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I agree completely. As a prisoner, she has nothing to think about all day but whether she has offended her boy lover, who she hopes will be helpful to her. I agree again, except t…
18 Dec 2013, 16:16
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Go ahead. I'll just ignore anything with "Land Across" in the subject. Jerry Friedman On Saturday, December 7, 2013 6:47 PM, Greg Bates <gregory.a.bates at gmail.com> wrote: I …
08 Dec 2013, 02:36
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From: Jeffery Wilson jwilson at clueland.com ... Oh, okay. I think that at the time, the theory that black holes might lead to other universes (or other parts of this one), where …
11 Sep 2013, 16:46
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Good point. That's why I said "even as currently understood". I was just thinking about what might happen with current physics, as I take it Gerry was too, not holding Wolfe to an…
09 Sep 2013, 14:57
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... ... Seems reasonable. It's certainly not from increased solar flux. However, that would be a LOT of energy. I'd wonder whether anybody at all could survive. I think that a b…
09 Sep 2013, 05:19
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Very interesting thoughts. Incidentally, they remind me of Severian's example of the hawk's nest. In the first place, it's fallacious. (Nest-building evolved in ground-living or ev…
09 Sep 2013, 04:47
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We have words for geological features caused by glaciers, though the people who use those words aren't expecting another Ice Age any time soon. Also, Severian doesn't bother to spe…
08 Sep 2013, 04:34
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Or whether they have roots? Well, he might justifiably ask, if Wolfe intended plate tectonics to exist on Urth, how it makes the book better for Severian to tell us that it stoppe…
08 Sep 2013, 04:25
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I'd help with this. Jerry Friedman…
07 Sep 2013, 17:54
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I don't remember TUotNS well at all. Are you saying that we know plate tectonics was still going on in Apu-Punchau's time? Jerry Friedman…
07 Sep 2013, 17:52
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. By the way, Cook has this part backwards. He writes, "without vulcanism and tectonic plate induction in the ocean, carbon dioxide would not be removed from the atmosphere and rec…
06 Sep 2013, 17:48
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Persuade the editor to do what???Not let Cook write any more columns for him? That might work. The only reason to publish nonsense is that it's effective trolling, and since the ed…
06 Sep 2013, 17:11
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He certainly missed the sentence "When I had first come to realize, as a boy, that the green circle of the moon was in fact a sort of island hung in the sky, whose color derived fr…
06 Sep 2013, 04:40
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You left out the best part of that quotation. "But the romance elements creep in very early on. Bujold tips her hand in the eloquence of her language (normally a good thing) and …
06 Sep 2013, 04:37
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... Or corrupt clergy in organized religion. Has anybody read the story as an attack on the Christian God? The ruler treats his subjects much better than God treats his worshiper…
19 Aug 2013, 12:01
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Not that I know of. I was just hoping. As for the sequence of writing (Delany before Wolfe?), I recall getting volumes of Damon Knight's ORBIT anthology with both appearing (may…
26 Jul 2013, 03:14
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Though the influence of Proust and other French classics seems possible and might have a lot to do with similarities of pacing and feel. Also, Wolfe has said he admires Nabokov, an…
25 Jul 2013, 13:32
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Planaria that had been trained to overcome their instinctive avoidance of bright lights and open spaces were decapitated. After regenerating their heads, they could be trained to d…
14 Jul 2013, 03:30
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Thanks, it's been a while. Not to throw cold water (sorry) on a promising speculation, but apparently in clear areas of the ocean, 90% of sunlight is absorbed in the first 33 m, …
09 May 2013, 14:27
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From: Jeff Wilson <jwilson at clueland.com> I thought the flood brought by the New Sun was caused by the melting of ice caps, which would make it permanent till the climate cooled…
09 May 2013, 03:21
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"Industrious" and "productive" are interesting words to use there. Wolfe has used weak pseduo-human parasites who live by their deceptive abilities as figures of horror in 5HoC and…
11 Apr 2013, 20:47
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You might also like biblos.com, which has the original Hebrew and Greek and many translations, including the Septuagint and the Vulgate--though I think that in non-English language…
09 Apr 2013, 11:21
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You ought to write that up and try to get it published (though you'd have to explain whatever evidence makes people think the narrator has a penis). Or if you can't publish it, put…
05 Apr 2013, 17:55
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That's interesting. Do we know that Eliot, Pound, and Tate inspired Wolfe? And was Pound Catholic? Jerry Friedman…
05 Apr 2013, 17:35
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I took that to mean that their culture is based on trees (and wood and vines?) rather than stone. Jerry Friedman…
03 Apr 2013, 22:56
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It does bring Christianity in by means of the hermit, though. I think so. ?The OED says an "owlet" is "especially a young or small owl", though Coleridge might have added the "let…
