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I always thought that Severian gave him the stone out of compassion, not just as a reward for his services. Or if compassion is the wrong word, maybe respect, or perhaps out of di…
27 May 1999, 09:42
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Perhaps the best Wolfe-fan-fiction Mr. Borski has written to date. -Rostrum…
26 May 1999, 16:36
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I'm not sure how much you can conclude from that one example. I'd think even the most "plan-ahead" type of writers occasionally come up with a cool scene they want to write withou…
11 May 1999, 10:27
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That may be one of the more hair-raising Gene Wolfe short stories I've read yet. -Rostrum…
10 May 1999, 14:33
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If you want to see more of the ethical dilemmas of radical self-modification, you should read Greg Egan's works such as Diaspora, Distress, and especially Permutation City. He ima…
06 May 1999, 08:36
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Vernor Vinge's new book "A Deepness in the Sky" is partly about the issue of whether you can have a cohesive interstellar empire with stl sleeper ramships. And it's a great book. …
03 May 1999, 08:43
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If Wolfe were writing in the same way as Lewis, that is, in a future meant to be a literal extension of ours, then it would make sense to ask, "If Tzad is really an Angel of God, w…
29 Apr 1999, 16:10
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Heh. The reply I was working on to Ori has been made redundant by Jonathan Laidlow who summed up what I was trying to say with this: So I'll just add a few minor observations. …
29 Apr 1999, 09:49
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For most of the series, I assumed that the "Conciliator" was a set of poorly-remembered stories of Jesus (I forget how I fit Typhon's statements into that interpretation), so I was…
28 Apr 1999, 08:36
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Using the author's biography and alleged intent to interpret a novel can be interesting, but I prefer interpretations that stand on their own support from the text. You may end …
26 Apr 1999, 10:09
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We recently had a discussion that touched on this topic. Some people argue that the distinction between "materialistic" and "supernaturalistic" is a modern one, and that it's we w…
23 Apr 1999, 16:26
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I've suspected in other contexts that one way Christian authors avoid getting pegged as "Christian Authors" is to write alot about sex. I wonder if Wolfe might have a little of th…
13 Apr 1999, 08:41
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Speaking of ambiguity, we might remember that the Long Sun books were written by a colonist (Horn) who may not have been entirely impartial in his portrayal of Quetzal and the inhu…
10 Apr 1999, 16:27
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Predestination? It sounds to me more like a promise. The Outsider doesn't say, "I've seen the future and I know you're not going to do anything bad enough to make me stop loving …
06 Apr 1999, 11:13
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You make a good case for why Wolfe would write about someone like Severian, but I'm not sure it answers the question of why the Hierodules would choose Severian as a savior. Are…
05 Apr 1999, 16:59
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If the comics are written by Wolfe, it seems that it would be extremely interesting to find out what he considered "the essentials to the story." I'd love to see someone who has t…
01 Apr 1999, 11:55
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I imagine it means that Violet and other girls from Orchid's brothel regularly entertain people at Blood's mansion. Blood owns the brothel. -Rostrum *This is WHORL, for discus…
31 Mar 1999, 09:38
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Am I right in understanding you to mean that you feel you leaped to that conclusion too soon, rather than that you disagree that Pas=Typhon? -Rostrum…
31 Mar 1999, 09:35
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Presumably some Autarchs would have been easier to optimize than others. Maybe Sev1 only just barely failed. -Rostrum…
17 Feb 1999, 13:11
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Now that you mention it, this scene did remind me when I read it of Moby Dick, at least as far as sharing a bed with a weirdo, but I'd forgotten about it. I didn't notice all the …
05 Feb 1999, 08:53
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Still, I think it would be a big improvement if either: 1. Someone with programing knowledge would help attach a search engine to the archives (I have no idea how big a job that …
28 Jan 1999, 11:33
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I've got another idea that might be less work and more useful. How about someone volunteer to help Ranjit convert the Urth/Whorl archives into an easily searchable format? Do mo…
25 Jan 1999, 16:31
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This sounds like it was inspired by a novel from the mid 1800's by Wilkie Collins called _The Moonstone_, which T.S. Eliot called "the first and greatest of English detective novel…
05 Jan 1999, 09:21
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That's the thing. If he didn't go on about his perfect memory so much, we might cut him some slack. But as it is, if Severian is so perfect, what alternative do we have but to ca…
17 Dec 1998, 17:11
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Forgive me if I'm misremembering and the "Tower of Torment" refers specifically to the execution wing of the torturer's building, but aren't there a lot of "clients" whose sentence…
17 Dec 1998, 15:07
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Oh. I don't own any of the Wolfe story collections yet, and I'd remembered that Castle of Days, for instance, had all the stories from Wolfe's Book of Days, so I imagined that the…
