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In the Peace universe, NECRONOMICON is a fictional book made up by HPL which Gold then "wrote," inspired by HPL's idea, in order to dupe someone into thinking that the book really …
13 Jun 2001, 15:20
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Inevitably, some scholars suggest there may have been a later writer using Luke's name, but I don't think they make a very good argument. I sort of agree. I think Wolfe is clearl…
11 Jun 2001, 16:01
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You're right. Blish was not Catholic and I don't think he did a very good job capturing Catholic thinking in Case of Conscience. I seem to remember him saying that in the book's …
11 Jun 2001, 15:43
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So what you're saying is that lots of people have noticed this already, but I didn't get it until Wolfe pointed it out himself. -Rostrum *This is WHORL, for discussion of Gene …
11 Jun 2001, 09:14
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I didn't get into that specifically, but, yes, this is exactly what I had in mind too. One of my favorite parallels: Luke and Acts are thought to have been written by the same pe…
11 Jun 2001, 09:10
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Horn's statement about having a mania for recording coversations struck me as a key insight into Wolfe's writing. Could it be that Wolfe's eliptical style is largely based on a pr…
10 Jun 2001, 15:48
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[...] I remember feeling this way at the end of tBOTLS, the idea that some of the wonderful things Horn had told me about Silk might have been exaggerations or wishful thinking ga…
10 Jun 2001, 15:40
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But can we get the guy who directed _Showgirls_ to pay for it? -Rostrum *This is WHORL, for discussion of Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun.…
04 Jun 2001, 12:39
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Silk isn't whole when he's astrally traveling - he's separated from his body. So it's reasonable that any healing that Severian initiates might not bear fruit until after Silk's s…
01 Jun 2001, 08:54
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This is kind of a joke isn't it? Isn't the whole point of that scene that the "Claw" is merely a common thorn that is holy and powerful only in the sense everything made by the In…
01 Jun 2001, 08:33
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Ok, I see your point. My only disagreement is that Christians in the tradition of Augustine and Aquinas would deny that Lilith or Satan could be "completely evil" (nor Adam "compl…
24 May 2001, 11:59
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Is this a joke? That's the very thing that Christians have always used to say "Manichaeanism is not us." Satan is the opposite of Michael the Archangel; there is no counterpart B…
23 May 2001, 22:44
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This is cool, but I still can't figure out the ending of Wolfe's version of the story. It seems to be some sort of joke or clever twist of wordplay, but I can't figure out what it…
23 May 2001, 09:53
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Better yet, Lewis's Perelandra, in which a human from Earth becomes the agent of evil attempting to orchestrate a second fall on the Edenic Venus. I like the idea that, disasterou…
18 May 2001, 08:26
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SOLDIER OF SIDON! SOLDIER OF SIDON! SOLDIER OF SIDON! -Rostrum P.S. Pretty please?…
11 May 2001, 13:19
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That's funny. I assumed that the Christian holy man and baptism were the parts Wolfe had added. Neat to see that the nifty part (the flock dwindling to a single bird) is from Wo…
11 May 2001, 08:52
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So, don't keep me in suspense--what happens to the children in the original version? Does it have the bit about the flock dwindling to a single bird? I think that's the coolest p…
10 May 2001, 16:23
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The explanation came to me right after I hit send. Lilith and Adam and Eden are post fall, as shown by Cain having already killed Abel. It's just that, even after the Fall, it to…
10 May 2001, 09:11
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Still, that's a big problem - Cain and Abel, and murder particularly, are definitely post-Fall, so it's hard to see how Adam (and Eden) could still be glorified and unfallen if Cai…
10 May 2001, 08:49
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Although I'm not sure how (if?) it fits with the creation narratives in Genesis, the Lilith myth seems to take place before the Fall. There is a tradition that before the Fall, hu…
09 May 2001, 08:38
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Need I point out this last bit is probably a reference to Cain and Abel? I hate to say it, loving Wolfe as I do, but this whole dialect thing strikes me as a cheap way of making b…
06 May 2001, 21:43
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Other good Wolfe Short Shorts: "A Solar Labyrinth," "Westwind," "How the Whip Came Back," "Peritonitis," "The War Beneath the Tree," "Useful Phrases" (actually Wolfe's translation…
04 May 2001, 12:06
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So how many people are _actually_ attacked by inhumi in a given year (not counting weddings)? Of those, how many suffer any permanent harm? -Rostrum *This is WHORL, for discuss…
25 Apr 2001, 16:00
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Interestingly, First Things, a conservative, mostly Roman Catholic journal has a mostly positive review of Pullman's series this month (May issue) by Daniel Moloney. He's not so c…
25 Apr 2001, 10:33
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That doesn't seem like it would merit a flat, "Yes." I'd expect more of a, "well, in theory, if I could get everyone else to cooperate, we could destroy them." But when she says …
24 Apr 2001, 22:57
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So you're imagining Krait dying in Horn's arms and whispering, "The one thing we fear, the one weapon that would destroy us, is if humans ever develop skins so think we cannot suck…
24 Apr 2001, 11:51
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A sword is obviously a weapon, even if it's a sword so big no one could actually use it. But a fact about the inhumi would only be called a weapon if someone were to say, "Ah! Thi…
24 Apr 2001, 11:03
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I am still unable to read "a weapon too heavy to wield" as anything but "a weapon fraught with (moral?) danger to the wielder." Or maybe "a weapon you can't control (that will des…
23 Apr 2001, 15:38
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It's not the same, but it has several characteristics in common with Silk|Horn's astral travel that Mucor's posessions don't: only works when Mora is asleep, ability to bring other…
23 Apr 2001, 12:32
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What about Mora's dreamwalking/possessions, which seem to be linked somehow to Fava's spirit? -Rostrum *This is WHORL, for discussion of Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun.…
22 Apr 2001, 21:48
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Never mind the wacky Typhon-is-a-neighbor theory, I don't think there's any evidence that Pas or Passilk ever posessed Silk, Horn, or Silk|Horn. Silk|Horn is Passilk inasmuch as t…
22 Apr 2001, 21:44
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I think that bit about personification is important. In real life, Envy and Pride and Lust and Avarice are often all interrelated, so any attempt to create a character beset by En…
20 Apr 2001, 11:13
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Do we see any chem to human transfers in Long Sun? Or were you just referring to Jonas? Having a robot canibalize a human's prosthetics for spare parts is not so hard to swallow…
20 Apr 2001, 08:52
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But one of the main arguments for Pig's demideity ("godlingness"?) is that comment about his ears, suggesting some kind of biological kinship with the big guy. I agree, but if the…
19 Apr 2001, 16:07
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Alga wrote: From Rostrum: If anything, the extreme brutality of what happened makes me lean more toward believing that Seawrack's song produced some kind of irresistable compulsi…
19 Apr 2001, 11:11
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I think the key has to be each one's temptation scene. Stubb's seems to be appealing to his desire to be thought smart and essential for an important case (and appealing to the yo…
19 Apr 2001, 09:39
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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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While I agree that Horn has serious flaws, I think you're exaggerating things here to try to make your point. I'll give you most of this one, but my impression was more that Horn …
16 Apr 2001, 17:32
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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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Don't have the passage in front of me, but in OBW, Horn tells Wizer that he wants to see Silk again and talk with him more than anything else in the whorl, and "Nettle feels the sa…
11 Apr 2001, 08:33
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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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Rereading OBW, I was trying to make sense of the Rajan's musings that Silk might be on Blue somewhere, or have died or Green. Could Horn be that deluded even after the confrontati…
10 Apr 2001, 22:38
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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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