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[no hidden puzzles] I agree that it's not a plot point. All I really wanted was to suggest that people not use "megatherians"?to mean the alien monsters as if there were a conse…
23 May 2011, 19:05
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... If you want to get a laugh with that, I think you have to tell it the way my professor did, ending with "19 is too close to 20". (Probably nobody laughed when I posted it h…
23 May 2011, 04:53
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[negative mass] Another example, pointed out by Michael Andre-Driussi, is the Green Room. Jerry Friedman…
23 May 2011, 04:44
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I keep saying that, but saying it doesn't make it true. He refers to the attacks from Ascia as "Abaia's incursions". Still, Abaia seems to rule Ascia, which is what's needed …
23 May 2011, 04:43
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... ... Wikipedia says the original title was De vita Caesarum, with no number. I think that may be part of it, though 17 is no more prime than 13 or 19. [added later] I agree…
22 May 2011, 19:55
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... ... By the way, LU notes that there's a literal "megathere" in CotC, Ch. 22. Just for grins, one possible connection with "the great beast Abaia" is that the megathere has…
22 May 2011, 19:41
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Along these lines, Michael Andre-Driussi writes in LU, "The number seventeen alludes to the Soviet politburo, which typically had seventeen members (eleven to twelve full members…
22 May 2011, 17:12
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... ... ... I trust somebody has mentioned Lovecraft's "Shadow Over Innsmouth", with its "fish-frog" creatures from under the ocean who mate with people and whose blood eventu…
22 May 2011, 15:23
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Okay, is there an objection to the idea that the "megatherian" human rulers were early rulers of Ascia? We don't know why 17, but if there are 17 sea creatures, we don't know why…
22 May 2011, 00:52
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Other possibilities for 17 (in addition to the typical, or minimum, number for the Politburo): A tribute to /Illuminatus!/ Incidentally, that book contains another Great Beast,…
21 May 2011, 23:37
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... Or, in particular, followers or even worshipers of the great beast(s). Almost the same term. "Great beast" isn't quite the same as your definitions, which I agree with. To…
21 May 2011, 05:07
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... Third, though since as you say we'd only be guessing at so much else, it hardly matters. Jerry Friedman…
20 May 2011, 20:56
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Quite different from my impression. My favorite speculation--I forget who came up with it--is that the seventeen megatherians are the seventeen beastly people who founded the gov…
20 May 2011, 20:34
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SF lore: http://books.google.com/books?id=92TqYdj56TcC&pg=PA146 I did make this mistake when talking about time on the Whorl in an earlier post. That's what I was thinking of. …
13 May 2011, 19:26
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But there are no moving parts ticking that you can attach something too. I guess you could have a photocell on the dial that notes when the shadow passes it (and distinguishes th…
13 May 2011, 17:47
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Gwern: > >> It occurred to me that the sundials probably date back to Urth's Dan'l: > > I don't see how you could do that - a sundial is limited to a 24-hour It would have to be …
12 May 2011, 20:00
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I must have missed the lyricism in the Dying Earth series, but I do remember a good deal of stylized dialogue. And Wolfe brings in religion and philosophy, which are missing from…
10 May 2011, 14:28
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And an emotional issue, an issue about our moral feelings. The James quotation is "Or if the hypothesis were offered us of a world in which Messrs. Fourier's and Bellamy's and …
01 May 2011, 14:53
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... I think you're right about what Wolfe is arguing, but it's interesting that he divides things up the way he does. Lots of Americans take it as axiomatic that liberal one-ad…
01 May 2011, 14:27
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Both /The Dispossessed/ and /Starship Troopers/ had to be SF because they're about societies that have never existed. Otherwise, it's true they don't provide much in the way of s…
01 May 2011, 03:53
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Very different from my impression, though I don't think it's a flawless book by any means. What book was a previous version of it? And which planet did Wolfe think was Russia? …
30 Apr 2011, 21:33
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... He's?massively unreliable in Booth's sense of differing ?from the author's norms, but he does seem to knowingly let you know most of the facts. Though some unreliable-narrat…
19 Apr 2011, 21:27
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How about the other familiar Greek word beginning with a psi: pseudes, "false", and "pseudein", to lie. (Thanks to the AHD <http://education.yahoo.com/reference/dictionary/entry…
18 Apr 2011, 04:34
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The original meaning of "unreliable narrator", as used by Wayne C. Booth in /The Rhetoric of Fiction/, is that the narrator's /norms/ differ from the implied author's. He gives …
18 Apr 2011, 04:29
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From: Allan Anderson <rubel at goosemoon.org> ... Here's my post at NABOKV-L recommending Wolfe to the people there: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/lsv-cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0212&L=nabokv-l…