17 Dec 1998, 09:54
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(Ah, this bit of my last post belonged here.) The first paragraph of Nightside identifies the enlightenment narrative as the way Silk "talked about it afterward" -- so that tells …
15 Dec 1998, 10:24
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Interesting. I don't know if I've ever heard to someone say that if the universe is a created thing, then it is "artificial" or "unnatural." Of course "clockwork" may just be Sil…
15 Dec 1998, 08:36
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The problem with this from a Roman Catholic sensibility is that the Church believes it has a tradition of interpreting the Bible with a better understanding of what Jesus meant tha…
03 Dec 1998, 10:56
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I haven't read Crossan, but I've read some fairly compelling critiques of his work which might interest you. N.T. Wright's _Jesus and the Victory of God_ argues that Crossan et. a…
03 Dec 1998, 10:18
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Alas! A very beautiful hypothesis slain by an ugly fact. Nigel really had me feeling like I'd missed the blindingly obvious for a minute there. Even so, the comparison is intere…
29 Nov 1998, 23:08
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Do I remember someone having pictures of those covers on the web? I don't think I've ever seen them, and I would like to. -Rostrum *This is WHORL, for discussion of Gene Wolfe'…
24 Nov 1998, 13:45
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Editorially speaking, I think that what you're expressing is properly a criticism of Exodus, rather than a good reason to continue Silk's story in the Short Sun books. Unless Silk…
04 Nov 1998, 14:19
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I predict that if we see Silk at all in the Short Sun books, it will be as part of a Silk/Pas amalgram residing in Mainframe. -Rostrum *This is WHORL, for discussion of Gene Wol…
03 Nov 1998, 13:58
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The classic SF trope is getting hydrogen from electrolysis of water, so I imagine Prion is refering to water vapor in the air. "Humid weather today. Yum!" -- Hammerstone -Rostru…
02 Nov 1998, 08:49
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I guess I'm imagining that a male and female get together and start making the little chem and go into an different mode of consciousness, after which they couldn't really tell you…
02 Nov 1998, 08:43
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I don't know. Even I who reject a lot of the allegorical interpretations that get passed around on this list thought that the "flawed bride of Christ" stuff was as blatant as Silk…
02 Nov 1998, 08:39
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Perhaps the program for reproduction is not consciously accessible to the chems. Try asking a computer that runs an automobile factory how to make a combustion engine. A chem may…
30 Oct 1998, 16:07
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What about C.S. Lewis's "Out of the Silent Planet"? The main character is a philologist and a significant portion of the book is about language learning. Does that count as "ling…
30 Oct 1998, 14:49
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Have you read Chesterton's critique (I think it's in _The Everlasting Man_) of the assumption you can draw valid inferences about ancient peoples by observing modern peoples who ha…
30 Oct 1998, 10:58
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I assume that, just as Wolfe explained that /terminus est/ is not really Latin but a language as archaic to speakers of Severian's language as Latin is to English, just so the lang…
30 Oct 1998, 09:18
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[...] I'm missing something here. How exactly do you see Wolfe being influenced by Jaynes as opposed to the Iliad itself? Are you saying he gets the idea that theophonies might …
30 Oct 1998, 09:14
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There's a big difference between Wolfe telling us that he personally interprets the Outsider as a real "spiritual god" and the narrative forcing that conclusion upon us. One of th…
30 Oct 1998, 08:56
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Exactly. Following Mothman's hypothesis, one would expect Latro's desire to manifest as regular visits from Hestia urging him to search out his kindred and get home. Except that…
29 Oct 1998, 10:21
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Is it only in Christian tradition that Daniel 10 is interpreted as evidence of supernatural battles between good angels and evil angels? Daniel has a vision of an angelic being wh…
22 Oct 1998, 17:17
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I thought it amusing that in Stephen King's book _Salem's Lot_, the good almost seems to draw power parasitically from the evil. I seem to remember a scene where the good guys pou…
19 Oct 1998, 08:46
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That's one interpretation. Do you think it's possible that the leader is actually a dictator who uses the "Westwind" business as a means of social control? Why does he lead each …
16 Oct 1998, 15:06
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I love this sentence so much I think I'm going to print it out and sleep with it under my pillow. "Cargo cult exegesis"--bwahahahaha! To go further off-topic, anyone here read A…
15 Oct 1998, 09:52
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I've long suspected I have some sort of deficiency because I am utterly unmoved by these kinds of revelations. Vader is Luke's father? Leia is Luke's sister? Yawn. Let's see so…
12 Oct 1998, 08:39
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I guess this should go in the Whorl list, but I'll keep it here where people have been discussing it. Spoilers for the Long Sun books follow. You have to remember that Pas was ki…
07 Oct 1998, 09:08
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