Posted from 2 addresses as Jeff Wilson, Jeffery Wilson clueland.com, Jeffery Wilson
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I thought it had already been suggested that Christianity had died out on Urth circa the First Empire and never came back, rendering it effectively unknown to the Commonwealth.…
19 Dec 2010, 03:38
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No, it *is* part of his bieng steered, and he acknowledges it when he confirms the steering orders to Rudesind after his Ascension. But we have no reason to think that Rudesind k…
19 Dec 2010, 03:35
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Even bonafide Yesodis casually use "creations" to refer to galaxies when thy are speaking to be understood by Urthlings. Because it's a time travel story, and a religious story, …
18 Dec 2010, 22:50
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I don't see any way for Ultan to know about Yesodi-level goings on and yet feel free to share it so casually with someone he can't positively identify.…
18 Dec 2010, 07:35
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Remember, in the BOTNS, time proceeds only mostly linearly, with many loops and echoes backwards and possibly forewards. If we take other metafictional hints in the BOTNS, the un…
18 Dec 2010, 07:29
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This is almost certainly an indirect reference to Kant, who used the term "island universes" when conjecturing that spiral nebula were not merely clouds of gas but galaxies like …
18 Dec 2010, 07:17
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That's my opinion; Urth is a place where humanity (for whatever reason) has squandered the light of Christ and is so much the poorer for it. There are still good people in the wo…
17 Dec 2010, 18:33
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I think it the flood thing was an oversight, though the retcon of it being a previous creation is a laudably clever answer to the riddle of just how far in the future the books a…
17 Dec 2010, 09:42
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The black devils sorta kinda parallel the Yesodis but the resemblance is probably due to the plots' descent from Teilhard de Chardin and being compressed to near-novel length.…
17 Dec 2010, 01:15
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There are examples of forgiveness in the Torah, as long as you don't equate it with a lack of consequences. All the times that the covenants with G-d were broken, and G-d keeps giv…
16 Dec 2010, 23:40
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The concept of "anonymous Christianity" is built on the precept that Christ's sacrifice is sufficient to save everyone for all times, and that His transcendent grace is not restric…
16 Dec 2010, 23:25
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This doesn't strike me as particularly pagan - Moses leading the tribes through the desert could have looked much the same, and he did sympathetic magic like nailing an effigy sn…
16 Dec 2010, 20:48
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I'm not sure it's consistent to include Agia's hex sign scribbled in the dust and not the beats or masks painted on the towers, or the theatrical masks appearing in various place…
16 Dec 2010, 11:09
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I think this is best explained by reconciliation between the former and new covenants; Jesus as the sacrfice of God's essence validates the new covenant for all time on its own t…
16 Dec 2010, 02:42
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I think it is because the Son is the Person who addresses all of mankind; He communicates, He is the good news.…
16 Dec 2010, 02:29
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He was to be the final sacrifice; no one can top sacrificing God. This Ultimate Sacrifice paid the blood price for all sins committed and yet to be committed by generations yet unb…
16 Dec 2010, 00:41
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Christian Atheism for the win!…
16 Dec 2010, 00:04
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Christ is the Logos, sure, but doctrinarily the Logos (symbol or word) is uncreated; co-eternal with the Father and the Holy Spirit. He is also the Son, though he's not the Son unt…
16 Dec 2010, 00:03
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Forry Ackerman might have been a publicity hack and a schlockmeister, but that hardly sets him apart from early fandom, not to mention authordom. Sci-Fi was and remians a popular s…
15 Dec 2010, 23:34
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The White House has numerous tunnels giving underground access to the property, and so it would be unusual for there to be no access between the age-old seat of government and the …
15 Dec 2010, 19:09
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right, that's why I went with a man with two heads - just as monstrous as king Gidorah, but without the heraldic baggage.…
15 Dec 2010, 15:26
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Sev says he's much lighter than a human of his size, and the only other full-speed robots we see (Sidero, Ossipago) are hollow as well, so presumably it's a popular design. In hi…
15 Dec 2010, 15:25
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"Dude, they have multiple racks of beef and calmari in here!"…
15 Dec 2010, 08:56
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Perhaps - but the Typhon is not remembered on Urth as two-headed, is he? Or at all? runners-up: block-head silhouette with bone through neck (actually bolts, from Universal's F…
15 Dec 2010, 08:44
