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Alga started it, Nutria compounded it: This was actually =Adam= who wrote that (and we thank him for using those citations all over the place). Adam also argues against my numero…
02 May 2000, 13:59
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Away for three days and I've fallen far behind! Adam's Questions Those are good functions. I'd also add the "red herring" of technical details (like the severe mass restriction,…
02 May 2000, 09:48
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Another problem with using a highly eliptical orbit (better known as orbital eccentricity) on a scale using significant fractions of an Astronomical Unit is that the world will hav…
05 Apr 2000, 13:48
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Adam Stephanides and Kieran Mullen, I am interested in your notes--of course you know I've been puzzling over the orbital details, too. Lately I've been thinking along the lines …
03 Apr 2000, 15:54
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Indeed, verily. "This world, the most ancient of all, I made my capital. That was an error, because I lingered too long when disaster came. By the time I would have escaped, esc…
15 Mar 2000, 10:08
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Oops, right! =mantis=…
14 Mar 2000, 07:07
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My impression: I had thoughts along the same lines. It is much more satisfying to think of this story as something like what you are saying, rather than taking it as a "Planet of …
12 Mar 2000, 13:33
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Well remembered Talarican! Here is the 1976 Ace version (p. 95 in both the $1.75 and $2.50 version <g>): "That which you call nothing is what holds all things apart. When it is …
12 Mar 2000, 10:53
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Dan Rabin quotes and writes: Okay, I'm writing it down this time! Same place, "Section P: Textual Variations." (I still think that "Going to the Beach" is a favorite of mine, bu…
09 Mar 2000, 07:04
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"The Haunted Bordinghouse," spoilers alert. Okay, so we have this house, and each face opens onto a different era. STYLE ODD NOTES 1. Neo-Classical boy climbing…
08 Mar 2000, 13:34
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I honestly can't see much of a link between "THB" and THE NAME OF THE ROSE. THE NAME OF THE ROSE and LITTLE, BIG spoilers to follow: In LITTLE, BIG the house that is central …
08 Mar 2000, 10:11
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Right, well took me long enough to get a copy, didn't it? And then other things got in the way. Well, what's the rush anyway? I had already read/collected all but six of the sto…
07 Mar 2000, 15:11
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The Gever is a mighty, continent-draining river on Jack Vance's Durdane. I thought everybody knew that. =mantis= *This is WHORL, for discussion of Gene Wolfe's Book of the Lon…
07 Mar 2000, 14:00
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(video feed from any one of countless episodes of "The Simpsons":) Dr. Nick Riviera: "Hi-yah, ev-ery-body!" Studio audience: "Hi, Doctor Nick!" Not until you actually read the b…
07 Mar 2000, 13:40
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=Recent items about Wolfe-fiction= "The New York Review of Science Fiction (#138)" (Feb. 2000) has: "Masks of the Father: Paternity in Gene Wolfe's BOOK OF THE NEW SUN" by Robert…
22 Feb 2000, 09:35
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Eek, the Borges chastisement continues! In "Additions, Errata, &cetera (volume I)" (1995): BORGES, JORGE LUIS some mirrors, books, Kabbalah, paradoxes, and mystery. See "Last Ni…
17 Feb 2000, 07:30
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Okey-dokey. (THE DEVIL IN THE FOREST as realistic and contemporary? <g>) So I would posit that you like "The Ziggurat" better than most of the contemporary lot because you sense t…
09 Feb 2000, 09:46
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Now alga, granted you don't like PEACE, nor FREE LIVE FREE, nor THERE ARE DOORS, nor PANDORA, nor CASTLEVIEW. But for the purposes of our calibrating your tastes, where does such …
08 Feb 2000, 13:31
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SPOILER WARNINGS (I guess) Speaking of guesses, I guess a lot of the various readings have to do with two key elements: 1) How Emory is perceived by reader (as basically heroic; …
30 Jan 2000, 11:48
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Well! I don't sense much difference between the Kessel (was it?) reading and the Swanwick reading I was talking about: both use "Maximum Delusion" mode. That is, all the skiffy st…
28 Jan 2000, 14:19
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"From almost the first page of FREE LIVE FREE, Wolfe makes it clear that his fable can be read as a loose fantasia on the 1939 film version of THE WIZARD OF OZ. When the four fina…
27 Jan 2000, 15:26
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IIRC, it was none other than luminary Michael Swanwick, whose reading of "The Ziggurat" included a significant nod to the sense of incest at the end . . . SPOILERS TO FOLLOW …
21 Jan 2000, 13:25
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Step one: even typos have entries, if only to note that they are typos ("Thadelaeus and Thalelaeus" in AE&2). Step two: while I agree that a typo is involved, unlike your(100-perc…
18 Dec 1999, 16:58
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I continue to toy with this Urth story (collected in ENDANGERED SPECIES). It was the first published work to mention Urth, yet is not an extract from TBOTNS (as two other magazine…
17 Dec 1999, 07:52
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Right--Julia Ecklar (sp?) (Forgive me, I'm still operating on fritzy brain alone) wrote and recorded the two songs. Another note: the other story title is "The Sailor Who Sailed A…
