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:> -----Original Message----- :> From: Nicholas Gevers [mailto:vermoulian at yahoo.com] :> Sent: Wednesday, August 16, 2000 2:11 PM :> :> Earlier today I asked John Clute to clarify o…
16 Aug 2000, 15:26
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I would say Wolfe is a Catholic conservative in the mold of his heroes like Chesterton. Because he is a _religious_ conservative, he makes more conscious shows of sympathy for the …
16 Aug 2000, 10:57
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I believe Devil was originally published as a work for children. Best, Jim **************************************************** "Justice will take us millions of intricate move…
24 May 2000, 22:23
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What if the orbits are not in the same plane? Best, Jim *This is WHORL, for discussion of Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun.…
04 Apr 2000, 12:10
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Since one of the things literature does is help us see through false value systems, why not start with this one? A fear of being seen reading a book with "lurid covers" is prissy. …
07 Mar 2000, 13:22
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Ooh! It opens up some very interesting lines of inquiry. Best, Jim *This is WHORL, for discussion of Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun.…
21 Jan 2000, 09:23
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Anent the "prevent any human from being bitten" theory, this doesn't just fall afoul of the problem of getting every human to care about protecting every other human. It falls afou…
21 Jan 2000, 09:21
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But if this is the secret, then why doesn't Jahlee burst out laughing when threatened with it? At that very minute she is being presented with _deeds_ showing just how far humans a…
18 Jan 2000, 08:57
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Also, only Wolfe might actually go out and _write_ "The Boo of the New Sun" if he got wind of this typo. Best, Jim ***************************************** "All God's children…
16 Jan 2000, 12:36
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Well, I haven't figured it out yet either, so if anyone wants to do a "Borges spoiler," I'm all for it. More on the cold-blooded inhumi in another message. Meanwhile, Ah. They're…
14 Jan 2000, 08:42
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I think so, Tom. Happily, David Liebling already gathered most of it for me (http://www.moonmilk.com/whorl/archives/#59) so I hope I can be permitted to merely summarize. 1) all t…
11 Jan 2000, 16:18
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They're cold-blooded. And they hibernate. Best, Jim P.S. Do I need a Whorl name now? I'm thinking "Plasma"... *This is WHORL, for discussion of Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long…
11 Jan 2000, 13:42
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I got my copy. I'd caution people that any "errors" they find might (probably!) come from the publisher rather than the author. Just as a for instance, the first half of the pictur…
02 Jan 2000, 21:08
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A fair question. Since I'm feeling under the weather I want to take the lazy man's way out and give the briefest of quotes followed by an appeal to extra-textual authority. In a se…
16 Dec 1999, 19:47
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First off, thanks for the compliment, though Jeremy certainly adduces some literary forebears for the analogy. I don't recall reading anything by Paglia specifically comparing read…
15 Dec 1999, 23:38
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Indeed there's not. But that's precisely the problem - Foucault and too many po-mo's don't seem to be able to tell the difference between chattel slavery and the compulsion to stay…
15 Dec 1999, 21:44
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Hey, Jeremy: Let me try to alleviate those for you! First off, repeat after me: "Il y a _beaucoup_ de merde dehors le texte." Second, "dominating" is precisely what we readers…
11 Dec 1999, 01:10
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I think Roy's right, with a minor possible modification: my impression was that one of the things the quake did was ensure that the beam _missed_, or at least caught Sev only glanc…
02 Dec 1999, 20:35
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There's a deep lesson in "Neutron Star" about "realism" in SF, particularly so-called hard sf. Jerry Pournelle pointed out that the the science in "Neutron Star" was so accurate th…
02 Dec 1999, 20:26
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I tend to think of them as home grown - Abaia as maybe the first giant (or maybe just the guy who was _meaner_ than the first giant, if you get my drift), and I'm really taken with…
30 Nov 1999, 20:06
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Nice reference, Michael. The larger lesson is surely to be drawn in conjunction with the recent alzabo/memory RNA discussion: every time someone thinks Wolfe is spouting gobbledygo…
29 Nov 1999, 19:23
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Good job, Nute: that's two out of three, and an excellent two. The Urthes say that everything in the saga has three levels - the science-fictional (plot/world) significance, the li…
27 Nov 1999, 12:01
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This is a fascinating point, Roy. It dovetails with the idea of Sev as Christ _figure_ rather than the second coming of Christ himself. And suggests a different angle on what the b…
24 Nov 1999, 22:29
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"Is Urth really so important to you?" She shook her head. "Then why bother with it or me?" "Because your race birthed Ori and Roy, our sworn enemies. We will stop at nothin…
22 Nov 1999, 21:00
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Which brings up another question: Did someone have to _put_ the black hole there? Might it not have just happened? Puts me in mind of one of Niven's Louis Wu stories (darned if I …
20 Nov 1999, 22:31
