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For some strange reason I see this story in a very clear light right now. Please forgive me if I belabor the obvious. "Alien Stones" is quite dense. It is a braid of a few diffe…
29 Jun 2001, 08:44
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Well hey, don't stop there--keep going! And didja ever figure out the base 12 numbering system? We are given a few (3 numbers and the decimal point; there are 7 undefined), and t…
28 Jun 2001, 16:14
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And alga, she found the show Ghastly, unwatchable. Ha-ha! I found the book unreadable twelve years ago, abandoning it soon after the library fire; yet I found the tv show (first …
28 Jun 2001, 08:01
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Wombat wrote Something we can agree on. Sorry, you are wrong! <g> Unless what you really meant to write was: "the author Horn thought of the title as being (or even planned to n…
21 Jun 2001, 15:13
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Ah. Okay. Apparently I'm being so sloppy with terms that I'm nearly incomprehensible. SHORT/LONG SUN EARTH biography fiction autobio…
21 Jun 2001, 12:15
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It was my impression that the word is from Esperanto rather than Italian. Fitting the pattern that seems to exist in some places on the Whorl (and Earth as well), where there is a …
21 Jun 2001, 08:38
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Hoo, boy. Look here. I mean it! 1) TBOTLS is revealed near the end to have been written by Horn. 2) TBOTSS starts off with some revision to that--it wasn't just Horn, but Horn …
20 Jun 2001, 17:26
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Hey everybody, Dan'l has a piece in the latest issue of "The New York Review of Science Fiction." It is about non-genre sf in the form of mysteries written by Nora Roberts. =man…
14 Jun 2001, 18:34
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Roy wrote Right, I was talking about the one in PEACE INDEXICON. I think we arrived at "1953" because 1) we had Olivia's death pegged at 1928 (kind of shocking in itself), which…
14 Jun 2001, 15:55
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Roy, Okay, we have a genuine timeline problem, since O RARE AMANDA was first published in 1954. How neat if our best anchor points (like Ludwig's biography of Napoleon) all come …
13 Jun 2001, 13:18
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Might be too tricky an entry for the Inivisible Library. HPL made it up (in the 20s, was it?) through allusions in his fiction. Gold "just wrote it" in the mid-50s, presumably bu…
13 Jun 2001, 12:48
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Ach, Roy--he got you! There really =is= an Amanda (McKitterick) Ros, eccentric Irish author (take note, PEACE ethnographers!), and she really did write IRENE IDDESLEIGH (Bookfinde…
13 Jun 2001, 06:42
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Wonders of Urth and Sky (oh, that doesn't count, does it?) from BIBLIOMEN: Arthurs, Kirk Patterson (Ph.D.), MASK AND COIN: GRUB STREET IN THE 30S (1986) " , MAZE OF GREY: JOHN GL…
11 Jun 2001, 20:18
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Which makes me think it might come out more like "Family Feuuud": "Survey says . . . BOOK OF THE NEW SUN is a good read!" <g> But that would be fine on two counts: it would still …
03 Jun 2001, 08:54
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Nevermind. I withdraw the statement/question. OTOH, it does lead to an interesting notion: what if, instead of a FAQ about a book/series/story, what if there was a position tabul…
01 Jun 2001, 19:52
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Ah, this has been established (or otherwise achieved consensual validity in excess of 51%)? I hadn't known, I must have missed that . . . it poses a leap I cannot follow. =mantis…
31 May 2001, 19:33
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<fontfamily><param>Geneva</param><bigger><bigger>Roy, The Changer was experimented with by the General at least, we agree. What would be the results of such experiments, aside fr…
16 May 2001, 13:04
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To answer alga, Bloom's novel/homage to Arcturus is THE FLIGHT TO LUCIFER. I wish he would write a chapbook about A VOYAGE TO ARCTURUS. (Waiting for the next digest to arrive.) …
14 May 2001, 06:15
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To answer alga, Bloom's novel/homage to Arcturus is THE FLIGHT TO LUCIFER. I wish he would write a chapbook about A VOYAGE TO ARCTURUS. (Waiting for the next digest to arrive.) …
13 May 2001, 17:25
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<fontfamily><param>Geneva</param><bigger><bigger>CHARACTERS New President: Marsha: wife of Boone Boone: was member of administration, killed himself over Jane Doe. General: ha…
10 May 2001, 06:49
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Hey, wow, I got an Urth digest! First time in a week or so, maybe? SPOILERS FOR COPPERHEAD Anyway, talking about "Copperhead." Jeff Wilson beat me to saying part of what I wan…
08 May 2001, 15:38
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Adam wrote about ENGINE SUMMER, including this bit: There is also the obvious metafictional answer: it is not for the angels, nor their city, but only for the reader of ENGINE SUM…
21 Apr 2001, 17:52
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Adam wrote about ENGINE SUMMER, including this bit: There is also the obvious metafictional answer: it is not for the angels, nor their city, but only for the reader of ENGINE SUM…
21 Apr 2001, 11:51
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New chapbooks! A chapbook on Gene Wolfe's PEACE! A chapbook on Gene Wolfe's THE FIFTH HEAD OF CERBERUS! A chapbook on all the fiction of John Crowley! Come see, come see! =man…
07 Apr 2001, 11:15
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As many of you probably recall, I have something of a mania about games. A few weeks ago I picked up a new one and I think it may be of interest around here, seeing as how much ti…
06 Mar 2001, 09:03
