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My impression is that Horn uses the same definition I used when listing the gods of Earth; a god is one who has been worshipped[1] by somebody sometime somewhere. Gods can be powe…
19 Apr 2001, 09:26
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I thought the main objection to the godlings is that in Act 1 (New Sun) the author goes into detail about why anything that big would have to live in the sea or collapse under its …
19 Apr 2001, 08:53
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I read this as metonymy (like when Jews refer to G-d as "Heaven"); he means that the gods of Mainframe will come to Blue, presumably by posessing humans or animals, not that some (…
17 Apr 2001, 11:24
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The best estimate I can make, based on my available sample of one planet, is thousands and thousands (Thor, Aphrodite, Molech, Baal, Allah, YHWH, Jesus, Shiva, Ganesha, Aura Mainyu…
17 Apr 2001, 11:16
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But if Silk-in-Mainframe is enough in charge that he can get the Whorl to leave early, he's probably enough in charge to prevent "Pas" from escaping to Blue. But then I'm of the o…
13 Apr 2001, 17:55
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If Fava is any indication, then Jahlee and Hide are going to gang up and posess Seawrack whenever Hide dreams. -Rostrum *This is WHORL, for discussion of Gene Wolfe's Book of th…
11 Apr 2001, 15:40
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I thought the climactic revelation was that the narrator is Silk in Silk's body. -Rostrum *This is WHORL, for discussion of Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun.…
11 Apr 2001, 10:46
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Or Horn who's fading away... -Rostrum *This is WHORL, for discussion of Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun.…
11 Apr 2001, 08:36
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The worst novel I've ever read in that respect is Cryptonomicon by Neil Stephenson. It jumps back and forth between two timelines and the the two timelines jump around from variou…
11 Apr 2001, 08:23
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My original theory was that the Narrator meant this metaphorically. That if humans knew what the inhumi were, then they would regard them as mindless leechagators, rather than int…
10 Apr 2001, 23:03
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No takers for my theory that the Secret is simply that inhumi intelligence is derivative from humans and that they fear the Secret because they are insecure, longing to be human (f…
09 Apr 2001, 08:29
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Look at Silk's conversations with the kids right after the game. He's so preoccupied with his enlightenment he's barely paying attention when they try to talk about the game. Hor…
06 Apr 2001, 12:00
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I'm sure Nettle put that stuff in about Horn in _Lake_ over his strenuous objections. Also, see the archives for my argument that the bit about catching the ball and winning the g…
06 Apr 2001, 09:58
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You misunderstand. Vizcacha is not saying that Incanto has any of Typhon downloaded into him. Incanto is 0% Typhon. But "Pas," as he exists now on the Whorl, is at least partial…
05 Apr 2001, 08:59
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Too late! I recant. I'm convinced that vizcacha's interpretation is correct: Incanto means that since "Pas" now refers to Pas+Silk that "Pas" is present because Silk is present (…
04 Apr 2001, 09:01
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The simplest explanation seems to me that Nettle was interested in the Whorl, so Horn talked a lot about what happened in the Whorl amongst his family but very little about the eve…
02 Apr 2001, 09:36
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If it weren't for the passage you quote, I would have said there is no Pas in the Narrator. Pig probably has some Pas because he's been posessed by the Mainframe version of Silk, …
01 Apr 2001, 16:43
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Chagrin at Wolfe being hard on himself was what I was really getting at. I didn't literally think he was talking to me. I was just a little sad that he felt the need to spell al…
28 Mar 2001, 20:54
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My impression was a weak psi-ability that doesn't influence what people see so much as encourage them not to look too closely and to ignore the flaws in the physical disguise, but …
28 Mar 2001, 20:43
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I'm also reminded now of Catholic veneration of relics. If a leg bone of a saint is venerated and can be a source of miracles, then it implies that something of the saint's "perso…
21 Mar 2001, 13:56
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There is some diversity of opinion on this, but I think Catholic theology teaches that while the soul can have some kind of existence apart from the body, that a person isn't fully…
21 Mar 2001, 09:07
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My reading of this scene: 1. Terzo notes that Horn's attention seems divided and asks what's up (note Terzo asks "Can you hear something I don't" not "Do you hear what I hear?"). …
02 Mar 2001, 00:23
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Yeah, I should have credited you. I was replying to all the more recent posts wondering if Horn was travelling forward/back in time as well as through space (of course a lot of ph…
01 Feb 2001, 08:22
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As I posted before, there's no reason to think Silk would even remember anything about catching the ball and winning the game - at the time he was preoccupied with his enlightenmen…
31 Jan 2001, 16:23
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I may have missed your post in the archives, but most of the discussion I saw assumed it had something to do with Silk's personality influencing Horn, whereas I was pointing out th…
31 Jan 2001, 14:04
