Posted from 5 addresses as Marc Aramini, maa32, aramini1, marcaramini, A Aramini, Marc A Aramini, Marc
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The Marvelous Brass Chessplaying Automaton? Yes, little dwarven derelicts/masterminds are lurking in a fair amount of Wolfe. Sometimes they are technicians like the Fliers/ Sciat…
16 Apr 2012, 02:19
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King Under the Mountain This was first published in If in 1970. SUMMARY: Five thousand feet below the earth’s surface, a supercomputer fifty years in the making is in charge of a…
16 Apr 2012, 00:38
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Oddly enough, short story 18, how the whip came back, deals with what to do with prisoners! The prisons in that story really do sound like hell, and Wolfe's concerns that when rel…
15 Apr 2012, 01:50
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How the Whip Came Back This was first published in Orbit in 1970. A note about the title: of course some may be less literal minded than me, but I always thought the whip of the …
15 Apr 2012, 01:46
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Okay, since you asked for one more elaboration. Innocents are the exception rather than the rule with all these appeals currently in place (in the US, anyway). No justice system …
14 Apr 2012, 01:03
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Good points Lee. I am going to stop posting in this thread and get back to Wolfe short stories! I do acknowledge the different perceptions between parental vs. "equal" treatment …
13 Apr 2012, 15:34
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I just think caring about those who are boorish and guilty is a waste of effort - their punishment is to be shunted off - to hang out with their own kind. It is the criminal who m…
13 Apr 2012, 13:11
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--- On Thu, 4/12/12, Matthew Knight <jacobeiserman at gmail.com> wrote: Whoa, back up Marc! ?Even in your own tradition, many people talk about a "consistent ethic of life." ?…
13 Apr 2012, 00:15
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--- On Wed, 4/11/12, Matthew Knight <jacobeiserman at gmail.com> wrote: From: Matthew Knight <jacobeiserman at gmail.com> Subject: Re: (urth) This Week in Google Alerts: Home Fir…
12 Apr 2012, 14:59
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I am not going to get too involved here, as it will no doubt veer further and further from its Wolfe origins, but the claim that the death penalty is not a deterrent from further c…
12 Apr 2012, 00:38
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thanks! I just thought it was super cool how there are objective markers in a Wolfe story that, at least pre-1973, mark him as a definitively modernist rather than postmodern styl…
11 Apr 2012, 16:00
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I like how these political threads on Wolfe always get a response, so I'm going to piggyback on this back to Wolfe's short fiction. (I am trying to cope with his political takes on…
11 Apr 2012, 15:29
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Futhermore, hasn't WWII taught us that even the most sophisticated, cultured, and enlightened city or country can descend into animalistic barbarism and brutality when the right id…
11 Apr 2012, 12:26
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Eyebem This was first published in Orbit in 1970 SUMMARY: The robotic Eyebem narrates the story of his education and first days on the job as his little black recording box is se…
10 Apr 2012, 22:31
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Now people let their leanings interfere with objective criticism, especially if the viewpoint is unpopular. As if Tristam Shandy wasn't anti-papist in its rhetoric. Yet there are…
10 Apr 2012, 13:35
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I'm with Nick on this one. pigeonholing. I can definitely see technology becoming less available to the unwashed masses (especially if my totalitarian and oppressive efforts ever…
10 Apr 2012, 02:30
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I don't watch TV anymore except for violence (boxing and whatnot) but that clip kind of cracked me up. It's like they are saying, if you read and enjoy Gene, cuneiform is no proble…
08 Apr 2012, 23:07
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Car Sinister Car Sinister first appeared in the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction in January of 1970. INSPIRATION: Well, we actually have an account of Gene’s inspiration f…
08 Apr 2012, 01:39
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A Method Bit in “B” This was published in Orbit in 1970 . SUMMARY: Our narrator recounts his little story with the start: “I suppose it was because I had attended a film just …
07 Apr 2012, 20:41
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--- On Sat, 4/7/12, Darth Ed <darthed77 at gmail.com> wrote: . I think Wolfe identifies with the adults more He is just showing how ridiculous and separated from their son they ar…
07 Apr 2012, 19:33
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yes ... I think I'm going to drop the publication info so these types of things don't happen in the future. I'm writing up too many at once - I've re-read like the first forty sto…
07 Apr 2012, 19:29
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I don't like Bunyan style exegesis in general for Wolfe, but every once in a while I think perhaps that is what a shorter piece is doing (much like Avram Davidson's story about a m…
07 Apr 2012, 17:27
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One more thing - the boy goes up in his treehouse on Thursday and the governor calls out the guard on Friday - so it is clear that the boy (who never really has any screen time exc…
07 Apr 2012, 14:47
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Paul’s Treehouse This was first published in 1968 in Orbit. Here is a link. It is also in Castle of Days. http://www.lexal.net/scifi/scifiction/classics/classics_archive/wolfe3/…
07 Apr 2012, 00:23
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I mean this in the loosest possible way - he's not Joseph's biological child but something more mysterious God swooped in the womb. Let's wipe it out then - but we should consider…