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Okay, we got three terraformed planets (in the old sense) we know about in the solar system: Skuld, Lune and Verdanthi, aka Venus, The Moon and Mars. Two questions: 1) What's goin…
20 Nov 1999, 21:42
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An excellent question! It relates to a new thread I'll want people's views on soon. Now wait a second - this seems to require the following: 1) That _everybody_ dies when the New…
20 Nov 1999, 21:33
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The fascinating exchange between Alex and Roy has clarified a separate recent thread for me - whether UOTNS is somehow extraneous. I'm more convinced than ever that the answer is N…
18 Nov 1999, 21:47
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FWIW, in an interview available on the "paulduggan.org" site <G>, Wolfe expresses a belief in the reality of such powers as the pagan gods, averring that the error was in consideri…
16 Nov 1999, 20:16
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Joy at last came to Casa High Clearing yesterday in the form of my belated birthday copy of the Lexicon. Suffice to say I'm enjoying it hugely, but a couple of etymologies are not …
11 Nov 1999, 23:04
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So it was his own fault. The question is whether Severian lies, not whether he has character flaws. This is another case where someone seems to confuse the specific case (Sev lies…
11 Nov 1999, 22:37
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Which tells us little about his reliability as a narrator, assuming that we really are _distinguishing_ between the two types of lies. Zat so? [Continued . . . ] Only a lie if a)…
07 Nov 1999, 22:37
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Doesn't "immersive" baptism always represent death and rebirth? The old self drowns and the new, sanctified self rises. Except ye be born again ye shall not enter . . . and all tha…
06 Nov 1999, 11:18
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Probably someone else thinks this. Not me though. Best, Jim **************************** "I once was lost but now I'm just blind" - Kid Rock…
06 Nov 1999, 11:16
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That's sort of saying "other than the blood" when comparing something to the Battle of Antietam . . . <gdr> Jim ***************************************** "It ain't the knife th…
05 Nov 1999, 22:30
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Not a single cell. You needed "a mouthful," which is quite a lot of cells. And there was a time the "memory RNA" concept was taken quite seriously. I gather from discussion here th…
05 Nov 1999, 22:19
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Daniel, I yield to your superior evidence. Indeed, I roll on my back and stretch my neck before you, making piteous mewling sounds. BTW, are there any "good scientists" in the sag…
01 Nov 1999, 21:35
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I tend to read BOTNS in an SF context until I absolutely can't. But what strikes me is how Wolfe communicates that the scientific habit of mind has pretty much disappeared from Urt…
01 Nov 1999, 20:14
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Ah, but so much of the time, Latro has no standard by which to tell the events are unusual, is the impression I get. He describes meeting, say, the river god casually because for a…
27 Oct 1999, 23:38
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Wow. "Cool" and "distanced" are the last words I'd have applied to Latro. I can see it for Sev though. Best, Jim ***************************************** "It ain't the knife t…
27 Oct 1999, 19:14
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I started _JR_ [another Gaddis book - ed.] about 10 years ago on vacation. I figured, as I usually do, I will read until my interest flags, then I will stop at the next chapter or …
26 Oct 1999, 22:30
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You betcha! And they haven't given Vance the damned Nobel Prize yet either. Say, has anyone ever seen Vance and Borges _together_? Best, Jim **************************** "I o…
26 Oct 1999, 22:14
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Quite the opposite: My good friend Frederick Pollack is one of the country's finest poets. He has two booklength narratives from Story Line Press (THE ADVENTURE and HAPPINESS) and …
26 Oct 1999, 22:14
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I'm not a Northern Hemisphere Partisan (NHP?) - far from it - but two things struck me on reading your very informative post: 1) If poles do flip, AND Urth has lost its magnetic …
26 Oct 1999, 22:13
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Keep in mind also that Heinlein's lasting contribution was _precisely_ a literary one, though people didn't necessarily think of it that way. He changed the way SF stories were tol…
26 Oct 1999, 07:08
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It's important to remember that we are dealing with an author of a genre work here. The author is Severian and the genre is, as Tony suggests, the memoir by which a ruler justifies…
23 Oct 1999, 11:27
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Well, here's another one: why would massive flooding kill a bunch of giants who _live in the water_? The only thing I figure is that if you're a giant who lives in the water and ge…
21 Oct 1999, 23:24
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I was talking giants and the Square-Cube Law last night with my Amber (RPG) group and offered the oh-so-clever observation that one could get around it by living, giant-sized in th…
15 Oct 1999, 23:29
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Oh, you mean Poisonville! Excuse me, _Personville_! Very nice travelogue, Ori. Thanks muchly. Best, Jim ****************************************** "There will always be …
10 Oct 1999, 23:48
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Hey, Gazoo is 1) short 2) has a funny hat! <g> Best, Jim ***************************************** "We can't be certain who the villains are cause everyone's so pretty" …
04 Oct 1999, 14:38
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