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That he was the sort of youth who was a pedantic know-it-all and people would get offended because they thought he was smarting off? "Why did Napoleon keep his hand in his vest?" …
16 Oct 2002, 05:23
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Re: Garden of Eden: If Whorl=Garden and Pas=God, then Outsider=??? RE: knowledge of good and evil: 'Knowledge' here should be read as (if you know Spanish) 'conocer' rather than…
10 Oct 2002, 16:42
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The cloning analogy might be a good one. Catholics and others who object to cloning generally do so not because they fear that clones would not be fully human. Just the opposite,…
07 Oct 2002, 19:18
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Roy wrote a great post documenting the attitudes toward chems but he lost me here: I don't think this conclusion follows from your observations. Wolfe has created a society in wh…
06 Oct 2002, 22:05
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Well argued. I think you're almost certainly right. But it is possible (although the text doesn't do much to support it) that Jolenta is not, for Jonas, a Siren but rather Dulcin…
26 Sep 2002, 15:58
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Forget about the in love part, I think there are plenty of people who would choose a super-strong, nigh-immortal robot body over a frail biological one, even if one had to give up …
26 Sep 2002, 01:32
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Count me as another one who doesn't see much connection between Wolfe and Smith. They have some similar interests, both address them from a Christian perspective, and they are per…
10 Sep 2002, 15:25
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Yes, exactly. If we can assume the chem-makers have figured out how to put a fusion generator in a robot, we can probably assume they figured out how to solve the radioactivity pr…
09 Sep 2002, 16:16
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Not because someone helped her, but because she lied to Silk about what really happened. He was sad about being lied to. Or at least that was my initial impression, looking back …
09 Sep 2002, 15:55
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Also, iirc, Hammerstone makes some comment about using water or water vapor as fuel - which I took to be short hand for the standard SF fusion plant: water in; hydrogen, oxygen, an…
07 Sep 2002, 03:22
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Because Hammerstone is one of the few men who looks at her eyes when he talks with her. -Rostrum…
07 Sep 2002, 03:14
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Yeah, but knowing human beings, that prejudice could easily exist whether there was any basis for it or not. You could re-write that substituting whites, blacks, and the accusatio…
07 Sep 2002, 02:36
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Excerpt here: http://www.locusmag.com/2002/Issue09/GaimanWolfe.html I won't spoil the hilarious last line by quoting it. -Rostrum…
05 Sep 2002, 15:07
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Also, at the time, Newt was one of the most famous science-fiction writers in America (along with William Shatner and, arguably, Stephen King). -Rostrum…
02 Sep 2002, 05:16
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Seconded. Excellent book. -Rostrum…
27 Aug 2002, 01:32
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Great post. Great title. Great discussion. Maybe Ascia is what you get when Mao reads Orwell. That is, I agree with Dan'l that Ascia's ("say only this") policy has more of a M…
29 Jul 2002, 21:17
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This objection is so obvious, I'm surprised we haven't articulated it before -- I feel like it's been in the back of my head all this time. The only answer I can think of would …
18 Jul 2002, 14:34
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This is my strongest objection to the theory, which you didn't respond to. I guess I'm not clear on this point. My understanding of Pig's story was this: Pig and other mercenari…
17 Jul 2002, 12:58
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Isn't there a passage in the Long Sun books that all but says this explicitly? Maybe when Silk is talking to Sand about all the cities having armies and being set against each oth…
16 Jul 2002, 15:53
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I don't think this works. For one thing, the only way I can swallow Horn steadfastly refusing to acknowledge the obvious during his return to the Whorl (that he is a spirit posess…
16 Jul 2002, 15:47
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Well, the whole bandwidth issue is waved away with a magic wand anyway, but you might only need a terminal for full up/download of a personality, whereas the (hypothesized) ubiquit…
16 Jul 2002, 15:18
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Also, maybe the closest parallel to Horn's situation, dead Fava's spirit somehow still wandering around in Mora's dreams and enabling them both to posess Vadsig. How so? I assume…
15 Jul 2002, 19:05
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The climate has changed quite a bit, what with the Sun getting dimmer, so South America is probably a lot more habitable for fair-skinned, light-eyed folks.…
15 Jul 2002, 18:43
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Well, the church was pretty disasterous for Christ, in the sense that he got crucified for it. Doesn't Paul essentially say in Ephesians that the marriage in which the husband is …
15 Jul 2002, 18:40
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Is it too late to lobby for calling it the Grue System, in honor of Dave Lebling's presence on the list? -Rostrum…
15 Jul 2002, 18:31
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Yeah, but how common are destriers in South America? The real question is how rare blonds were in the Commonwealth in Typhon's time. -Rostrum…
