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So wish I could be there. Look forward to reports.…
14 Nov 2009, 02:58
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The initial open quote on " "Cues " is there because it's, well, the opening of a line of dialog: "Cues?" the young (not really so young any more) man said. "I'm afraid I don't un…
12 Sep 2009, 03:01
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Glad to see some activity on the urth list. In the interest of possibly stirring up a little more: I Lolita for the first time a few months ago -- Amazing!!! (But difficult; I r…
11 Sep 2009, 22:57
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For the well heeled Wolfean: http://ncane.com/1pom…
21 May 2009, 16:43
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Like some kind of mailing list where we could talk about Gene Wolfe?…
02 May 2009, 07:55
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Yeah, I couldn't find you guys either. I think you're on facebook in an alternate timeline or something.…
02 May 2009, 06:25
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That's chapter 8, at least in my book. But I don't think that one side of the glass blocks light. I suspect you may be thinking of Crowley's Engine Summer.…
30 Apr 2009, 04:00
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I don't understand. Is Tor on facebook somehow? I can't seem to find them or these posts.…
29 Apr 2009, 16:55
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Yeah, for me, the take-away from the argument about corn polyploidy (or whatever it's called) is not that the Neighbors have double the normal chromosomes and therefore double the …
29 Apr 2009, 03:40
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It is equally possible that the inhumi on Green are vine-like, not because they evolved from vines, but because they feed on the trees on Green, thus becoming more like them.…
29 Apr 2009, 02:51
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Apropos of the question of the necessity of wings on a heraldic representation of anything "volant," I find this quote in Soldier of the Mist (62): "[H]er oars, with the foam on th…
27 Apr 2009, 00:58
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Blasphemer!…
17 Apr 2009, 00:26
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Do we know when Oreb(?) became Scylla? He was no ordinary talking night chough in Long Sun. Is there any reason to think he wasn't possessed by Scylla from the beginning?…
17 Apr 2009, 00:23
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Is this some sort of modish spelling of "wanker"?…
14 Apr 2009, 19:04
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I call this hypothetical and much-desired-by-me book The Clawmarillion.…
03 Apr 2009, 17:46
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Aren't they gods? I've always wondered whether the many-armedness of the Neighbors was meant, in part, to allude to the representation of Hindu deities, especially in light of the…
20 Mar 2009, 15:12
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You actually read that book all the way to the end? Ugh.…
20 Mar 2009, 02:43
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It does actually sound insectoid. Do we have anywhere a description of greenbuck hair? What about Babbie's hair?…
19 Mar 2009, 18:14
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I've been puzzling over this passage in Claw, Jonas and Severian are in the Antechamber and Jonas is wigging out. I don't know the history Jonas is talking about, and I wonder if …
19 Mar 2009, 15:30
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Yeah, but i seem to remember a much more succinct post on the old list about the thematic argument, without so much of the hard-sf defense of the idea, which does less to convince …
19 Mar 2009, 02:06
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The best argument that Urth is Blue (or Green), to my mind, is the thematic argument, which Marc made long ago, that The Book of the Short Sun is all about returning. I can't seem…
19 Mar 2009, 01:46
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I saw it too. I noticed that here are little postscripts by Wolfe for each story, so there is a reason to buy it, even if you have every story contained in one collection or anoth…
16 Mar 2009, 23:57
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This is my assumption too. "Ph'nglui mglw'nafh C'thulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn."…
16 Mar 2009, 23:53
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See what?…
16 Mar 2009, 23:48
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Heh, no, no trucks in Short Sun. Also, I reread the story and near the beginning the other boy is eating bread and soup, and there's no way he's faking. The inhumi don't eat food…
06 Mar 2009, 01:52
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Mike, 1) I have always assumed that this story takes place in the same universe as _The Book of the Long Sun_ and _The Book of the Short Sun_. Since Bin sees blue sky and talks a…
04 Mar 2009, 00:12
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And her rod looks like the Rod of Asclepius.…
06 Feb 2009, 05:16
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I agree that this is the only way there could be shadows, but I think it's pretty clear that when Wolfe talks about "valleys [that] run parallel to the long sun," he's imagining a …
