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Don't apologize, especially if you have such interesting things to post. Got any more insights? Nutria…
07 Apr 2000, 13:11
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Mantis, Very happy to grant that THB has much more to do with Crowley than Eco. But it is typical of Wolfe to mix tales, as Mowgli and Romulus in the tales in TBNS. But maybe eve…
08 Mar 2000, 13:38
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Great link, but don't forget *The Name of the Rose* as a major player here. (labyrinth, library, latin). Patera Nutria…
07 Mar 2000, 17:37
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Now, I've been wondering for some time what kind of animal a gevers is. Now I'll have to figure out what a rigoglio is. Patera Nutria *This is WHORL, for discussion of Gene Wolf…
07 Mar 2000, 13:27
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Maybe someone made this point already, but I'm pretty slow these days. At any rate, in this story we have a labyrinthine building, a library, a murder mystery, and lots of latin p…
16 Feb 2000, 10:17
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Hmmm. Good question. I was just bringing in a global view of Wolfe as devout RC and the purgatory theme in *peace* along with what seems to be the drift of the Sandman story. I nee…
11 Feb 2000, 10:28
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Maybe they have. Remember, we only see a very small town in a small part of Whorl. Lots of communities have doubtless raided the tanks. Clones of Gene could write several hundred n…
10 Feb 2000, 19:19
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A thought: The traffic jam is purgatory. This would link with *Peace,* where the character is also in purgatory. Remember that in RC thinking, purgatory is just the anteroom to hea…
10 Feb 2000, 13:13
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I really don't think we have to credit it. The motivation for this reading in the first place was to "deliver" Wolfe from the "scandal" of writing a story that is "negative" about …
10 Feb 2000, 13:09
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Don't have my copy here, but I recall that the copyright date of both stories in the same, thus written together. I suggest we give Wolfe bit of space here. The traffic jam soci…
10 Feb 2000, 13:07
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Mebbe. I'll need more to be convinced. I accept your overall assessment of the book as a collection. Maybe I should take the link between "taming" and "Tamar" more negatively, as a…
31 Jan 2000, 16:22
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At 09:39 PM 1/30/00 -0800, NG wrote: in this context, then, "The Ziggurat" is Interesting take. I'm intrigued. Please elaborate on how you take the overall narrative. I'm inter…
31 Jan 2000, 12:30
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I really think this is a superficial analysis on the part of "a lot of people." If someone so much as hints that men and women might be different in any respect other than sheer pl…
30 Jan 2000, 17:00
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Yeah. You other guys better watch it, or Patrick, Alga, and I are going to come over and beat you up. You know who you are, and so do we. Be afraid. Be very afraid. Nutria (sla…
29 Jan 2000, 15:47
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One other thing: There are a number of Wolfe stories wherein the last paragraph or line stuns the reader into realizing he's misunderstood what has been going on, and forces a re-…
28 Jan 2000, 21:03
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Wow, Borski. You make an interesting case. I guess it just does not make sense to me, without something a lot more explicit. From what I can tell, your interpretation assumes the "…
28 Jan 2000, 20:52
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I didn't pick up any reference to Mediterranean, but perhaps someone else did. Nutricious…
28 Jan 2000, 12:41
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Just finished rereading Ziggurat, and some comments on the mooted "evil Emory" interpretation. Wrong, Jim. Tamar is not her name, but the name Emory gives her, and he explicitly …
28 Jan 2000, 10:49
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What set me to thinking was the name Glinda with an eye, as well as the other allusions. When I cast my mind back over the book, the Oz connection seemed right. I'd already seen th…
27 Jan 2000, 12:59
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I recall being struck by and convinced of this paradigm when I read the book, but I just can't recall enough at the moment to argue the point. If my aging longterm memory is servin…
26 Jan 2000, 12:28
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Dadgummit. I always forget something. The Quadrumvirate alludes to the Triumvirate that took over in Rome after the collapse of the decadent Old Roman Republic. That's also part o…
26 Jan 2000, 10:58
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The four main characters are from the Wizard. Ben Free is the Wizard. Glinda (note spelling) is also the name of one of the good witches. It's been years since I read it, but I do…
26 Jan 2000, 10:54
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I'm with Alga on this one. The interpretation she rejects seems completely wrong to me, along with the notion that Weer is a mass murderer. I submit that, since Wolfe has explicitl…
25 Jan 2000, 12:11
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It seems to me that your proposal has the same problem as the "golden rule" notion that I've been forced to reject. Everybody has to do it. It's just a kind of negative side of the…
19 Jan 2000, 13:00
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Good point. The "secret" does seem to be something that can be "done" on the spot. I have to agree that my suggestion as regards the "secret" seems to be in error. Nutria *This…