14 Apr 2011, 04:07
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Hi, Sergei. Was it partly a mention of Pale Fire that got you to delurk (if you're the same Sergei Soloviev I remember from NABOKV-L)? Like Editor B, I'm interested in why people…
13 Apr 2011, 22:41
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Maybe you know that in addition to the surname "Funes", there's a Spanish word "funesto" that means disastrous, ill-fated, and stuff like that. I feel sure he had it in mind. :-)…
27 Jan 2011, 18:23
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"'They caught a green man, do you know that? Got him right over there where you see the tent. Green men know everything, people say, if you can but make them talk.'" TCotC Ch. I…
17 Jan 2011, 17:07
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Do we know that the green people or their creators share the Author's views of respect toward the Creator? And do the various man-beasts show us the limits of that? Wings the siz…
17 Jan 2011, 16:29
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... ... The other possible understanding of his comment might be "It should be obvious that my fortune-telling will be lies, since my foot's caught in a trap. If you don't wan…
17 Jan 2011, 16:20
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Okay, I guess it depends on what "it" means. Jerry Friedman…
17 Jan 2011, 06:29
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[snip interesting points] Surely the green man would be an example of genetic engineering, not evolution. He says they've altered the algae, so why wouldn't they have altered them…
17 Jan 2011, 06:27
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If that means he's not willing to have sex with any woman but one, it started after the encounter with Pia, and I remember no trace of this change in him. I'm sure I've read that …
17 Jan 2011, 06:11
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Heinlein did it earlier. Jerry Friedman…
17 Jan 2011, 05:57
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Okay, if green people are trapped in the dark, maybe they should be using their resources to get out of the trap, so maybe it would make sense for their algae to be engineered to …
17 Jan 2011, 04:46
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Good one. I really should have figured that out. However, the reason for this phenomenon of etiolation seems to be so the plant can put its resources into growth to reach the su…
17 Jan 2011, 04:20
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He got her to run away, pulled her down by her ankle, and tore her shift off. I think they had sex after that. ... Maybe to point out, as he says, that she has no power over him…
17 Jan 2011, 01:26
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... He says they get no nourishment except from the algae. Like Antonio, you're leaving us to fill in your interesting suggestion. Green people are yesodotrophs? Why would W…
17 Jan 2011, 01:13
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Do we know he's homeothermic? I suppose when he took one of Severian's arms to help him escape from the Ascians, Severian might have noticed if his hand had been cold, though he w…
17 Jan 2011, 00:31
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Those seem like two ways of saying the same thing--headed for Urth, going backwards relative to Lune, which puts it into an elliptical orbit that intersects with Urth. It just p…
16 Jan 2011, 19:44
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... Sorry, what I wrote was unclear. I meant their likelihood of escaping from the Lune-Urth system. That depends on their velocity relative to the center of mass of the syste…
16 Jan 2011, 19:39
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... [snip calculation] I like it, but you need to add in the orbital velocity of Lune, which makes molecules substantially more likely to escape. (This could actually be a bigg…
16 Jan 2011, 05:51
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Do alzabos eat poker champions to improve their skills? Jerry Friedman…
14 Jan 2011, 16:58
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/Lexicon Urthus/ isn't evidence? That means I hope someone else knows. That still doesn't agree with the statement from Horn that Severian is younger than him when Horn is "ris…
13 Jan 2011, 06:24
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Others here have mentioned it, maybe when you weren't reading the list or something. I think more than one person has come up with it independently, but I'm not sure. One of the…
13 Jan 2011, 04:14
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... What if Wolfe sent you a postcard that said, "Ushas is Urth!"? Seriously again, there are hints that the Severian in /Short Sun/ is a different iteration of him than the Sev…
12 Jan 2011, 04:34
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Sometimes a starship is just a starship. (But see Vonnegut's story in Again, Dangerous Visions.) Seriously, I wonder whether Wolfe's comment was metaphorical or thematic. Urth …
11 Jan 2011, 19:37
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You may be right. Perhaps each person is entitled to his own reading, or to two readings that conflict with each other, as the oboist said to the clarinetist. Have you ever hea…
10 Jan 2011, 22:19
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... ... But when someone says as a theoretical generalization that there's no falsifiability in interpreting fiction, that person does imply that Daleks are just as good an int…
10 Jan 2011, 22:08
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To pick a nit, a heart-shaped face seems to be one with a narrow chin but wide at the top. A triangular face is wider than usual at the bottom and narrower than usual at the top…
08 Jan 2011, 16:52
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