28 Jan 2009, 03:36
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Yes, under the circumstances I laid out. The trouble is, a bowl isn't really the same thing as a valley. It's more like a crater. Wolfe says in the interview, "Where is the diff…
28 Jan 2009, 02:06
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I'm having trouble seeing how the excerpts quoted indicate that the shade is a spiral, and trouble envisioning how a spiral shade would ever provide night anywhere in the Whorl, si…
27 Jan 2009, 20:30
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I can make a drawing, but I'm afraid I don't have the means to create and post a digital image. (I'm posting this email using some rocks and coke bottle I found.) If there's genu…
27 Jan 2009, 18:25
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Vampires hurtling through the void of space to reach their victims is super awesome. So I think it's true.…
27 Jan 2009, 16:28
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No, each valley -- each bowl would be filled with shadow. The topography of the inner surface of the Whorl would have to be much more eccentric than I had ever pictured it.…
26 Jan 2009, 15:41
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The text in question is: "Beyond the black streak of the shade, the skylands had been as bright as Silk [...] had ever seen them[...]. Here were nameless mountains filling inviola…
26 Jan 2009, 06:06
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Cerainly "up" is always toward the axis of the spin, regardless of whether anything is tilted. Presumably the long sun is aligned along that axis, no? But the point regarding sha…
24 Jan 2009, 22:40
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I think that must be Marc Arimini's essay: http://www.urth.org/whorlmap/chras-writers/marc-aramini1.htm Much to ponder there. No peeking, Witz. Also, I have compiled as many tr…
22 Jan 2009, 16:44
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I don't know if it had been revealed previously, but a Neighbor confirms that the Whorl is a "hollowed-out asteroid," (In Green's Jungles 381).…
22 Jan 2009, 00:37
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I was confusing the issues. Point 1: In relation to the idea that the shade might be pulses of dark along the axis of the long sun: This would be insufficient to cast the shadow t…
22 Jan 2009, 00:20
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Some people seem to have a very different idea of what the long sun and its shade are than I do. To my mind, the questioner is correct to ask how there could be shadows in the sky…
21 Jan 2009, 22:55
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I seem to remember Silk being considerably younger than Hugh Laurie when he was first Cald?. Someone young, slender, and very fair. Take your image of Severian and create a photo…
15 Jan 2009, 00:15
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I don't have a good answer for you. I don't think the "Gene Wolfe" persona plays a very large role in TBotNS. I think that, as you say, he just gave up the pretense. Probably be…
02 Jan 2009, 05:22
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Yes, homage, I think. It might even be winkingly self-referential. Wolfe is laying his "cloak" -- TBotNS -- over the "worn counterpane" of Melville's Moby Dick.…
30 Dec 2008, 19:12
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This scene reminds me of Moby Dick, where Ishmael has to sleep next to Queequeg at the inn. Looking back at Moby Dick, I feel sure Wolfe is referring to Melville here. Melville m…
30 Dec 2008, 02:00
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Actually, Witz, given your reaction to Wolfe and PKD, I wonder what Vance will have to offer you. Vance's artistry seems to operate almost entirely at the level of style. Have yo…
17 Dec 2008, 17:40
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I think the main reason Wolfe didn't evacuate Urth rather than flooding it, other than linking the story to other world-flood myths, especially Genesis, is that an airlift really s…
07 Dec 2008, 01:20
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Why so snarky? I said no such thing. I don't object to counting years. It's just that if one tries to calculate the age of Urth by the decay of ruins or by geologic change, one i…
01 Dec 2008, 21:18
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Again, this is the mistake of reading Wolfe as hard-sf. Wolfe's future doesn't have to be consistent with scientific theories of geology or plate tectonics. When he wants to conn…
01 Dec 2008, 20:35
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The many-limbedness of the Neighbors, their worship of the Mother goddess, and the prominence of Gaon and the Hindi-named gaonese (who seem to worship a benevolent Kali-esque aspec…
27 Nov 2008, 22:07
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A crab canon is a palindromic contrapuntal composition in which a dux (leading voice) is placed against a comes (following voice) which is the retrograde of the dux. In other word…
10 Nov 2008, 17:30
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I suppose it would have to be a crab canon. :)…
09 Nov 2008, 16:41
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