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One curious contrast I noticed between the postoperative recuperating Typhon of Urth and the bicephalic simulation Pas of the Whorl. Typhon of Urth was rather reticent about his, …
13 Dec 1999, 18:19
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Previously, while discussing Hethor’s mirrors I mentioned that the Good Ship Tzadkiel did not appear to be a lightsail craft in anything like the conventional sense. Lightsails wou…
09 Dec 1999, 23:07
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You know, during all this recent discussion of Wofean science and the degree of “hardness” we should expect to find in it (speaking as one of the hardline nitpickers), I’m surpise…
09 Dec 1999, 23:05
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I too had gotten a certain bee in my bonnet to the effect Wolfe was signalling that in some sense (other than literal!) Cyriaca was Sev's mother. Why else would there be all that m…
02 Dec 1999, 11:15
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At the risk of being exiled to the (nonexistent) Tolkien list, I'll interject a comment or two here. Tolkien's Arda is pre-Mosaic, and almost certainly antediluvian. The revealed …
24 Nov 1999, 14:36
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Well, forget Borges, forget Proust - it would appear Mr. Wolfe's mentor is the late Samuel Clemens!<g> Now that we've spotted a possible source for the "eclipse trick" in UNS, and …
24 Nov 1999, 13:37
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As you probably can tell, I'm not a literature scholar. I'll have to paraphrase Sev's line on this subject: if I sometimes manage to seem a peer of the esteemed contributors to thi…
01 Nov 1999, 20:35
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... ... Greetings, Mikah. Not such a crazy theory - thanks for the interesting observations re Tagalog, etc takes on the title "Apu". I don't by any means claim to "know" Quechua,…
29 Oct 1999, 15:55
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It has, including a rather recent iteration which should be in the latest volume. Since I've taken an interest in the 'magnetic' aspect of the issue, I'll repeat that Urth, havin…
26 Oct 1999, 09:13
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Mitchell A. Bailey wrote: ... Whoops, my mistake, it WAS in the book, near the beginning, in a chapter entitled "The Eclipse", at that! BTW, I noticed that among the protagonists…
12 Oct 1999, 11:02
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This seems to illustrate a principle of culture I vaguely recall from school: the history and traditions of a ruling class, often arising and being deposed cyclically, tend to pass…
09 Oct 1999, 15:26
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... Wasn't there an "eclipse trick" featured in the 1931 movie "A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court" with Will Rogers in the title role? (it wasn't in Samuel Clemens' book…
09 Oct 1999, 13:32
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Greene, Carlton wrote: ... Relevance? Severian doesn't use a magnetic compass. Nor does anyone else. As I pointed out previously, Urth probably has little or no magnetic field b…
01 Oct 1999, 15:32
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Um, are you referring to the "bullets of power" Baldanders provided for the lake people? Baldanders told us what they were: "Natrium" - i.e. sodium metal. _Sword_ contains a pretty…
30 Sep 1999, 21:50
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Macronaut wrote:... I seem to recall that Sev compared their "thrumming" sound as well as looks to that of locusts. That thought occurred to me during a period when we had an unus…
24 Sep 1999, 15:24
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Furthermore, regarding use of monopoles and interactions w/ Urth's alleged magnetic field - rising above the trees to see the forest... Back when I first started posting, I posed …
11 Aug 1999, 14:24
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Mantis, if that was the worst thing anyone ever said to, or about, me, I'd be a happy man indeed!<g> ..but wouldn't monopoles tend to accelerate away from the "like" planetary pol…
11 Aug 1999, 08:51
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Now let me get this straight: the cherry-leaf fliers the Autarch and a few privileged characters of the Commonwealth (including Vodalus) possess supposedly get their lift from the …
02 Aug 1999, 18:25
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... I have to agree with that; rigid breakable glasslike mirrors do seem to be implied... ...and knowing Inire, I don't think I can even argue convincingly that he simply made an…
10 Jul 1999, 22:41
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While I haven't fathomed where Hethor came from, nor his real name (and if it's Kim Lee Soong, why is he never described as resembling a Xanthoderm, as Agilus and Agia were?), but …
03 Jul 1999, 14:00
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I'll have to confess to a minor goof, inasmuch as I intended to stick to your chronology and not try to construct one of my own. Writing from the seat of my pants, I momentarily fo…
