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This seems dead-on to me, except that I can't quite square the black beans with Apheta's claim that the Hieropeople were behind the black hole in the sun (or, in my pet Wild Theory…
09 Dec 2008, 21:23
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Witz--I think your instinct is correct. It's also worth noting that the mythological Typhon had a hundred heads, and that the great, ruined palace might be R'lyeh.…
09 Dec 2008, 19:31
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I think it is clear that the Hierogrammates do not know the will of God. What is less clear to me is: 1) Are the pieties of the Hierodules, Hierarchs, and Hierogrammates sincere?…
07 Dec 2008, 20:02
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Not only that, but the astrological deck is stacked pretty well. See, if Christ was born in late December, he's a solar allegory. If he was born in late August or early September…
06 Dec 2008, 17:46
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I don't think that's quite right. What occurs occurs by the will of God. I.e., He created all that is, and possesses mastery--He could at any time and in any matter intervene dec…
06 Dec 2008, 03:16
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"We have condemned" strikes me as remarkably straight-forward. A character claims responsibility for something that, logically, she would be better off denying. What's your propo…
05 Dec 2008, 22:15
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That speaks to the ability of the Hierogrammates and their agents to refer to their eugenics project with sacred language.…
05 Dec 2008, 20:38
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I don't see how that rebuts the eugenic rationale for the Hierogrammates. "Trying to let us become what we were" = "trying to breed us into Hieros." They've slathered layers of m…
05 Dec 2008, 20:00
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Roy explained it back in June. http://lists.urth.net/htdig.cgi/urth-urth.net/2008-June/009108.html…
05 Dec 2008, 17:27
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That question mark is itself a clue. You are trying to throw me off the scent like a good lupine hero.…
05 Dec 2008, 16:45
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Absolutely. I mean, to the degree that a Christian (or a Jew or a Muslim, or, I guess, a modern worshipper of the Babylonian gods) believes that a global flood literally occurred …
05 Dec 2008, 16:09
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I agree that the Hieros might not care to save the Ascians. One argument that's been made here before (can't recall by whom) is that the humans of Urth have interbred with cacogen…
05 Dec 2008, 15:16
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My new theory is that brunians is Sev1. I will reread to look for clues.…
05 Dec 2008, 15:11
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I think Master Ash comments that most of humanity was evacuated before the final freeze. This is I think the opposite of what Wolfe intends. Yes, the Pelerine says that the Ascia…
05 Dec 2008, 14:55
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Well, just intuitively, I think this is a pretty great theory. One contribution--are Able and Disiri thus a reworking of the Vane/Lilith relationship from George MacDonald's Lilit…
05 Dec 2008, 11:45
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Perhaps brunians remembers remembering those things? I still have 3 or 4 clear recollections from before my 3rd birthday, but I think I just remember writing down my earliest memo…
05 Dec 2008, 11:38
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You misunderstand. Absent their astrological connotations, this silly theory could not be seen to correspond to the Christ story at all. Nor is the Crucifixion observed on Decemb…
04 Dec 2008, 23:56
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You pretty clearly do mean astrological though, don't you? Otherwise what's the significance of the "scorpion"?…
04 Dec 2008, 23:26
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I think you mean Easter, and I'm not especially impressed with the correspondences between, well, ANYTHING and astrology, because astrology is so deliberately ambivalent that it qu…
04 Dec 2008, 22:28
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There's a bit at the end of Urth that strongly implies that the future the Hierogrammates are aiming for is not the Green Man's future. I don't think the Green Man is a midpoint b…
04 Dec 2008, 21:14
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We agree here. My point isn't that there's no Life of the Soul in the Urth books--I think there pretty clearly is, at least of some sort. But that Life of the Soul seems wholly d…
04 Dec 2008, 20:50
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My main point, in this and others of the conceededly tiresome threads on this topic, has been to argue that the Gene Wolfe who depicts non-Christian faiths so empathetically in Lon…
04 Dec 2008, 20:21
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So he says, and maybe so he believes. There are textual reasons, laid out at length by others, to doubt that Tzadkiel has any sort of mystical or special access to the Divine mind…
04 Dec 2008, 20:07
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Judgment, same as what happens to believers. Believers, of course, are expected to fare better--exactly how much better is a matter of some debate.…
04 Dec 2008, 20:05
