-
Is this a joke? If it is it is in poor taste. Trafficking in such things funds people who do a lot worse than own books.…
03 Nov 2009, 00:21
-
I should have also said that I agree with you that Margaret is not an iteration of Cassie.…
18 Sep 2009, 18:36
-
Not to go down the rabbit hole, but after Pirate Freedom, I have a tough time buying this particular point.…
18 Sep 2009, 10:38
-
I thought the character's speech patterns were recognizably those of George W. Bush as well. I don't think anything of Wolfe's attitude toward the former president can or should b…
15 Sep 2009, 14:03
-
Good thing Wolfe didn't leave too many possible options, eh? Time travel, shapeshifters, "glamours" that alter appearances, gods who look like people, physical alteration by Cthul…
10 Sep 2009, 00:32
-
Well, it's definitely an unstated and unsupported premise. I'm not sure that it counts as question-begging. Many people do know that they forget things.…
26 Jul 2009, 12:49
-
A rare lapse from the erudite Mr. Wynn.…
23 Jul 2009, 01:11
-
David., is the assumption you're making about Daniel's reading habits warranted? I am not a fan of the argument that those who disagree with one must simply not be readers. There…
20 May 2009, 00:42
-
I take it, then, that although you believe that war can be justified, you don't believe that the American Civil War (from the Yankee side, anyway) was such an instance. Is that fa…
19 May 2009, 22:37
-
brunians, are you a bona fide Southerner, or is your term for the American Civil War an affectation?…
19 May 2009, 22:25
-
Do economists still take the account of the nature of profit explained below seriously? I encountered it in school myself, laughed at it, and was assured that I wasn not expected …
19 May 2009, 22:20
-
Somalia is to libertarianism what *1984* is to communitarianism. A useful thing to keep in mind, but little else. In real life, communitarian states are as apt to resemble German…
19 May 2009, 21:21
-
This makes sense to me.…
01 May 2009, 21:27
-
Where wolf? Wolf here! Good wolf!…
24 Apr 2009, 03:28
-
I mostly agree with you, but I want to take some points in turn. He told the story with the intent of the inhuma present revealing herself to him. The whole goal was to accuratel…
16 Apr 2009, 23:01
-
Yes, it's possible that this subtlety escaped Wolfe.…
16 Apr 2009, 22:51
-
I don't think so...my OBW character index lists people like "Hoop, one of the RAJAN's scribes" and "Pehla, the RAJAN's principal concubine."…
16 Apr 2009, 21:51
-
I've been keeping an eye out for that eating thing, and it is more or less as you say. That point would be more compelling if Silk hadn't had such a weird relationship with food b…
16 Apr 2009, 21:49
-
This is certainly compelling evidence that a Neighbor or more than one did something. I tend to agree that in some sense the being who comes out of the pit is not the same being w…
16 Apr 2009, 21:37
-
Oreb faints in Nightside right as Silk is about to sacrifice him to the Outsider. Silk assumes he's dead, discards the body and returns, after his adventure at Blood's, to find Or…
16 Apr 2009, 20:52
-
Oreb faints in Nightside right as Silk is about to sacrifice him to the Outsider. Silk assumes he's dead, discards the body and returns, after his adventure at Blood's, to find Or…
16 Apr 2009, 20:51
-
You mean waaaaaaay back in Nightside?…
16 Apr 2009, 20:41
-
Long Sun would be an interesting set of films or, say, HBO series. Fifth Head, the original story, would probably be my choice for a discrete movie.…
16 Apr 2009, 19:55
-
Oh, I agree--I think he's definitely still Oreb. On the level of mere plot, SilkHorn doubts Oreb(?) is Oreb because 1) he's suppressing Silk's memories of the last 20 years, whic…
16 Apr 2009, 18:37
-
Of course, there's another layer of complexity here. I'm currently midway through Return to the Whorl, where SilkHorn makes several references to his theory that the Oreb of SS is …
16 Apr 2009, 18:26
-
No, I didn't find Adult Chris to be sympathetic and I'm not sure I was supposed to. I don't really have a developed argument for that, though.…
16 Apr 2009, 17:46
-
The obvious one, to me, is that the series is a trilogy set on three different worlds. The first is set on an old world and deals with a human being coming into contact with that …