05 Apr 2012, 18:26
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Lil Abner, played by Peter Palmer, born 1931, the real age of our narrator, is a notorious oaf, and I thought this was interesting, from World Wide Words. "An oaf is a stupid, boo…
05 Apr 2012, 17:11
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So in light of Peter Palmer aka Lil Abner being born in 1931 the same year as Gene Wolfe, I favor the "swapped at birth" scenario where someone has removed Peter Palmer from his or…
05 Apr 2012, 16:52
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I was thinking about how the Peter Palmieri showed up in 1931 when Maria Palmieri was born, but Pete Palmer was supposedly in the 4th grade in 1944 but not in the picture. So i pu…
05 Apr 2012, 16:45
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Yes Gerry, my summary sections are intended to be verbatim and as "objective" as possible for those who cannot or do not have time to re-read the entire story, then I go into comme…
05 Apr 2012, 15:03
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The Changeling Finally — we have arrived at Wolfe! Just as “The Tell Tale Heart” or “The Cask of Amontillado” could be considered “typical” Poe, “The Changeling” is the very firs…
05 Apr 2012, 05:26
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It is clear that Finch cuts the crap out of the troll from Garth's account, but the point does not ever "tell", matchiing the details of his spirit battle: "When I woke again the …
05 Apr 2012, 02:00
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The troll is wounded, it just wasn't pierced with the tip of a sword. I think to ignore that these guys have to band together to beat him and defeat the "I" ego theme would be vio…
04 Apr 2012, 22:54
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The blood is of course the traki's. It is on Finch because Finch used the sword to kill him. There are slashing wounds on the troll but no "piercing" stabs because the tip of the…
04 Apr 2012, 15:32
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Thanks for the comments Ed. There is a point where Finch WANTS to kill the traki, but knows that he cannot (previously he mused on what "ego": "my body seemed a cast, an almost in…
04 Apr 2012, 03:36
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I was driving to work this morning (I drive 140 miles every day, so you are going to here this preface a lot) thinking about these stories and the ones coming up in 1970 when the p…
03 Apr 2012, 15:08
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on second thought, maybe some of the thoughts about "obeying" and duty and order in Severian's philosophy, but I just don't think it is definitely an outgrowth of Aurelius, but the…
02 Apr 2012, 17:35
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A while ago. eh, they are quoted sometimes directly in the Chrasmological Writings so I'm sure Wolfe has read them, but I don't think they relate much to the actual cosmology of N…
02 Apr 2012, 17:30
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So far the short stories (except The Green Wall Said) have not been excessively ambiguous. 1970 is looming, a year in which Wolfe published Operation Ares and 13 stories, and the …
02 Apr 2012, 02:16
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House of Ancestors This first appeared in IF in 1968. It is on pages 150-177 in Endangered Species. SUMMARY: A rather stern fellow named Joe shows up to the world fair of 1991 o…
02 Apr 2012, 02:07
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There is one incomplete sentence in previous super long post, where the troll gives Finch the option to leave, but Finch "would rather stay with his friend". I forgot to finish …
01 Apr 2012, 18:58
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Trip, Trap Note the semiotic slip of one letter in the title — it is the vowel that creates completely different words though the surrounding letters are the same. Thus it is tha…
01 Apr 2012, 18:19
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Hopefully we have gotten something out of the Young Wolfe posts so far; I plan on continuing but the pace for some of these stories written in the early 70s may slow down, because …
01 Apr 2012, 05:58
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The Last Casualty of Cambrai Just as the previous tale, this was an unpublished piece that first saw the light of day in 1992?s Young Wolfe. SUMMARY: Once again, the gruff and r…
01 Apr 2012, 00:58
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Yes Daniel, I mean spritual in the second, vague sense you refer to, and by dualism I mean the idea body and spirit are both "real" - and sometimes independent, sometimes operating…
31 Mar 2012, 23:17
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As I was finishing up the commentary for the rather straightforward "The Largest Luger", I just wanted to mention exactly where I think Wright oversimplified in "Attending Daedalus…
31 Mar 2012, 19:25
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The Largest Luger This Wolfe story was not published until 1992 in Young Wolfe as a previously unpublished story Wolfe had sitting around, but its style and theme really do make …
31 Mar 2012, 19:08
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Larry Santoro has an audio of Wolfe's acceptance speech at 15 minutes in his latest Tales To Terrify! Awesome, it's really funny and entertaining and it is cool to hear Wolfe's vo…
30 Mar 2012, 16:06
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Yes, I agree, especially looking back now?to a time without easy access to the internet; it is pretty easy for me to look up the terms in a general database and find references - G…
30 Mar 2012, 13:20
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Volksweapon The next three stories we will do are very similar, and so I feel like we should complete? Volksweapon?, “The Largest Luger”, and “The Last Casualty of Cambrai” before…
30 Mar 2012, 01:58
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Yes, and KNOWING what the names actually mean instead of just having the scientific knowledge is key, so I think the totality of human knowledge is shown to be invaluable to surviv…
30 Mar 2012, 00:17
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