19 Jan 2000, 12:52
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I still say that the secret (probably) is that when humans learn to live with each other in love and charity (not enslaving one another, for instance), the inhumi will follow suit,…
15 Jan 2000, 17:40
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I did not find an implication of ennui in "And When They Come." Open to being shown, of course. The father simply kills himself and tries to kill his family. I took it that there w…
15 Jan 2000, 17:31
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I'll add a thought, which is probably wrong (almost certainly) but may spark someone else's thinking. "151D 1000, I.E." Id est, (i.e.,) means "that is," and means that 151D 1000 ex…
09 Jan 2000, 17:48
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Odd "sticks." When struck they sound like telephone bleeps. Dunno if I've ever encountered sticks like these. My suspicion, given the gloomy Like CordwainerSmith's "instrumental…
09 Jan 2000, 17:07
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I'm ready to start discussing this. How about it? Everybody got his or her copy yet? A few I've read before, being published in mainstream SF sources. Most were originally publis…
08 Jan 2000, 20:52
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Sails for flying between the stars are in several Cordo Smith stories, but Wolfe may not have gotten them from him. Nutria…
06 Dec 1999, 20:14
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Good poynts. Guess we gotta wait.... Nutricious *This is WHORL, for discussion of Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun.…
29 Nov 1999, 09:27
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At 12:01 PM 11/27/99 -0500, you wrote: . The Urthes Great summary. Gotta remember it. Your theory does nicely for the latter two: alas, Dunno. But, Satan is frozen in a bloc…
29 Nov 1999, 09:25
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Interesting. In Dante, Satan is in a block of ice at the center of the earth. Hell is frozen. Make Erebus a Satan-figure then. Does Satan want humanity annihilated, or does he want…
26 Nov 1999, 15:01
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Did it not write fairly clearly that after an initial change the Gospel only gradually changes things? I thought I made that clear, from my perspective. I thought I just did. The…
24 Nov 1999, 10:29
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It's Rat Time, Slimina! To begin with, courtesy of Kieran: Horn: "If only we cared about each other sufficiently. If only all of us loved all the others enough, they would go bac…
24 Nov 1999, 00:58
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You're probably on to something here. Simply going around predicting what is going to happen, and giving hope to the oppressed, would fill the bill quite nicely. Rostrum? Nutria…
24 Nov 1999, 00:48
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Good thought. Probably more analogous to the prophets, however, than to the gospels. Nutria…
24 Nov 1999, 00:45
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You're right. That's exactly how I took it. Nutricious Nutria…
23 Nov 1999, 16:40
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Perhaps Severian's hohum earlier career has been conflated with the career of the real Conciliator over time, and that is why the myth exists in such a powerful way. Nutria…
23 Nov 1999, 09:10
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I think Wolfe's premise is that before the coming of Christ, the world was ruled by violent and imperialistic empires. In the ancient world context, Alexander's Hellenistic Empire …
22 Nov 1999, 09:30
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http://world.std.com/~pduggan/gwjbj.html The Bible teaches that before the coming of the Son of Man, humanity was under-age, and was under the governance of angels -- which would…
16 Nov 1999, 10:00
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Clute does like Wolfe and has done some good work. But he's really hostile to Wolfe's religious beliefs, as you are, O Slima, but unlike you, he seems not to want to deal with them…
11 Nov 1999, 10:19
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Could this be *The Book of Fantasy* by B & BC, published by Viking in 1988? It's a collection of stories by other authors first pub'd in 1940 in the Argentine. The first is by Akut…
28 Oct 1999, 10:20
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Well, I'd read Eco first, so I was set up for it. He's a librarian. He's blind. One of the books contains all books, Borges's Aleph. The city is Buenos Aires. jbjordan…
27 Oct 1999, 16:51
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The Slime (Alga) suggested long ago that because of the clearly Byzantine character of the Commonwealth, we are really in the Mediterranean. She made a valiant case for it, but it …
27 Oct 1999, 13:55
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To be sure. And Borges was a super-Chesterton fan. As is Wolfe, of course. One should probably also add, as regards religious influences, C.S. Lewis, who of course also was influe…
26 Oct 1999, 14:46
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I think Wolfe intends his characters to be Everyman and Everywoman. I distinguish them because I think Wolfe wants to say that men and women are quite different, and this is someti…
26 Oct 1999, 14:37
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Alga rejoins: I add this (depressing) thought: Wolfe's writing may be so complex, and so dependent on the tropes of SF, that he will never make it into a "canon." It is hard to …
26 Oct 1999, 14:28
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It's been my assumption that Severian simply cannot be killed, and brings himself back to life, so to speak -- cannot be killed at this pre-New Sun point in his life anyway. But ma…
26 Oct 1999, 14:24
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