15 Apr 2009, 17:15
-
Undoubtedly an inadvertent omission--SS has aspects of Lewis's Ransom books.…
15 Apr 2009, 15:18
-
Oreb remains funny throughout, but I agree--there's little humor in Short Sun. It's a melancholy work.…
15 Apr 2009, 12:12
-
I think that Long Sun stands just fine on its own, but is certainly better with Short Sun as well. Short Sun is really Gene's treat for his biggest fans, no one else could read it…
15 Apr 2009, 02:21
-
I think Short Sun (which I'm rereading now) is as good as anything Wolfe ever wrote. I can't say the same about Pirate Freedom or Soldier of Sidon.…
14 Apr 2009, 12:41
-
Remember, it's Wolfe's future vocabulary. "Gnostic" here, at least to Severian, is probably synonymous with "occult"--the symbols are mysterious, understood or intelligible only t…
09 Apr 2009, 04:31
-
James, I really admire the insights you bring to this topic. I am curious, though--if Severian is a clone of one of Typhon's children, what is Ouen's function? Just a red herring?…
08 Apr 2009, 14:49
-
Agreed. It's far more likely that the idea of superficially Confuscian totalitarianism came from Mao than from Wolfe.…
03 Apr 2009, 18:57
-
Gene seems to me to be too coy to do that outright. I imagine the One True God would act through an intermediary of some sort. The members of this list could probably come up wit…
03 Apr 2009, 18:38
-
Beats me. I got lost during Sidon. I think he needs miraculous intervention of some sort, but he's had countless opportunities for it and instead been the pawn of basically every…
03 Apr 2009, 18:14
-
Are we talking about a hypothetical backstory to the Red Sun Whorl (a Clawmarillion), or a hypothetical collection of Gene Wolfe's ideas, thoughts, unused notions, etc. (a History …
03 Apr 2009, 18:02
-
We've been operating on that assumption, I know, but rereading Short Sun, I'm no longer certain of it. Check out Duko Rigoglio's rant: "Nessus is our city...A city larger than th…
03 Apr 2009, 13:49
-
Is this called for? Son of Witz asked a sincere question.…
02 Apr 2009, 19:12
-
I think it's the latter. Another Lewis bit that comes to mind is his point (in *The Discarded Image*) that the physical arrangement of Dante's cosmos (with Satan in the center and…
02 Apr 2009, 17:59
-
I think so. The idea is that attachment to abstract principles is higher than loyalty to any particular laws or men. It's the principle of governance, right? I take that as "the…
02 Apr 2009, 17:41
-
Better yet--assume Typhon *was the original Neighbor and the founder of their race. *The doubling of limbs is in imitation of his doubling of heads. That's why the Neighbors tell…
02 Apr 2009, 14:40
-
Good question. Obviously Silk has telepathic powers, and had them *before *he killed Blood. Now, we already know that the inhumi were in the *Whorl *at least 37 years before the …
02 Apr 2009, 14:14
-
Well, Wolfe is a Christian, so I think he thinks that most human things need to be redeemed and transfigured. I don't think Wolfe inverts the idea at all--Able's love for Dsiri *d…
25 Mar 2009, 17:02
-
That's not how I read Silk/Hyacinth, Severian/Dorcas, Able/Dsiri or There Are Doors (although to be honest I have no clue what was going on in that one. Silk makes a Christlike ac…
24 Mar 2009, 21:00
-
Where Thelx Holds Up a Mirror, or whatever that chapter's called.…
24 Mar 2009, 20:34
-
I agree with your general point, but Galen/Callie was *not *a healthy relationship. Galen/Boomer was for as long as it lasted despite being illicit and therefore covert. Also, un…
24 Mar 2009, 20:18
-
I never thought the viewer of BSG was supposed to take Baltar's mysticism the least bit seriously. He was as phony as they come and the fact that he never spouted a coherent philo…
23 Mar 2009, 19:42
-
Krait has a copy of Sinew's soul, but it's a copy of Sinew's Thomistic soul from when Sinew was extremely young--they're more like identical twins then like being "the same person"…
23 Mar 2009, 00:55
-
I watched it last night with some friends and just want to say on record that I loved it from beginning to almost the very very end when the robot dance montage started. But even …
22 Mar 2009, 15:08
Urth Net