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No. Or at least, only in the sense that that is as far as pagans have gotten to the true godhead, at least in Wolfe's opinion. I'm sorry that I slipped up and capitalized him, I …
15 Dec 2010, 08:27
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The two-headed silhouette is about the most basic monster symbol. It covers notional multi-headed creatures as well as the most common and lurid visibly "monstrous" birth defects…
15 Dec 2010, 05:01
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Sidero could not access Sev's memories despite his adverse pccupation when it would have been very useful to do so, so there's no precedent for the suit-robots to have mind-readi…
15 Dec 2010, 04:50
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These are both attested to by Wolfe in interviews, so your impressions are correct. There is a possibility that the Green Man is meant to suggest this happens in the distant futur…
14 Dec 2010, 23:33
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I don't think it's important to see "again" a character who never made an overt appearance to begin with. There's no reason for Inire to be around after his mission of helping brin…
13 Dec 2010, 23:21
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At the end of Citadel, when Sev signs off to board The Ship, he speculates that Inire will not long survive the coming of the New Sun due to his extreme old age. Since Severian is …
13 Dec 2010, 20:45
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IIRC, it was Borski's recollection of LSD-fueled sex when discussing 7AN, but maybe he swings both ways?…
10 Dec 2010, 18:12
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09 Dec 2010, 21:39
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However, recent popular web forums are notorious for letting you miss postings that you *haven't* been party to.…
09 Dec 2010, 21:36
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This list uses Mailman software, which allows people to set their accounts to "no mail" and follow the threads via the web interface if they like.…
09 Dec 2010, 18:16
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How about swordfighting an intemrinable series of sea serpents while swimming in full armor?…
09 Dec 2010, 06:33
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The sailors' "as they said" tags and the pious "whose X is Y" tags are good places to look for future legacy verse. Perhaps Sev's "old story" he mentions to Eata on the boat?…
07 Dec 2010, 21:29
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It's not a problem, because GW knows who they are.…
07 Dec 2010, 17:51
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It's one interpretation *per* *level* of the text. An unaging maid who survives decapitation can't be Severian's mother *and* a robot at the same time in the same way. So I pick …
07 Dec 2010, 17:29
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It's less plausible because Inire himself is already a created helper of a higher power, intentionally less capable than his master(s) so that they can spread their influence wid…
07 Dec 2010, 04:44
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But he has heard Kipling's work, however many times removed. The Boy Called Frog is Mowgli from _The Jungle Book_; the verse could have held its form better over the ages suffici…
07 Dec 2010, 04:21
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Hey, I hadn't thought of it quite so literally before - if Severian considers his Book to be YA fiction that would certainly explain his circuitous and obfuscatory treatment of t…
07 Dec 2010, 04:10
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The translator's notes in _Soldier of the Mist_ detail how he uses the first words of each entry as best he can tell as the chapter title out of a lack of any other identificatio…
07 Dec 2010, 01:38
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Bucephalus is described as having a black coat with a large white star on his brow.…
06 Dec 2010, 19:34
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I suppose this means dark-haired Piaton would be drawn with a grey forelock?…
06 Dec 2010, 18:49
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The business about opening pregnant women (presumably post mortem) to take the children would give him some plausible exposure to the appearance of pregnancy if not post-partum p…
06 Dec 2010, 18:44
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The boatman's story about her eyes opening as she is dropped in suggests he has some anxiety that she was still alive somehow. This might mean that she died mysteriously with no …
06 Dec 2010, 18:19
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That's great, and I would not dismiss such a thing. It is very Wolfean for Typhon to be patterned after Alexander. But saying that a similar likeness of Tzadkiel and Inire to Ale…
06 Dec 2010, 09:26
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Dorcas' physical description upon being found at the lake does not seem to agree with her having died in the act of childbirth, and the speculation on her parity prompted by the …
06 Dec 2010, 09:12
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I think the story about Fechin's monkey arm is really about Rudesind's monkey arm, since the grandad gets names wrong.…
05 Dec 2010, 17:50
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One can certainly use intuition as a means of selecting possible answers, but the answer must still logically fit the puzzle given for the exercise to be meaningful. What purpos…
05 Dec 2010, 17:45
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