13 Dec 1999, 16:14
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Some FAQs can be relatively debate free--the struggle 'round here has been due to the fact that the subject matter is "Mysteries" rather than, say, Publishing Facts. Q: Where can …
13 Dec 1999, 14:26
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Sure, it is fine with me if the list of mysteries in LEXICON URTHUS is used by itself or with another list as the seed for a FAQ or a combined list of mysteries. Around here we ha…
02 Dec 1999, 15:33
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Ron H-E, Re: GURPS New Sun release date. Without holding anything back, all I can tell you is this: it went to the printer some weeks ago, as fitting with a December release; it …
02 Dec 1999, 13:15
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. . . which reminds me: I collect slower-than-light stardrives. I recently ran into something I haven't seen before, and I'll post a few notes about it in the hopes that someone e…
02 Dec 1999, 13:00
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The white holes might stand up to some kind of historical science-lens examination, but the sailing starships have no such fig leaf! Because of a superficial similarity to the 196…
02 Dec 1999, 11:00
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Right, I understand that (cf. "Wolfe's impishness" in "BaD sCienCe" post), so I should have written "science of its day" as "science of the day before its day." But the clunky phr…
02 Dec 1999, 08:30
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So Roy, are you saying that the resurrection at the Convulsor was accomplished via the more usual white fountain energy rather than any other source? I can't really tell from your…
02 Dec 1999, 07:40
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I'm trying to think of a major science fiction work in which the sensawunder science has held up . . . I keep thinking of poor old Larry Niven, who was about as close to the non-c…
01 Dec 1999, 21:07
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Well now, I didn't mean to imply that there was no cooling going on at all! Just trying to de-couple visible light from heating light; to allow a habitable zone to exist where cano…
01 Dec 1999, 13:06
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Maybe we should just go ahead and call the Old Sun, aka the dying sun, an "infrared star." This because: it ain't natural (must always bear that in mind); with a hypothetical IR s…
30 Nov 1999, 17:05
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We have talked in the past about the curious details surrounding the fliers of Urth, which seem to have features of anti-gravity and anti-matter. This, in turn, seems to fly in the…
29 Nov 1999, 12:20
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22 Nov 1999, 16:45
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Hey there, raster. Raster write: Right. I didn't mean to suggest that she was going to chose this option. My money is on bachelor number three. Well, okay. I mean, I agree wit…
10 Nov 1999, 20:04
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Hallvard's Story--"The Two Sealers" Melito's Story--"The Cock, the Angel, and the Eagle" Loyal to the G17's Story--"The Just Man" Foila's Story--"The Armiger's Daughter" We can an…
09 Nov 1999, 09:01
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My impression of the Matachin Tower is that it is not a "one day" service place, like a dry cleaner's shop. To the contrary, clients wait months, seasons, even years before being …
09 Nov 1999, 07:20
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08 Nov 1999, 16:09
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A bit of thread: (Technical aside: that last paragraph is what is called in alchemy a "retort.") Doh! Er, I mean, "I meant you were rolling your eyes at how very commonplace and…
02 Nov 1999, 14:30
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Wombat, The circular written by Remora is dated "30th Nemesis 332" (III, 173). =mantis= *This is WHORL, for discussion of Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun.…
12 Oct 1999, 16:47
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Yes, that's right. For posting spoilers on volumes 2 and 3 whilst people are scrambling to get volume 1, wombat was convicted of going too far. After some fiercely competative bi…
12 Oct 1999, 14:26
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Wombat had the subjective time for the flight of the Whorl but wanted to know what the objective time was. Subjective time: 332 years, exactly. Objective time: 1000 years, roughly…
12 Oct 1999, 14:24
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As Nick reminded me, the Wolfe story regarding a house with four fronts is "The Haunted Boardinghouse" (in WALLS OF FEAR anthology). I recently re-read it, and it is pretty neat, …
06 Oct 1999, 14:18
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Did I miss something about Seawrack, the semi-Venus de Milo? That is: first there was the blood on the deck. Then, didn't Horn decide that the huss had =not= struck whatever it w…
06 Oct 1999, 09:04
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"Gaon" is Hebrew, meaning "genius," according to printform OED. There. Now alga can go to town with the CD-ROM version, and the other new words! (I had the sense that the Neighb…
05 Oct 1999, 17:51
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Well, what a novel! My first impressions: Horn is a Greek hero, mostly Odyesseus. How wonderful! I suppose I might have anticipated this, with all the Greco-Roman grounding of …
03 Oct 1999, 20:28
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Yes, they are the lead shot used in slings (we are told that directly, aren't we?). OTOH, I don't think they are the only type of projectile used by the slingers: I remember their…
30 Sep 1999, 16:02
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