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Hmmm. This (?) answers the question: Typhon and Baldanders are the same person? I must have slept through that. =mantis=…
07 Sep 2003, 03:10
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No, no -- I forgot to mention the corn meal gruel at the shepherd's shelter between Mount Typhon and Lake Diuturna. Now I'm obsessive. =mantis=…
22 Aug 2003, 02:17
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Ahem. In Long Sun I remember the fried green tomatoes (Silk salivating over) and watercress sandwiches (that Hyacinth would never eat, remembering the drudgery of harvesting water…
21 Aug 2003, 16:23
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I guess I'm just a sucker for Thea's story about Skuld as "the world of the future." <g> It does seem to me that Skuld would be the planet in the solar system most likely to be in…
18 Aug 2003, 17:41
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I will answer the last part: PLAN[E]T ENGINEERING is a book published by NESFA Press in 1984. The first essay in this book is "Books in THE BOOK OF THE NEW SUN." That is the essa…
08 Aug 2003, 15:03
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to little Severian, perhaps around Lake Diuturna, where both <italic>Terminus Est</italic> and the Claw are destroyed? Citadel, chapter 34: Severian still has it when he returns t…
07 Aug 2003, 16:41
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Wasn't someone mentioning fairly recently that we don't know what happened during Severian's Year as an Ascian Slave? One of the few things we know about that period of Severian's…
21 Jul 2003, 21:26
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Now hang on, there: the unalterable reason why Malrubius was chosen over Palaemon is the fact that Malrubius is already dead, in the timeframe, and a logical candidate for a ghost …
18 Jul 2003, 19:36
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I can go along with this, because I think you are saying that Severian saw a ghost-like Silk (as shown in BOTSS) and later in TBOTNS saw a ghost which he reported as being that of …
18 Jul 2003, 16:46
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Who is that shadowy man striding always 15 years ahead of you? It is my future self, sending me hints for threading the maze that is being built up around me. In TBOTNS, narrativ…
09 Jul 2003, 14:52
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Yes, I covered this in "Additions, Errata, &cetera" volumes 2 and 3. There is definitely a body for "sailor Severian" on the ship Tzadkiel, and one for Apu-Punchau in the Age of M…
09 Jul 2003, 14:28
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Because I have a hard time envisioning the Claw as either a dumb object or as a mere "focus" for Severian's current/latent power, I tend to think (insist) that the Claw is the (hol…
06 Jul 2003, 03:19
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Yes, I did think of "The New Prime," which is an interesting story for a number of reasons. But as you say, the worlds are very sketchy -- this is not detrimental to the story at …
28 Jun 2003, 15:52
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Normally I would agree with you, except for three points: 1) the categorical distinctions are made professionally for publication and (subsequently) awards, even if we readers don…
27 Jun 2003, 19:54
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No, there is only the one piece from Wolfe, an excerpt from KNIGHT. =mantis=…
25 Jun 2003, 18:08
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Sorry, no diabusing from me! I'll just spur you on -- you haven't gone far enough yet! (Well except for the Whorl lifting off from Urth; I'll agree that seems unlikely.) Fact: t…
19 Jun 2003, 18:13
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Normally I'd agree with you about ignoring all that stuff, but for the odd detail that the Japanese Army had occupied the island during the Pacific War. I don't know if this tidbi…
10 May 2003, 18:36
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Welcome, Oren. The characters at this point are: Roche (Drotte's lieutenant), Drotte (the captain of the apprentices), Eata (the littlest one), and Severian. The sequence goes li…
24 Apr 2003, 00:34
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Writing about the Z and Y series, Jeff Wilson asked: More like yours is the annonymous ancestor to all the others, the first to escape the "to burn box"! (I really was going to d…
13 Apr 2003, 14:58
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I do not know about the availabilty of standard copies, but I've been auctioning-off "less-than-perfect" copies on eBay. (Each one has all the pages, is legible, and all that. It…
12 Apr 2003, 19:44
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The story is in THE ISLAND OF DOCTOR DEATH AND OTHER STORIES AND OTHER STORIES. IIRC the story has been covered a bit here in the past -- you might check the archives and see what…
17 Mar 2003, 15:01
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I googled "Marea" before, if I didn't mention it, and one of the interesting things that bubbled up was a town of that name, in ancient Egypt. Located, iirc, to the west of the Ni…
09 Mar 2003, 18:24
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To begin, I did not intend to badger Adam Stephanides at all, and if that is how it was taken by anybody then I apologize. Of course I thought of these examples, too, but I though…
19 Feb 2003, 22:40
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Good guess, but I think "Straw" (collected in STOREYS FROM THE OLD HOTEL) is the one in question. =mantis=…
19 Feb 2003, 16:35
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Because I don't know what you are "pointing at" when you say "genuine love." If I don't know this, then my approach is limited to a shrug. I cannot comment if I do not grasp the …
18 Feb 2003, 15:37