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I politely disagree in the most strenuous terms while still allowing for all the spectrum of personal readings. The kick of all the Whorl stuff being written by people who have ne…
01 Mar 2001, 18:21
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"We're off to see the Shrike, the Wonderful Shrike of Hyperion! It really is a spike of a shrike, The Wonderful Shrike of Hyperion! If ever a swindlous spindle there hikes, Or tim…
28 Feb 2001, 11:12
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One possibility that I had in mind is that the colonies on Blue (and Green?) are now "grown up enough" that they do not need any further assistance from the starship, beyond the se…
26 Feb 2001, 17:21
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Well, =maybe= . . . I mean, I recall too well my own similar reaction to a possession in the Long Sun series, thinking that it must have been a goddess of war (Scylla or Spingx) ra…
24 Feb 2001, 19:32
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Well BMeyer7, as you no doubt recall from the days of GEnie, if not before then, it all boils down to "you like it" or "you don't like it." Case in point: Henry Kaiser, in his rev…
19 Feb 2001, 12:43
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Right, that would be 0% Delusional for the narrator; the outsiders cannot grok it, but the Outsider can. I agree with just about all of the material you posted (I would go on more…
17 Feb 2001, 20:36
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Just talking to myself here, explaining two angles of the narrator, as I seem them. "Delusional" is the angle where 100% Silk is present in the narrator from the transfer moment f…
17 Feb 2001, 15:54
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Ah well. Interesting to contemplate two more-or-less identical Silks (your Silk-in-Pig and 100% Silk in Horn) in the same place (ruins of Blood's mansion) at the same time with su…
16 Feb 2001, 10:29
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None, alas! Mostly the result of impressions over the previous two books, impressions which seemed confirmed by a first reading of RTTW. I'll try to take notes on the next readin…
16 Feb 2001, 10:24
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If you had written "litHorn of TBOTLS is the literary creation of the narrator Horn; litHorn, of TBOTSS, is a literary creation of the narrator `N'" then I'd know we were on the sa…
15 Feb 2001, 11:50
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Okay, now we're getting somewhere! The narrator must know that he isn't "Silk" (whether this is "oldSilk" or "mainframeSilk" or "litSilk," or some combination thereof, doesn't mat…
15 Feb 2001, 10:18
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Wombat and Adam go on thusly: But you GUYS! HEY! Your sense of SILK is from the BOOK written by HORN and NETTLE! Crikies! There was even a little cliffhanger between volumes 1…
14 Feb 2001, 21:50
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Nick Gevers was the first to suggest that the arrival of Horn and co. at the citadel explains the guard's absence at the necropolis gate on the day that Severian nearly drowned (I,…
14 Feb 2001, 17:40
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Putting aside the godling issue as the lesser, I'm still working on how alga is bugged by Jahlee's death. Aside about Twain: well, we might agree he had some authorial mishap ther…
13 Feb 2001, 20:16
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While we await Adam's model of Silk-in-Pig and why the narrator should want to have it inside his crowded head, allow me to try again. A different approach, using Adam's previous …
13 Feb 2001, 13:18
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IIRC, as Horn lay dying in the lander on Green, the deal expressed by the Neighbors was something like: from two broken men we will make one whole man. And since Horn's "broken" n…
13 Feb 2001, 12:56
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You might think you are being sketchy, but we know exactly what you are talking about. (Here, it is in III, ch. 7.) Yes, some of us sometimes think that the silent man is Palaemo…
12 Feb 2001, 15:03
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Matt asked a lot of questions, and I guess I'm on the desk right now (but maybe we should all agree to make Adam the official answer-man?): Only in the sense that "Terminus Est" i…
11 Feb 2001, 19:01
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Eek! In my rush to express my intuition that the Silk-to-Horn/Silk transfer happened at a very specific point in the text (when Horn/Silk sees Pig face to face after the operation…
11 Feb 2001, 18:15
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Nacre, Right, there's that explanation: that Sev Armiger/Exultant was just a friend of the family, who provided a safe burial place when things got ugly. Maybe he was even the ch…
08 Feb 2001, 18:39
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Dan wrote, and Adam responded: Allow me to interject: I don't think that Horn was completely evacuated from the Horn/Silk/Silk combine (that is Horn spirit/Silk body/mainframe Sil…
08 Feb 2001, 09:52
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IIRC, both the numbers "around 300 years" and "around 1000 years" are from the text of TBOTLS (the calendar gives the former in precise detail, and a comment by a god gives the lat…
01 Feb 2001, 09:49
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Yes, Quetzal's name has a definite connection to the Toltec/Aztec god Quetzalcoatl. (To me at least: I wasn't familiar with the quetzal bird when I first read NIGHTSIDE THE LONG S…
01 Feb 2001, 08:32
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Well, well, mister slow poke! Better read RTTW asap. I thought we hammered out/nailed down the time dilation angle in "Welcome Wombat" message of 7 Sep 97. =mantis= *This is …
31 Jan 2001, 18:15
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Granted many details: the "just in time" arrival of the French greatly strains realism; that the inhabitants of Ste. Anne sense the cloaking effect as something in the sky (makes i…
23 Jan 2001, 08:28
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