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I think Free Live Free is easily Wolfe's funniest book. In fact the phrase "madcap adventures" comes to my fingertips. It's also got a humdinger of a puzzle to fit everything to…
31 Jan 2001, 08:21
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Horn telling us that he licked the dew from every inch of the ground and as high on the walls as he could reach was more detail than *I* needed to hear. <shudder> -Rostrum…
24 Jan 2001, 08:21
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Reading "A Story," I got the impression that the field was hiding St. Anne from an already-settled-by-humans St. Croix, not shielding the whole system from Earth. In the story, th…
23 Jan 2001, 08:52
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Wasn't "Marsch" originally arrested in connection with Number Five's murder of his "father"? Even if, after they arrested Number Five, they continued to hold "Marsch" because they…
22 Jan 2001, 08:45
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Dick's _The Man in the High Castle_, and _The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch_ are even better, in my opinion. _High Castle_ is just plain beautiful. The book features the I C…
21 Dec 2000, 15:48
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It's a joke. It's just not clear whether Weer is making the joke or Wolfe is. Or Weer could be just complaining to himself that he, as a dying old man, should get priority over…
12 Dec 2000, 22:15
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When Weer says he's dying and the nurse says the others are ahead of him, he takes her to mean (perhaps knowing she doesn't really mean) that Ted and Sherry are closer to dying tha…
11 Dec 2000, 08:04
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Yes Alex, I was thinking of you when I mentioned that. Sorry...I think it was an Adam/Alex confusion. -Rostrum…
08 Dec 2000, 23:23
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Oh, come on. Is there anyone who doesn't get a shiver when they first connect the two elm tree passages? That's too good to be an accident. Maybe it's a Weer getting a Ghost of …
08 Dec 2000, 16:35
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As much as I like this idea, I don't think it's the book Wolfe wrote. I've seen a couple interviews with him about it and he always talks about the joke of Morgan seeking an heir…
08 Dec 2000, 14:10
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My point was to disagree with your claim that we couldn't evaluate possible readings of PEACE by arguing which reading is aesthetically better. You say the reading Wolfe intended i…
07 Dec 2000, 11:43
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I immediately thought of Castleview when I read Adam's post. I'd love to see you're "straightforward" summary of how it ends. I remember one reviewer writting something like "Gen…
07 Dec 2000, 10:39
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I'm not ashamed of scifi covers, I just don't think the artwork on the Short Sun books is very good. The multi-legged thing on the cover of IGJ just looks dumb. And Babbie looks …
06 Dec 2000, 08:53
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You see this as if it were a negative thing, but I think this is the most interesting way to talk about a book. If PEACE is a more coherent book and more asethetically satisfying …
04 Dec 2000, 14:09
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[...] No, he's fallen asleep on a ceramic pillow! And and his Aunt is waking him up to go play at the picnic with Bobby Blake... -Rostrum…
04 Dec 2000, 09:29
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"hush.og"? Looks like a website for librarians. I suppose that's supposed to say "hush og"? And I guess you mean that the orignial word was 'hushog' (one 'h' in the middle) pron…
04 Dec 2000, 09:19
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Oops. OK, so what I really should have said was that I found OBW far more satisfying on its own than Shadow or Nightside, but I have no idea why. Maybe it's because OBW is real…
21 Nov 2000, 15:55
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Good point. I left off "Horn embellishing" from my list of possible explanations for the dreams/prophesies. That whole ambiguity regarding Horn's role as the storyteller is one o…
21 Jun 2000, 16:28
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But in most books this is kind of a wink at the reader; we're not supposed to ask why the madman's ravings should forshadow events in the book. In the Long Sun, however, one of th…
21 Jun 2000, 14:12
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There's also the scene in OUT OF THE SILENT PLANET where the scientist who captured Ransom is on "trial" and he gives this eloquent defense of humanity's manifest destiny to conque…
30 May 2000, 15:35
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Yeah, I don't know that Walter Hooper is doing Lewis any favors publishing some of this stuff, but it does give a pretty clear picture of his thoughts on the matter. What I think …
28 May 2000, 22:31
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This poem gives a pretty clear picture of Lewis's thoughts on the subject, although he didn't publish it in his lifetime, so he may have had reservations about the ideas (or about …
27 May 2000, 22:35
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It's a fine point, but he didn't think space travel and immortality are themselves sins, rather they are a bad idea because they would allow sin to grow beyond it's current bounds …
26 May 2000, 08:14
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This reminds me of some of C.S. Lewis's poems and _Out of the Silent Planet_ where he expresses horror at the thought of humanity colonizing the universe because it would bring the…
25 May 2000, 08:36
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Aha! I like this practice of letting Wolfean weirdness and ambiguity invade other books. Reading Mansfield Park as if it were written by Gene Wolfe; Borges would approve! Or wou…
21 May 2000, 21:57
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