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Tania Ruiz, Thanks for your comments on my notes re the constellations of THE FIFTH HEAD OF CERBERUS. Re: the pinkness of light from the star. Right, there is no such thing (in …
26 May 1998, 05:14
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Robert Borski, Hey, fwiw =I= like it. Gee, all this twinning has got me to thinking that 5HC has a lot of Gilgamesh to it, which I'd never thought of before. (Okay, this is prob…
20 May 1998, 23:38
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Craig Christensen, Re: little banished Tzadiel at Brookside the Madregot. Why was she banished? For being naughty, somehow. It seems that after she has proven herself reformed …
20 May 1998, 19:15
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Robert Borski, Re: quote about VRT as 16 local years old, but looking older. Great! Okay, so a 30 hour day might be a tad long, but good enough for the moment. Re: the "R" of VR…
20 May 1998, 05:31
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Robert Borski, Okay, so far here's what I've got: Assuming a 30 hour day and given the 402 day year, we have a local year 1.37577 times as long as a Terran year. (Any recollecti…
19 May 1998, 21:42
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Hey, Cerberus-heads! Let's find the star of Saint Anne/Saint Croix! Let's work out the other planets in the system! The clues I have at hand are few: 1. We are told that Marsh…
18 May 1998, 20:33
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Spectacled bear, "Pure keg" as "un-doctored beer" sounds pretty convincing. Thanks! (If anybody can find it in a dictionary, that would be even better.) =mantis=…
17 May 1998, 22:51
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"Many will seek to flee by that road if the pelagic argosy sights land" is said by the old autarch at the last line of (II, ch. 20). Responding to Severian's "Then you can show me…
16 May 1998, 22:51
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alga, Even more disturbing is the thought that Severian as the Sleeper has taken the throne of Abaia as his own. "Yesterday's Hero becomes Tomorrow's Tyrant" deal. Especially if…
16 May 1998, 20:38
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Brain, Yay! Stuff looks =great=! "Scrape out" and "Sweatin' ken," excellent! Re: "Card in a cart," this is used in regard to Orchid's proposal for Silk to have recreational sex…
16 May 1998, 00:05
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In developing my theories of Urth power grid monopolies, I also tied-in that odd detail of Urth's utter lack of vulcanism (yet another one of those flags suggesting deep futurity, …
15 May 1998, 20:20
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Rostrum, Oops, I mixed two famished Severian moments. The hunger beyond the lake happens between books III and IV, ending when Severian finds the dead man who will become Miles (…
15 May 1998, 14:11
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While the white fountain is heading towards Urth as some kind of probability wave function in TBOTNS, Apheta's comment, if taken at 100% veracity (granted: how often do we grant th…
15 May 1998, 00:04
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vizcacha (and anybody else following this "how can the white fountain power the Claw in BOTNS when it doesn't exist yet, except possibly as much as a half dead/half live cat?" inv…
14 May 1998, 01:10
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Here's another curious detail to ponder in the "hard science" department. The Wall of Nessus is said to be leagues (plural) tall, where each league is three miles. That is some s…
13 May 1998, 01:10
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alga, Re: seven Severians as ten or more. Yes, of course you are right. And you know I know--I've listed the probable resurrections (under "Miracles," AE& p. 13) including eight …
12 May 1998, 05:43
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Re: no monsters at the gate of Nessus, that this is standard operating procedure, firing military hardware into the crowd just to keep them off the road, when will they ever learn,…
12 May 1998, 02:31
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What a lot of activity has been going on. Well, I've been away. And in my awayness I found opportunity to skim through the Illuminatus! trilogy, because I was fairly certain that…
12 May 1998, 02:30
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Sev1: ProtoS, proto-Severian, Severian the Cruel. Goes to Thrax, War, gains Throne, goes to Yesod, comes back. Sev2: the putative Narrator, the optimized Severian. Gets Claw; me…
02 May 1998, 20:22
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It really doesn't take excessive imagination to read TBOTNS as a historical/psychological realistic novel about "the psychological breakdown and flight into fantasy by a young infa…
02 May 1998, 17:28
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William Ansley, "The New York Review of Science Fiction" ran a detailed timeline (by William Schuyler, Jr.) along with Damien Broderick's PEACE piece a while back (IIRC). Check t…
02 May 1998, 15:45
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Christopher, FWIW I have hardcopy from July 1991 where I used the terms Sev1 and Sev2 (as well as Sev3, Sev4, and Sev5). Apparently I didn't use the term ProtoS until sometime la…
02 May 1998, 03:17
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Mark Millman, Sure, the night sky of Urth could be utterly alien to us. Severian knows precious little about constellations--alone in the mountains, he makes up a few: "amphisbae…
02 May 1998, 01:04
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FunkMonkey, The terraforming and renaming story is told by Thea (II, ch. 10). The presumed Xanthic Continent is a bit more dicey. The Xanthic Lands are a group of a couple hundr…
02 May 1998, 01:04
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vizcacha, We are on the same page here. Yes, even with the Claw and all bells and whistles, Severian can still blow it. Sometimes he does right all on his own, like refusing to …
02 May 1998, 01:04
