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Welcome aboard, Shannon Wilde! New Wolfe story: "The Tree Is My Hat" is a new Wolfe story in the just released horror anthology _999_. Set on an island in the South Pacific, in t…
16 Sep 1999, 13:42
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Odilo--tenth century Abbot of Cluny who established All Souls's Day. A Teutonic name, meaning "rich." Pega--Saint Pega (died 719) was reputed to have cured a man of blindness. Th…
11 Sep 1999, 20:34
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SPOILERS! Thus the text breaks off in mid-thought. Here's the rest: The whole idea of the clones is based upon the seed analogy: that genetic material can be activated and grown…
07 Sep 1999, 07:42
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Okay, so the recommended book MANSEED (by Jack Williamson) floated up onto my shore and I read it. It was pretty good, a slowboat colonization of interstellar space deal, with a su…
06 Sep 1999, 21:23
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. . . so I finally axed him, point blank--"Is the mysterious sold-but-never-published story `Talk of Mandrakes' going to be in STRANGE TRAVELERS, the new collection coming up?" (O…
29 Aug 1999, 15:00
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Okay, so let's say that we have a calendar of thirteen months (here called "First Month," "Second Month," etc.; but this is just for our own tracking purposes--the Commonwealth wou…
20 Aug 1999, 10:43
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A little cross-posting. Actually that was "Cross Posting Behind." But I like the idea of a traffic sign showing posts crossing the road. ===== ASTRON. EVENT DATE SOUTHE…
13 Aug 1999, 13:30
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Whoops--I left out more steps than I thought. Re: Lunar reckoning and calendars, my sense of it is (and I probably got this from some comic book) . . . At the earliest stage peop…
13 Aug 1999, 10:42
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John Bishop, Maybe there is trouble caused by the term "calendar"? That is, if I wrote "Lunar reckoning" rather than "Lunar calendar," would that clear up some of the problems? …
12 Aug 1999, 14:52
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Roy, Good job in showing that the Feast of Holy Katherine occurs in early Spring! It is very convincing and I'm willing to go along with it. This would appear to be a compromise…
12 Aug 1999, 11:01
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Roy, I have done a lot of work on the calendar, so allow me to share a few notes. "Hallowmass Eve (which is to say, the full of the Spading Moon)," ("The Cat," first few pages). …
11 Aug 1999, 19:31
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Mitchell A. Bailey, To step back and state the obvious: this is a case where the medieval/rennaisance vocabulary of Commonwealth science has Wolfean ambiguities when describing po…
11 Aug 1999, 06:43
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(the Proust bits from an unpublished interview conducted by myself a few years ago--the manuscript of EXODUS had just been turned in.) Q: How many times have you read _Remembranc…
05 Aug 1999, 19:11
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Eep! I hope my joke didn't misfire so completely that umbrage occured. I'm too fond of that phrase, "Everything you know is wrong," but not in the put-down way, rather in the way…
05 Aug 1999, 17:12
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Well of course it could very well be the blunder you make it out to be. Then again, people have been tripped up by various "science" issues in the Urth Cycle, for example: "solar"…
02 Aug 1999, 16:39
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He read a translation. I don't remember off hand which one--if I run across that info I'll let you know. =mantis=…
29 Jul 1999, 13:23
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UPDATED! CLIP and SAVE! September 1988, Issue 1: Gene Wolfe's "Riddle," a brief boxed feature. October 1988, Issue 2: A reading list from Wolfe and a letter from Wolfe re Hard S…
29 Jul 1999, 13:19
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Re: the Budrys line in review of THE SHADOW OF THE TORTURER. I'd agree with that. Add details like Thecla's mention of "agathodaemon." Perhaps all the Hellenic/Hellenistic terms,…
22 Jul 1999, 13:13
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I usually appreciate the discussion and debate that goes on around here (well, obviously--otherwise I wouldn't be here). In addition to that, it is very exciting to see fully deve…
17 Jul 1999, 14:06
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On the lighter side (not that things have been very heavy): Item: in describing the carved mountains of Urth, Severian mentions that they wear diadems, tiaras, and miters. (In th…
07 Jul 1999, 10:58
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Mitchell A. Bailey, Ha-ha! Yes, this has been a secret understanding between Ranjit and myself, and I'm glad you've come to see that Agia looks "Korean"! While I don't want to a…
04 Jul 1999, 08:29
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Hello there Josh Smith, and welcome aboard! FWIW (and that ain't much, since the new trilogy is about to begin and it will probably give some new information), I think that: 1) T…
01 Jul 1999, 16:04
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Roy, Me say: You say: At this point, Roy, you are being either contentious or sloppy! Because on the same page, a mere four sentences beyond your paraphrase, when Jonas strode …
22 Jun 1999, 15:09
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Re: that symbol in the presence chamber that makes Jonas say he's on Urth. I didn't mention this before, but yes, it =has= always reminded me of the special individualized symbols …
22 Jun 1999, 10:15
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Another tidbit about A CASE OF CONSCIENCE-- The James Joyce detail, while cryptic at first (I'll readily admit that I didn't recognize it as Joyce), is later on laid out in the op…
10 Jun 1999, 22:12
