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All of the speculation and mystery make me consider "Father Inquiry" as a possible pun? (Assuming it's "in-ee-rey" rather than "in-ire-ay" or somesuch.)…
12 Jul 2010, 21:33
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Some thoughts... Me again, and I was joking. I think it's one of many reasonable hypotheses. He's unlikely to be a strict clone of Typhon--he's almost certainly genetically enha…
12 Jul 2010, 19:25
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"Kim" is the most common family name in Korea. If one wanted to pick an iconic Korean name, it would be "Kim," with "Park" as the probable runner-up. It also means "gold," or rat…
12 Jul 2010, 18:13
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Isn't one of the names "Kim Lee Soong"? It's Korean.…
12 Jul 2010, 16:59
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That's a great insight. Maybe this gives a triple meaning to the name--"Father" suggests the politically involved churchmen of Byzantium; "inire" suggests an initiate of a Gnostic…
10 Jul 2010, 17:07
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Michael Andre-Driussi mentions the fact that "inire" is a Latin infinitve meaning "to begin" or "to enter," related to "initiate" and suggesting the guardian of a secret knowledge.…
10 Jul 2010, 02:24
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I meant "not part cacogen or two generations north of man-ape or whatever." Pure human.…
09 Jul 2010, 22:08
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On Fri, Jul 9, 2010 at 5:05 PM, Roy C. Lackey <rclackey at stic.net> wrote: Uh, I don't think so. Most of the people Sev found on Ushas after he returned there from the stone town…
09 Jul 2010, 21:15
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As I recall from earlier discussions on this list, that's far from clear. In his initial appearance he seems to be indifferent to the Sun myth. Later he appears in a confusing sce…
09 Jul 2010, 21:07
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Possibly filled by the Green Man?…
09 Jul 2010, 20:26
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Good point. For all we know, their passage off the planet was paid by inhumi.…
09 Jul 2010, 19:15
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2010/7/9 Ant?nio Pedro Marques entonio at gmail.com This actually makes some sense of the family tree and incest preoccupations of the text, and of the monkey preoccupation--we kn…
09 Jul 2010, 15:18
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He's a real-life demiurge. That's worth something.…
09 Jul 2010, 14:41
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That is one conclusion some people have drawn. Another is that "good" is a meaningless concept except insofar as it is identified with God's will. I.e., the reason murder is wrong…
09 Jul 2010, 14:31
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Ooh, this is excellent stuff. Thank you for this. Someone like me (but smarter) should take this insight and run with it into a full-on application of Melek Taus to other Wolfean…
09 Jul 2010, 00:52
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2010/7/7 Ant?nio Pedro Marques <entonio at gmail.com> Actually, I think this may be the simplest explanation available. Rudesind probably is Inire's agent.…
07 Jul 2010, 23:17
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I'm not sure that anyone has said that there's nothing to be found in all the various clues about Inire. The question is whether it makes any sense to assume that every candidate …
07 Jul 2010, 22:02
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...this suggests that the "naming theory" is of limited value.…
07 Jul 2010, 21:14
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...fair enough. Assuming Piaton is not one of Typhon's bastards, that is.…
07 Jul 2010, 20:25
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Challenge: name a (humanoid and non-undine) character in The Book of the New Sun who is definitely not Inire, Severian, Typhon or a member of one of their families.…
07 Jul 2010, 20:19
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I'm not sure if it matters or not. Wolfe certainly seems to be having fun with people of various degrees of artificiality.…
07 Jul 2010, 19:34
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At the drowning at the earliest; on the ship at the latest. Not in the avern battle--he kept his original body that time.…
07 Jul 2010, 19:28
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Well, I don't know that Severian was always already artificial--I know that at one point or another in the narrative his personality is artificially resurrected.…
07 Jul 2010, 19:19
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I think my "Severian-is-Inire" theory is getting short shrift here. This means Severian is also a robot, of course.…
07 Jul 2010, 19:10
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Non-dispositive. If West is Superman, the commute is pretty short.…
07 Jul 2010, 18:36
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You know who else is rarely seen with Superman, if ever? Wally West.…