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Not exactly sure that's a fair way to describe the Second Coming...the End of the Universe is naturally a "mass genocide" in a sense, but a very limited one... Well, yes, but neit…
04 Dec 2008, 19:59
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Gene Wolfe is Catholic, so I doubt he believes in the Rapture. There shouldn't be anyone "left behind."…
04 Dec 2008, 19:55
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Also not what I said. But I guess I have to put it all in one place. Severian's Planetary Reset/Genocide is not a way in which he resembles Christ, except maybe as a parody or tr…
04 Dec 2008, 19:47
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Fine, Severian hits a reset button. But that has nothing to do with Christianity.…
04 Dec 2008, 19:22
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All I'm saying is that I don't think Severian brings about an apocatastasis, and if he did, it wouldn't necessarily make him "Christ-like."…
04 Dec 2008, 18:59
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The plot of Soldier of Arete touches on the ancient Olympics and includes a pankration.…
04 Dec 2008, 18:45
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Thanks! This is what I get for not having read Castle of the Otter.…
04 Dec 2008, 18:29
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I do not think this a valid reason to dismisss my point. I don't think it's a typo or devoid of theological meaning. I agree with the Lexicon's take, which is theological.…
04 Dec 2008, 18:22
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This thread is fascinating. Witz is pretty sure that Severian is Jesus because he's bringing about an apocatastatis (even if this isn't quite a fair description of the plot of Urt…
04 Dec 2008, 18:19
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I believe that the wrestling imagery comes from the word's Greek origin--it referred to athletes competing in the pankration--the blended boxing and wrestling that allowed combatan…
04 Dec 2008, 17:37
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But why is the death and resurrection stuff in New Sun more "Christian" and less "generic dying/returning god"? Sure, individual events (both encounters with Typhon, for example) …
04 Dec 2008, 17:33
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Aquinas can hardly be blamed for not being entirely sure where he begins and ends. There was an awful lot of him.…
03 Dec 2008, 22:34
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Yes, my basic rundown was meant as that. Heck, I even conflated Aristotle with Aquinas very badly at the end.…
03 Dec 2008, 19:54
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Yes, "form" and "anima" mean the same thing here (although not always, because "anima" will sometimes mean "breath" or "soul" when "form" will not.) Basic Aristotelian metaphysics…
03 Dec 2008, 19:12
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I don't think the bodies are the problem with Apu Punchau. It's the forms. The Hieros explain that at the end of Urth, I think, with the bit about writing the same lines too clos…
03 Dec 2008, 18:42
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Another big difference is that Severian's resurrections are explicitly something that Christ's was not. Severian either revives after a moment of death or, if his body is badly ma…
03 Dec 2008, 12:20
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Hey, another John/Jack!…
01 Dec 2008, 14:53
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I don't want to give you the wrong idea--it's not like the ideas in Rowling are especially deep and fascinating (although apparently there's some alchemy stuff which is pretty intr…
26 Nov 2008, 18:41
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I give Rowling an A for imagination and a C for style. Some would call the C generous.…
26 Nov 2008, 17:19
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Also "The King of Comedy," the DeNiro movie in which a deluded stalker takes a hostage to live out his fantasy of becoming a stand-up comedian. To the audience's surprise, he's ac…
26 Nov 2008, 16:29
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Dave, I agree with you entirely.…
26 Nov 2008, 02:42
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I'm not, I'm responding to what you're saying. That doesn't especially matter to me, or to my point that Christian speculative fiction writers have been writing Christian speculat…
25 Nov 2008, 22:53
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Let's not overstate the "ballsiness" required for a Christian to recognize the mythic elements of Christianity and apply them to speculative fiction. It's been going on for a very…
25 Nov 2008, 22:34
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And there's no contradiction there. It's pretty common for Christian thinkers to try to find ways in which Old Testament figures "prefigure" Christ. Noah is typically held to pre…
24 Nov 2008, 22:59
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Yes, it would--at any rate, it seems to evoke the idea of an evil power (a dragon or wolf) that tries to devour the sun. That is a very old idea. But who is the "demonic power" i…
24 Nov 2008, 22:56
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Well, there's no general resurrection and no judgment. It's not clear that there's victory over a demonic power. And instead of serving as a genuine Last Day, it's just a hit of …
24 Nov 2008, 22:21
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