27 Mar 2013, 04:22
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... Just a mention that I think it makes a difference that 666 is not the number of the devil but "the number of the beast, which is the number of the man." ?Ancient writers--and …
26 Mar 2013, 03:58
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Is there any reason to think Wolfe would answer specific questions about the stories, such as the ones Ryan Dunn suggested? I think he's said he won't do that any more. Even if he …
18 Dec 2012, 16:40
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You can be good without being that good, and the inhumi might naturally worry about the worst case, which is humans wiping them out. However, this is a good point, and it might be…
29 Nov 2012, 15:16
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... Other way around--typical visible meteors are pebbles. ?To judge by the Wikipedia article, inhumi meteors would probably reach the surface of Blue, though too broken-up to mak…
29 Nov 2012, 15:13
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Maybe the Neighbors knew what meteors are. Or that aliens could get human characters or atmans or whatever--not just what's in the DNA, but what is affected by the person's moral …
29 Nov 2012, 15:04
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... ... Before anybody says anything, hasn't someone argued here that the Rajan was an inhumu at some point, and that's how his whatever got into Silk's body or something? Jerry…
29 Nov 2012, 00:28
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Thanks to Andrew Mason for pointing out the "too heavy for our hands" line, which I'd forgotten. Also, even if one person or a few people start treating others better, it would be…
28 Nov 2012, 23:18
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As far as I can tell, Wolfe's answer does offer a practical threat to the inhumi. If the people on Blue and Green were non-parasitic, the inhumi couldn't parasitize them, and if th…
28 Nov 2012, 02:06
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Another good one, though maybe we should chalk it up to the monastery, since novices have no need to talk on the phone all the time. (That's plural. The singular is "mafioso".) I…
27 Nov 2012, 23:11
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... But Chris is not a "made man" in the Mafia sense, as I understand it. ?He's never been part of the Mafia. ?But I don't remember him saying such a thing and it's not at Google …
27 Nov 2012, 15:55
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... Yes, rejected but not refuted. ?Even bringing something up with a negative is bringing it up. ? I know the eagle of Jove only from the myth of Ganymede, a variation--maybe a…
24 Nov 2012, 20:31
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Very well thought out! If the thorn is the key to the meaning of the Claw, and fangs do seem to occupy a space adjacent to thorns, they are therefore a link to the Claw. ... In f…
22 Nov 2012, 20:49
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Very interesting. For Chris's parents to be himself and Novia is genetically drastically unlikely. ?Even if you make Novia Chris's daughter (!), the odds are worse than 1 in 70 tr…
03 Nov 2012, 18:14
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I don't see why. ?There's be less energy from the stars we see, but I imagine it would be enough to see them. ?Many stars, probably the majority, emit more strongly in the infrared…
01 Oct 2012, 01:14
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... Infrared vision for the inhumi makes perfect sense to me. The sky is blue because short wavelengths are scattered more than long; we get lots of blue light from the sky, but l…
28 Sep 2012, 21:29
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Cancer? Figuring out whether known radiation is likely to cause blindness in one eye would be too much work for me right now. ?We can always imagine unknown radiation, but then we…
04 Sep 2012, 15:16
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and starts chasing after them in his underclothes ?while meteors miles ahead shot up into the sky”. Our narrator says, “We’ll do it, we’ll fly!” to his captive passenger, and belie…
31 Aug 2012, 19:53
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Even "reflect reality" isn't necessarily the same as "realistic characters and plot", I'd say, especially not the "plot" part, though it's closer than the phrase I mentioned above.…
02 Aug 2012, 01:48
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... I don't see in that quotation that he says why the series has fantastic parts, much less what their "only" purpose is. ?I also don't think "a truth at the core of it" is neces…
02 Aug 2012, 01:43
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I was going to mention something about that. ?Setting forest fires is so easy that one person can do it by accident. ?See for instance the two biggest fires in Arizona history: the…
02 Aug 2012, 01:40
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I thought it was pretty good. Graves leaves you in no doubt about where he stands. What happens has some resemblances to Wolfe, but I won't say any more about it unless you don't …
16 Jun 2012, 16:49
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... "Self-proclaimed", raising the possibility that they're not groupies of anyone or anything (yet), which is consistent with the description of them as virgins or nearly. And ju…
13 Jun 2012, 13:25
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Chesterton doesn't offend me, but a lot of what I've read of his just seems silly (as well as brilliant and unbelievably original), including the essay where he says the moon is ma…
01 Jun 2012, 20:05
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... ... ... I meant to answer that one. Because Wolfe wants us to know from the beginning that they're not clanking tubular robots, and because he knows muscular male torsos are…
23 May 2012, 04:52
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