07 Jul 2010, 18:30
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What is this garbage, Brunians?…
07 Jul 2010, 18:19
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2010/7/7 Ant?nio Pedro Marques <entonio at gmail.com> It certainly is far from a perfect explanation. I'm eager to consider any kind of being that there is textual evidence for. …
07 Jul 2010, 18:12
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Right--I think there's a deliberate mystery as to by what means Inire, the hierodule, extends his lifespan (someone has proposed that Inire's lifespan is actually normal, but that …
07 Jul 2010, 18:00
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Again, not a novel. The infodumps were as much for the author's working out of his creative impulse as anything else. Personally, I'm fascinated by Tolkien's process, and while "…
07 Jul 2010, 17:46
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Where's the evidence that Inire, in particular, has the same power-set as Tzadkiel? As I understand is, Tzadkiel is a Hierogrammate and has certain powers thereby--and it is not e…
07 Jul 2010, 17:36
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Actually, it at least gave me the insight that the "things" Agia "does" for Hethor probably involve lying very, very still...(shudder)…
07 Jul 2010, 17:25
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Actually, I thought we'd decided that Hethor's attraction is to sex dolls/robots, but that he might possibly settle for the right kind of human woman (maybe one who role-plays as a…
07 Jul 2010, 13:53
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This seems to me to settle the matter. Rudesind is not Inire--they have very different physical appearances and no evidence for them being one and the same besides physical appear…
07 Jul 2010, 13:48
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Heh heh heh.…
06 Jul 2010, 15:03
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Wait a minute now. Severian goes out of his way to heal the girl in *Sword of the Lictor*. That was an unusual display of compassion/interest for Severian, and we've only routine…
06 Jul 2010, 12:19
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But he isn't never-seen. It's fairly clear that he's the tiger-shaman guy. Now maybe he's one or more of the other candidates mentioned as well, but I can't see why he needs to be…
05 Jul 2010, 12:21
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That the right of the citizenry to possess weapons should be relatively unencumbered.…
03 Jul 2010, 21:38
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To the extent that Gene Wolfe expresses sympathy with the view of the majority of Americans as to gun ownership, I agree that there's very little "unusual" or "surprising" about t…
03 Jul 2010, 21:02
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I'm not sure what this really has to do with Wolfe. (And I know I've had my digressions too.)…
02 Jul 2010, 14:04
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I"m confused by this too. Certainly Pas is evil. Certainly many of his servants (Silk) are good. And of those servants who aren't very good, they tend to be improved by greater se…
01 Jul 2010, 23:11
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This is mistaken. The Gnostic posits that the demiurge is in fact the God of the Old Testament; while it's at least consistent with Christianity to posit that the gods worshipped b…
01 Jul 2010, 23:07
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01 Jul 2010, 20:31
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2010/7/1 Ant?nio Pedro Marques <entonio at gmail.com> Yes. Gnosticism posits that "the world" is the creation of the demiurge, a debased being posing as the true God, but that a …
01 Jul 2010, 20:28
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2010/7/1 Ant?nio Pedro Marques <entonio at gmail.com>…
01 Jul 2010, 18:09
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2010/7/1 Ant?nio Pedro Marques <entonio at gmail.com> Is it? I dunno. I think the existence of, say, hurricanes, or the bubonic plague, is potentially more troubling from a theo…
01 Jul 2010, 17:22
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No. I believe that the Hierogrammates were artificially bred by the Hieros.…
01 Jul 2010, 17:08
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Tdazkiel's people are themselves artificial...awfully difficult to blame God for their control over the universe. 2010/7/1 Ant?nio Pedro Marques <entonio at gmail.com>…
01 Jul 2010, 15:31
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Thanks. Obviously, the effect of Tzadkiel's actions is the coming of the New Sun and the drowning of Urth. Lots and lots of people die in this, maybe for a redemptive higher mean…
01 Jul 2010, 13:24
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Well, I didn't want to get into various schools of angelology in Christian and Gnostic thought. Obvious there must be *some *possible separation between angelic will and divine wi…
01 Jul 2010, 12:40
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