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Nigel Price, Thanks--I wanted to say something like that! (Rather than Shaw, I was going to draw attention back to the [in my mind] similar roughness of Cordwainer Smith's "Scann…
09 Jun 1999, 17:01
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I suppose. But I'm not clear on your reference points--by "Monarch" of "Monarch's Empire," are you referring to Typhon, the Man Who Would Be Monarch of the Second Empire, or some …
09 Jun 1999, 16:46
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Antechamber-as-missile-base: it is possible, and in some ways likely. But one of the solid clues we have is that one of the "original" ceilings has a painting of clouds and birds o…
09 Jun 1999, 11:47
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What did Jonas learn from the nth generation prisoners of the antechamber? First I will attempt to gather all the points. Item 0.1: at the end of SHADOW, Jonas begins to tell a t…
08 Jun 1999, 13:44
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In the past on this list there have been periodic reference to Blish's book, by three or four people hereabouts. Well I just read it, myself, and I liked it a lot more than the BL…
01 Jun 1999, 15:17
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LOL! Excellent point! "Here, Jonas wanted you to have this." And then, later on, his last line to Miles could be: "But hey, she wasn't worth it, man--I mean, jeez, she fell asl…
01 Jun 1999, 15:09
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corncrake wrote, regarding the disappearance of the port that Jonas and co. were looking for: Here's an interesting point we can all agree with, however tentatively <g>. But, in …
01 Jun 1999, 10:57
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Mitchell A. Bailey wrote, I was using the incident at the gate as a categorical example (a situation with few clues, in contrast to a locked room murder mystery with a dozen red h…
01 Jun 1999, 09:24
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Okay. So do we sort of agree that Jonas-the-android-bits was created on Urth? Now then, let me walk through the current antechamber set: Jonas sees the love of his looong life, t…
31 May 1999, 17:46
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Robert Borski, That's a pretty good answer and we'll go with it. His panic seems almost like that of a claustrophobe suddenly confined--which fits with what you are saying. (Sti…
28 May 1999, 20:55
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Robert Borski, First, the counter-digestive process--I believe you that it is in TIME'S ARROW, but it isn't all that rare a notion: from secondary sources I have been led to belie…
28 May 1999, 09:46
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Timothy and Rostrum, We all agree that the exchange is not equal. The fact that it is unequal might be the spur that drives the Green Man to balance the scales, in this case a se…
27 May 1999, 07:57
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Hello Timothy Reilly! Since the Green Man can supposedly see into the future, and we have Severian's future in hand, the Green Man's phrase may relate to the mine at Saltus (which…
26 May 1999, 15:51
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Robert Borski, Well, this reading moves very far away from or around the evidence (however one wants to interpret said evidence) found in the antechamber. That is, if Jonas is so…
26 May 1999, 14:16
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Three cheers for Ranjit! Hip-hip, HOORAY! Hip-hip, HOORAY! Hip-hip, HOOORAAAAY! For he's a jolly good fellow, For he's a jolly good fellow, Yes he's a jolly good fe…
25 May 1999, 19:48
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vizcacha, I thought I was careful in saying that he was selling issues one and two, and that he =said= the series went on to six. Then there was a lot of stuff about comic book i…
19 May 1999, 13:22
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Wombat, So your experience matches mine, but is actually more valued because you worked in a comic book store. (Plus, since you are such a completist, I have great faith in your …
18 May 1999, 11:45
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Fellow Urthlings, I just saw that a fellow on eBay is selling issues number one and two of the Graphic Novel adaptation of TBOTNS. That may be of interest to anybody looking for …
18 May 1999, 10:40
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Yes, but actually, as I understand it, the experiments you describe produced =both= Left-handed and Right-handed amino acids, in equal amounts. The odd thing is, all life on Earth …
13 May 1999, 15:02
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Brain, Good job! Thanks for your work! Looks like it is time for the next edition of "LS-2" . . . but I can't say how soon I'll be able to crank that sausage grinder. Not too l…
11 May 1999, 19:20
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Greg Neyman, Well sure, that's the usual rationale, especially pre-Asimov, who really went far in exploring "robot rights" (which itself is either a cheap and easy rip-off of the …
05 May 1999, 13:03
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Al and Rostrum, Thanks for the notes. (I greatly enjoyed A FIRE UPON THE DEEP and look forward to reading A DEEPNESS IN THE SKY.) Re: seedships, another anonymous informant menti…
03 May 1999, 20:33
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Good call, Robert Patterson! Refresh my memory further: IIRC, BB2 is about an anthropologist (from Terra or the civilized sphere) who is examining the hulk of the colony ship in or…
29 Apr 1999, 12:58
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Long, long ago, we were chatting about generation starship stories and stories about the colonies that result. Because the subject matters are so big, the two types are not usuall…
29 Apr 1999, 10:01
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alga, Innnteresting. IIRC, in his recent book on sf, THE DREAMS STUFF ARE MADE OF [did I get that right?], Tom Disch gave short shrift to TBOTNS, calling it "Renaissance faire" s…
27 Apr 1999, 18:49
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