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Reply: Item #5001329 from URTH at LISTS.BEST.COM@INET01# Seems to me, fwiw, etc. ad naseum, that the exultants are from offworld, probably from outsystem. They grow tall because of…
01 May 1998, 19:33
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Reply: Item #7020139 from URTH at LISTS.BEST.COM@INET# Dan, FWIW, I first encountered the Venus de Milo story (modern forgery, arms were actually broken off to increase saleability…
01 May 1998, 13:34
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Reply: Item #9909015 from URTH at LISTS.BEST.COM@INET01# Christopher Culver, "Korea was just mentioned a few pages before [before Jonas started speaking a foreign language]." Real…
01 May 1998, 03:17
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Reply: Item #2628447 from URTH at LISTS.BEST.COM@INET00# FunkMonkey, Welcome. Well, now we know where you stand on the Jonas issue. But how do you interpret and/or resolve the Mi…
30 Apr 1998, 23:32
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Then again, the first time I read PEACE I thought of it as being a lot like SLAUGHTERHOUSE FIVE; that Weir was "unstuck in time" like Billy Pilgrim of that novel; but that PEACE ha…
22 Apr 1998, 16:22
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Paul and John, Not that this means anything (file under "Free Association"), but this detail of a desk reminded me at first reading of a similar scene in an early Heinlein novel-…
22 Apr 1998, 16:00
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Reply: Item #3038987 from URTH at LISTS.BEST.COM@INET00# Dan, Re: Funes from FICCIONES, right--that's another Borges/BOTNS touchstone (re: Severian's memory). And folks often reme…
21 Apr 1998, 19:12
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Reply: Item #2870989 from URTH at LISTS.BEST.COM@INET# Xury, FWIW & IMHO, all of THE BOOK OF IMAGINARY BEINGS is essential reading for those more than superficially interested in T…
16 Apr 1998, 22:12
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Reply: Item #1149260 from URTH at LISTS.BEST.COM@INET02# Mark Millman, FWIW I agree with you 100 percent. Wolfe uses (or seems to use) "aquastor" and "eidolon" interchangeably. H…
16 Apr 1998, 22:03
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Reply: Item #0284733 from URTH at LISTS.BEST.COM@INET03# Re: teratoid sign as radiation warning symbol. Good guess, vizcacha--my memory of possible radiation warning symbols puts t…
30 Mar 1998, 16:06
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Reply: Item #7497439 from URTH at LISTS.BEST.COM@INET00# raster, Re: Algedonic, whoops. I meant that "Latinate" (or more properly "Greco-Latinate") names are officialese titles fo…
30 Mar 1998, 02:40
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Reply: Item #2316394 from URTH at LISTS.BEST.COM@INET# raster, Right re: Dux Caesidius. He died the year before Severian returned to Urth (and there was that dead assassin in the …
28 Mar 1998, 19:21
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Reply: Item #3679491 from URTH at LISTS.BEST.COM@INET01# Hello Damien Broderick, and welcome aboard! Way back when (deep in the archives?), I was arguing that the world of "Trackin…
27 Mar 1998, 02:53
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Reply: Item #1901496 from URTH at LISTS.BEST.COM@INET03# Dan, FWIW: The alcalde of Saltus also "wore his yellow gown of office and his gold chain" (II, ch. 4). The Old Autarch we…
25 Mar 1998, 22:18
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Reply: Item #3591065 from URTH at LISTS.BEST.COM@INET02# Tony Elis, You're right, of course--I'm making the whole thing up. There's so much tangled here, I hardly know where to st…
18 Mar 1998, 06:28
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Reply: Item #1807114 from URTH at LISTS.BEST.COM@INET02# Christopher, By writing that Hethor's most information rich (including links to our time rather than Severian's time) speec…
17 Mar 1998, 04:48
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Reply: Item #1015407 from URTH at LISTS.BEST.COM@INET# The text says that the prisoners (most but not all--don't forget Lomer and Nicarete) are descendents of crew of a starship tha…
14 Mar 1998, 05:36
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Nutria, The entire Commonwealth as "Delaware-size or smaller" provides a geographical topological hydrological latitudinal paradox. All together, it is a charming idea but I stre…
12 Mar 1998, 15:03
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Reply: Item #1421618 from URTH at LISTS.BEST.COM@INET# Releasing the floodgates does =not= kill the prisoners of the vincula (not "jacal," that's the hut on the cliff near the wall …
12 Mar 1998, 04:20
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Having rounded up all the words and definitions (for LS-2) that we were able to come up with, I've still managed to misplace the page citations for all the Trivigaunte and Flier te…
01 Mar 1998, 19:18
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Reply: Item #2256475 from URTH at LISTS.BEST.COM@INET# vizcacha, Re: "Cutthoat as a dogman"--it works for me (for whatever that's worth). =mantis=…
01 Mar 1998, 17:51
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Reply: Item #7040617 from URTH at LISTS.BEST.COM@INET# (Entry from GENE WOLFE: URTH-MAN EXTRAORDINARY by Phil Stephensen-Payne and Gordon Benson, Jr.) K41. "THE FIFTH HEAD OF CERBE…
28 Feb 1998, 18:17
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Reply: Item #0242743 from URTH at LISTS.BEST.COM@INET01# Tony Ellis, Re: the shortcut Sev and Gunnie enter from Yesod (worldship interior, to be exact) to get to an Urthbound ship …
18 Feb 1998, 15:56
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Reply: Item #8489663 from URTH at LISTS.BEST.COM@INET02# Kieran, Re: entering the circle, the "circle" I allude to is the circle of magic mirrors looking at each other. Octogon, w…
18 Feb 1998, 03:35
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Reply: Item #0858372 from URTH at LISTS.BEST.COM@INET# Kieran Cleary, Re: the endpoint destination from magic mirrors in Briah, in "The Cat" we are told creatures which enter the c…
17 Feb 1998, 15:56
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