors.…
02 Aug 2010, 09:53
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I doubt there is a close analog, because rather than God's representative on earth of course the Autarch's highest calling is the epitome, to be Urth's representative in heaven (…
01 Aug 2010, 21:38
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That's not unusual for popes or kings either. John-Paul I reigned a month, Jane Grey for 9 days, and IIRC the Hawaiian Kamehameha dynasty ended with the last couple of heirs reig…
01 Aug 2010, 20:36
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The old Autarch does claim he will live, and re-reading reveals his mention of cells that will take up residence in Severian's body. So technically, some living tissue may surviv…
01 Aug 2010, 18:15
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Some of the figurative comments about the Autarch who this is that and so forth and the lack of any particularl clerical figures suggests to me that they have a more Anglican or …
01 Aug 2010, 13:50
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I'm not sure what you are getting at. If Vodalus wanted to be Autarch then he certainly fails, being dead and still not Autarch. It can be said that Severian is his servant and h…
01 Aug 2010, 13:34
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He's no dummy or simpleton, but I get the sense he has a problem accepting inconvenient facts.…
01 Aug 2010, 09:29
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I'm sorry, the shaman shows up in chapter XXVII.…
01 Aug 2010, 09:14
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In URTH XXXVIII, while Severian is also a seer imprisoned by the authorities, there is a literal biblical reference to it, immediately followed by a dream with Revelations imager…
01 Aug 2010, 09:13
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That's still subject to Severian's bias. Beccan's lingering imprint was also happy at being reunited with his daughter, and was eager to have the rest of the family join them in …
01 Aug 2010, 04:09
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They are but two steps on the same stairway to damnation, one a bit further from the end, or even the same step if you believe the Autarchy is divinely ordained; by presuming to …
01 Aug 2010, 03:49
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Vodalus fails in his ambition to upset the rule of the Autarch and put the Exultants in charge. The rest of the counter-changed patchwork of good deeds by evil forces and misfort…
01 Aug 2010, 03:42
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His healing and resurective ability is supposed to work via short-term bending back time, isn't it? He meditates on the limits it might have over the carnage at the final battle …
01 Aug 2010, 03:21
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I agree, the horror of not-rightness is very strong when the beast firs speaks in the little girl's voice. But horror eventually gives way to reasoning that it must be that way, …
31 Jul 2010, 09:41
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Of course it's satanic, Vodalus is a satanic figure and he's twisting any virtue the analept might have into part of his mockery of communion. But the Increate may validate even a …
30 Jul 2010, 22:23
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"It's like Bubba Hotep, but instead of a mummy, think ginormous wolf-man with those weird black eyes"…
30 Jul 2010, 18:31
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High concept: "He's torturer with multiple personalities, it's a talking bear; they're cops!"…
30 Jul 2010, 18:15
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Whatever the mechanism, the reference to Joseph's dream makes it pretty clear to me that he is correct in his feeling that it comes from the Increate, like Joseph always claims o…
30 Jul 2010, 18:09
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If there was a right to life from the Increate, it wouldn't be a gift, and there would be no grace in it. No one's life is being artificially extended by the alzabo; the memory …
30 Jul 2010, 18:07
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I get the sense that the author is trying to convey that the various "kinds of resurrection" are a mortal projection; there is only one source of the gift of life and that is the…
30 Jul 2010, 16:08
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I think it's a mistake to strongly link the Cumaean to the leech or Ceryx on the basis of their resurrection fixation - essentially *everyone* and *everything* in the BOTNS - inc…
30 Jul 2010, 11:46
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I didn't think it was necessary for them to become mortal to partake of the plenary indulgence, but it would have been kind of futile trying to stop transcendent spirits. And there…
30 Jul 2010, 01:12
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The one I'm thinking of is _City of Angels_ with Meg Ryan and Lucas Cage, and it's a remake of a German film, _Wings of Desire_.…
29 Jul 2010, 20:46
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She appears as a clump of many serpents to Severian's second sight, the way Dr Talos's face looks like a stufffed fox's. She doesn't actually unmask, other than sword-swallowing th…
29 Jul 2010, 20:44
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Hello? Abaia.…
29 Jul 2010, 20:10
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I was kind of in to it until they stole his shoes. "Wait...the shoes also fell from grace?"…
29 Jul 2010, 20:06
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Gene Wolfe did live in a world where "chicken hawks" were occasionally treated sympathetically in the media, particularly when their exploitees turned out to be gay runaways, who…
29 Jul 2010, 19:23
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How does that work? I don't see losing the wings would be equivalent to gaining mortal flesh.…
29 Jul 2010, 18:57
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"This is the End" - you know, like the Doors' song, the one with the killing and the incest and the masked executioner with the special blue rock and the ancient buildings and th…
29 Jul 2010, 18:54
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The BOTNS seems to disagree with you; there is a green megatherium at the Well of Orchids, and we have green sloths today who get their color from algae growing on/in their pelts…
28 Jul 2010, 18:55
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That's "eye color" in the middle. Continents' influence aide, Mendelian genetics has blue eyed parents breeding true, and blonde haired parents as well. Dark haired parents can ha…
27 Jul 2010, 20:58
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Generally darker hair dominates over lighter, though hair can appear as lighter colors at longer lengths and with increasing exposure to the elements. Red hair counts as a form of…
27 Jul 2010, 20:49
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Maybe. A family connection would be a good motivation to become a double agent, and equally good for convincing the other side that you have become a sincere double agent when you …
27 Jul 2010, 20:21
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Rudesind and the Old Autarch both say that Inire stationed Rudesind in the House Absolute. Rudesind later says Inire is his master, and Severian speaks as if his inherited memories…
27 Jul 2010, 18:26
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It sounds to me like Sev is getting a little too full of himself; the heady influx of power and wisdom and confidence from his new state of being leads him to hastily decide he has…
27 Jul 2010, 17:25
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Are you calling him a naviscaput? And yourself a headless naviscaput?…
27 Jul 2010, 15:16
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