15 Jul 2002, 18:29
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I think Pig gives us the most insight into how this works. Downloaded personalities can only stay in contact with their Mainframe versions if their eyes can make contact with a te…
15 Jul 2002, 18:23
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Interesting theory - and kind of sinister - instead of Silk conquering Pas in Mainframe, Pas is secretly still around pulling all the strings. But the Narrator can't be a complete…
15 Jul 2002, 18:14
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Some have said that Silk, an able augur, ought to have no difficulty killing himself if he wished. On the other hand, Silk is very hard to kill. These two probably cancel out. O…
15 Jul 2002, 18:08
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"Pas" has no genes from which to make Silk. Typhon did (skin cells from his head, or germ cells frozen from his original body). And Typhon is dead by Silk's time. Silk might be …
15 Jul 2002, 18:05
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Also, Severian tortures others for their sins. Silk tortures himself for his sins. -Rostrum…
15 Jul 2002, 17:59
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Nettle was as much a disciple of Silk as Horn was. If Horn hadn't gone to search for him, Nettle would have. Now that Horn is dead, following Silk is the natural thing to do. Fo…
05 Jul 2002, 14:24
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I don't think that interpretation has achieved consensus yet. I don't agree with it. I have a half-completed write-up of my interpretation of what happens to Horn that I hope to …
03 Jul 2002, 12:06
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Took me a moment to realize you are saying Typhon is not a citizen of the Commonwealth, rather than that Typhon is not a saint, which would disqualify most uses of the convention..…
20 Jun 2002, 19:07
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Sphigx? I see her in an embryo enhanced for physical strength (Chenille, maybe), if not a godling, but, are the godlings bios or chems? I'd think a nuclear-powered, moisture-eati…
18 Jun 2002, 02:33
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Is Silk a godling? Surely Silk was the body planned for Pas, what with his near miraculous charisma. And the symmetry with Piaton is too good to ignore. (i.e. an intended host b…
18 Jun 2002, 01:54
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Yeah, what I meant is that it's all a mishmash that might have seemed funny to Typhon: "Let's have Christianesque priests worshiping a pantheon of Gods and doing animal sacrifices…
17 Jun 2002, 11:55
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I assumed that these were deliberate parodies of Islam, Judaism, Christianity, etc. by Typhon et. al. But since Typhon thought it was all bunk, he inadvertently incorporated bits …
12 Jun 2002, 19:33
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To me, at that point it became obvious the whole thing was a joke and not meant to have any real bearing on Severian's story. -Rostrum…
12 Jun 2002, 19:13
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If you're going to count the intros/appendix where Wolfe talks about translating Severian's manuscript, Wolfe directly refers to all the stuff of Severian's time being in the futur…
12 Jun 2002, 16:15
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Not at all strange. One of the chief virtues of BoB is Hughart's ability to maintain a light (and often hilarious) tone while telling about grim events, and yet still managing to …
06 Jun 2002, 20:03
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I don't see how that can be a plausible reading, given the bit attributed as a direct quote from God. If Cain is given some sort of divine protection that makes it impossible for …
05 Jun 2002, 16:53
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I think the Christian way of expressing this is that death by smallpox is evil (one of the evils unleashed by humanity's estrangement from God) and murder is sinful. The humanist …
30 May 2002, 18:03
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I agree with you, but I remember before the SS series came out, there was quite a bit of speculation on this list about whether Severian would appear in the next book, whether Seve…
30 May 2002, 14:17
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If the Bible says Adam and Eve were the parents of all humanity, and Cain's wife was human...QED. -Rostrum…
29 May 2002, 17:48
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OK. I thought you were saying that inhumi souls were fake and human souls were real. OK, I agree that they want to be human and never can be. But I think in the course of trying…
28 May 2002, 19:38
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This has happened to me several times, not just with Wolfe. I guess I'm just particularly dense. Urth of the New Sun - I disliked this because I had too many wrong interpretation…
28 May 2002, 15:50
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I don't see how you can hold to that view of mind/body relationship and still view chems as persons (which Wolfe obviously does). If a soul is only 'real' if it is part of a human…
28 May 2002, 15:30
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[...] Or maybe he edited it out because he wanted to show us the similar story of how Jahlee became Silkhorn's daughter, and having both seemed too repetitive. Of course it's not…
23 May 2002, 19:58
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One of the Neighbors (or maybe it was Silkhorn) said that the Neighbors made the Inhumi their slaves, and thereby brought their own ruin. I think one of the temptations Silkhorn r…
23 May 2002, 19:52
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