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It would be easier (or should that be "possible"?) to approach this if I had some examples of a few authors inside and outside of genre who write fiction about love (monolithic or …
16 Feb 2003, 22:46
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No bells ringing for me, aside from a progression from early Winter into mid-Spring. <LOL> Yeah, that restaurant-between-worlds plays hell with employee break-times, too. Step o…
12 Feb 2003, 22:01
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No, not at all. Thanks for raising the point -- bringing it up -- drawing it to our attention. For all I know "Attis" might have a similar etymology (aside from association). Sp…
10 Feb 2003, 16:25
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Yep. If this is "The Planet of the Apes," then where are all the "apes"?! Could it be that the capital city of the nation has a high concentration of a numerical minority? Oops, …
31 Jan 2003, 17:25
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BTW I took a look at the Captain Billy's Whiz Bang ref, Adam. Pretty neat stuff. Yes. In my defense I would say that we are now arguing over what the bill claims to be about ver…
30 Jan 2003, 21:59
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Once again I find my recent investigations put me on the same page with Roy. I agree with everything (Klamm is a visitor; Klamm is Lara's ex-lover, and he isn't dead; Klamm is in …
27 Jan 2003, 18:41
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I can go along with that, but I'd add that there must be plenty of Otherworld women who do not want children, either because they do not want to commit murder or simply because the…
26 Jan 2003, 18:49
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Whoops, we've lost track of the point that the men are marrying for love, the women are marrying for socially sanctioned reproduction. (Then again, maybe I'm wrong on that supposi…
26 Jan 2003, 16:25
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Sure. But since I've been tracing the copper/electric/technology thread of Lara in TAD, it is perhaps too easy for me to say that Lara, the White Goddess, is also something of a g…
21 Jan 2003, 17:24
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Thank you, Andrew Bollen, for the research on the Chrasmological Writings! Good job! It reminds me of Charles Dye's work in April 1997, where he traced the influence of Marcus Aur…
30 Dec 2002, 19:56
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If you decide to read THERE ARE DOORS then let me know: I'll reread it and you will have someone to talk to. (It is next on my list, anyway.) =mantis=…
19 Dec 2002, 20:47
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I should mention that a lot of inspiration for the Liberty Four came from Mrs. Baker's comment to Robin Valor: "But look at the way we do here. We don't try to change the way thi…
17 Dec 2002, 02:12
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My timeline fragment shows that the 53-year-old deserter did =not= go straight back to 1803, he went back to 1807. Maybe he did this to acclimitize himself to 19th century life be…
13 Dec 2002, 01:07
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When Buck Whitten brought his team from August 20, 1942 to November 5, 1982, they came in the B-17. Presumably the gizmo on High Country can be set to project outside of the High …
11 Dec 2002, 23:01
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Good points. I took the pinkness of her fingers as pointers to her pale skin color. Her pink and black clothes were worn, iirc, when she was "off duty." In any event, I believe …
11 Dec 2002, 17:28
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I strongly disagree: not mentioning it upfront was what made it a back-alley ambush of a housewife by an academician. In the animal kingdom this is predatory camouflage. I think …
04 Dec 2002, 17:08
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This is another piece of what I was writing about before, where I wondered how Whitten could be vague about his own desertion: But I think that in the example Roy is looking at, i…
03 Dec 2002, 13:41
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Um, no, Jerry . . . when the Whorl is at rest, the Whorl people experience time at the same flow as people on Urth or Blue or Green, but at near-light speeds subjective time (the p…
02 Dec 2002, 22:58
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Hmmm. The text is pretty clear that the Objective Time has been 1000 years (LS3, ch 6, p. 242) and the Subjective Time has been 332 years (date on letters). If we assume that the…
02 Dec 2002, 20:59
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Blattid wants new numbers. Okay! A 10:1 time dilation suggests somewhere between .98 c and .99 c, I reckon. OBJECTIVE SUBJECTIVE LEG RATE TIME T…
02 Dec 2002, 18:46
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Right, there is a lot packed into that tiny epilogue. 1. The nature of the house: what year is it in that final kitchen? If it is 1982, then Ben Free has not died yet! Talk abo…
29 Nov 2002, 22:54
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The OED has nothing; THE NEW YORK TIMES EVERYDAT DICTIONARY OF MISUNDERSTOOD, MISUSED, AND MISPRONOUNCED WORDS has nothing; MRS. BYRNE'S DICTIONARY has "pinacotheca" [note spelling…
07 Nov 2002, 14:39
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Welcome Kipling! Glad you found the place! =mantis=…
02 Nov 2002, 17:39
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"Edogawa Ranpo" was the pen name of a Japanese author (the name itself is a not-really-disguised "Japanification" of "Edgar Allan Poe"). I associate Edogawa Ranpo's work with Japa…
31 Oct 2002, 17:28
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That is not the verbatim of the diary text. If you prefer, it is the image of the "story behind the veiled text" that Weer imagines as Kate reads it, but I think it is too close i…
31 Oct 2002, 14:53
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