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The title indicates to me that moving to the Eighth can only happen after death (thus, resurrection, glorification, queenification). Getting to the seventh (consider the number in …
13 Jan 2000, 11:40
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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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Again, sorry this is so late, and if the point has been made already, please excuse me Wolfe has made this very clear in some other stories, such as "The Last thrilling wonder Sto…
09 Jan 2000, 15:59
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Did this get answered. Apologies if so: Briah is earth; Yesod is the next higher plane. I think in Wolfe, that's all there is, so Yesod is (the equivalent of) heaven. Briah comes…
09 Jan 2000, 15:53
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Did this ever get answered? In ancient Egypt, the scarab or dung-beetle pushes along a ball of dung, which symbolizes the sun. The Great Scarab pushes the sun along. Thus, in the g…
09 Jan 2000, 15:44
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Just recently reading and trying to catch up. A note on: etc. etc. I asked Wolfe about this either in or around the time of my interview that is posted on Paul Duggan's website.…
09 Jan 2000, 15:42
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Given *Strange Travelers,* we now recall that pawns advance until they become queens. The other pieces may look bigger and be able to do more, but at the end, the pawn becomes the …
09 Jan 2000, 15:36
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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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Just a thot. Does it work? Erebus, Abaia, Scylla, Arioch: four monsters. Compare Daniel 7, the four monsters defeated by the "one like a Son of Man" who "ascends to the Ancient of…
30 Nov 1999, 11:47
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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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Long ago I posted a score or more of fairly explicit parallels between BLS and the gospels, Acts, and Revelation. I've never been able to see much of Moses here. Of course, Wolfe …
18 Oct 1999, 14:02
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Since I've been away from Urth and Whorl for months, maybe you folks have settled this question, but for what it's worth, my recollection is that Wolfe says his narrators are not u…
18 Oct 1999, 09:56
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Yes, you and I and Wolfe agree, and Alga (almost certainly) doesn't. My only point was that we have to consider what Wolfe had in mind. (Well, I'm a Reformed Protestant, and I imag…
15 Oct 1999, 19:04
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Alga! Talk about slime! ;) Each of us has her/his own view of the origination of the gospels. What matters here is what Wolfe's view is, and it's not what you describe. Since BLS …
15 Oct 1999, 17:37
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Well, he's Brown in the first book, not much in the latter three. Some kind of "divine election" is involved in his whole life, as well as the "scientific predestination" that re…
15 Oct 1999, 17:33
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How dare you imply that I'd forgotten Nettle's help? Don't forget that Nutria's eat Vizcachas alive bite by bite (whatever Vizcachas are)! Hyoomr aside, I still find it hard to und…
14 Oct 1999, 10:56
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Good thought. I'm still puzzled at how Horn could have written TBLS without some kind of help, which is why I suggested a possible earlier info dump at Manefraim. But there is more…
13 Oct 1999, 10:11
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Hope you're right. To be honest, the business of Severian's showing up in the current series has always struck me as kind of hokey, and it will require Wolfe at his best to convinc…
12 Oct 1999, 16:04
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At 04:25 PM 10/12/99 -0400, you wrote: . Wouldn't "Wijzer" in Dutch be pronounced like "Wiser" Viser'd be closer. The "ij" in Dutch is the German "ei," so the long "i" sound is…
12 Oct 1999, 15:57
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Right. Sorry. Given his syntax, I suspect Afrikaans, just because what little Dutch I used to know, I don't recall as so convoluted. Nutria *This is WHORL, for discussion of Gen…
12 Oct 1999, 14:24
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Look at all the Christians who want Jesus to return soon and bail us/them out of all their problems. I suspect that's part of what Wolfe has in mind when the leaders say they want …
12 Oct 1999, 14:23
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To expand on what I wrote before, try this out: TBLS sure contains a LOT of stuff that Horn would have no way of knowing, unless he was tagging along and spying all throughout. Bu…
12 Oct 1999, 14:16
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It needs to be something in Hindi. Okay, Han are Chinese, Gaonese are East Indians, the tribes along the river are Amerinds, and Wijzer (sp?) is Scandanavian. When are we? Evide…
12 Oct 1999, 11:53
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What I meant was that they did not want ANOTHER book. But you're point is well taken -- and you do have inside knowledge!! So, I'll defer to it. Nutria *This is WHORL, for disc…
12 Oct 1999, 11:36
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Well, that's what I was going to write, having finished the book last night and reading the posts today, but you beat me to it. Completely agree. I think we have all we need to kno…
12 Oct 1999, 11:00
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The book of Silk is the Gospel of Silk. Remember that the narrative follows the gospel narrative rather closely. Silk is the closest to a Christ-figure that Wolfe has ever written.…
12 Oct 1999, 10:54
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Perhaps it has been discussed here already, but if not, some might want to look into this: The end of Urth resembles the end of Moby Dick. To some extent at least, Severian appears…
03 May 1999, 16:48
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The New Sun is analogous to I've been too busy to keep up with everything on this list -- I have a huge backlog of posts to read! But I do have a comment here. The coming of the …
28 Apr 1999, 10:53
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Though not a Catholic myself, as a practicing theologian I have never heard of such a thing. Purgatory in RC theology is a way of coming to peace with all that has happened in your…
07 Sep 1998, 01:30
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Along Borgesian lines, it is worth remembering that Borges was quite a fan of Chesterton, and Wolfe cut his teeth on Chesterton, claiming (to me) to have read everything of Chester…
07 Sep 1998, 01:03
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