21 Jun 1999, 20:10
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Thought this story from the BBC News site of June 18th might interest you (the Drudge Report had a link to it) An outfit called American Cell Technology has acknowledged that they…
19 Jun 1999, 10:26
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You’ve tried to explain “fuligin” to the clerk at the costume shop. You display any of the following bumper stickers ( on an OFF-road vehicle, natch) “The Conciliator Saves” ”I…
18 Jun 1999, 18:49
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Roy C. Lackey wrote: Thanks, Roy ... ... Well, of course the 'megatherians' I had in mind were really Erebus, Abaia, et al, themselves more so than their creatures. "Vanquish" n…
16 Jun 1999, 12:34
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Some additional thoughts on Inire: Here is a puzzle I haven't been able to crack. Does any other Urthling get the idea that there is some kind of connection between Father Inire a…
16 Jun 1999, 10:59
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... Ascribing Who was it who wrote earlier that Wolfe regularly explores the boundaries of what constitutes humanity? " If it's possible for someone to lose his humanity, surely i…
12 Jun 1999, 19:03
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Inire probably arrived at about the same time as, or shortly after, the sun started to gutter. Inire seems to have openly appeared on Urth at about the same time, no coincidence, a…
12 Jun 1999, 17:42
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Of everything which has been said thus far about Father Inire, it strikes me that the most germaine point has thus far been missed. Father Inire is not merely an incidental, ecce…
12 Jun 1999, 17:29
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My take has been that the House Absolute was reclaimed as a residence/command center rather early in the Monarch's Empire, several millenia earlier; the painted ceiling could date …
09 Jun 1999, 16:46
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... Concurrence! Exactly what I was wondering when this crew-of-crashed-spaceship theory for the original residents of the Antechamber first got floated. Ummm, I think Severian a…
09 Jun 1999, 09:59
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... well, there IS that loong wait. Or maybe an airport/ commercial spaceport. The original residents of the Antechamber were "bumped" passengers, waiting to be assigned a new fli…
08 Jun 1999, 18:38
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Being a literal-minded, rather than a literary-minded sort, I never considered the Piteous Gate business, as partially explained in the opening chap of "Sword", as any great myster…
01 Jun 1999, 13:53
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In the vein of this ongoing "Death & Memory" discussion, I had noticed there seems to be a motif or idea running throught B/UNS and some other Wolfe works as well relating memory a…
21 Apr 1999, 14:45
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Since things are sorta quiet lately... I have set out to catalogue parallels between 5HC, B/UNS, other than those already discussed recently, be they similarity of situation, a sim…
17 Apr 1999, 15:51
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...The ... ... Whoops! This is what I get for getting impulsive just before staff-meeting time. I realize that the idea is still at this point full of holes in that Sev would ne…
13 Apr 1999, 11:54
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... And Dorcas' first child Ouen, in whose childbirth (? or infancy, at least) she died the first time, apparently was Sev's father! If we buy the idea that the new baby is Cathe…
13 Apr 1999, 10:48
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In his essay "Roy Trenchard, Homeboy", Robert Borski posits an influx of Annese abos attempting to 'pass' as Terran humans into the cities. The motivation might be to escape genoci…
10 Apr 1999, 23:23
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Tony Ellis wrote: ... Well, yes, valid point based on the assumption. But then again, there may not have been any such thing as abo's in the sense of a native race, and the Tren…
10 Apr 1999, 22:34
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Re the nature and fate of the St. Anne aborigines, including the Shadow Children, we could argue with nearly equal justice a number of alternate scenarios, e.g.: (1) both races we…
09 Apr 1999, 20:28
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Tony, we might just have to agree to disagree here, but thanks for your interest and thought-provoking debate. I guess my nature is more literal-minded. Like I said, Wolfe probably…
09 Apr 1999, 20:26
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Mitchell A. Bailey wrote: ... What the Old Wise One actually says is "'We had no names before men me Guess I better own up to a goof: when the OWO makes that statement there are s…
06 Apr 1999, 20:06
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The explaination I would offer is basec on the fact that, as you say, the Old Wise One at the time this remark was made was being generated by one lone Shadow Child, Sandwalker, an…
06 Apr 1999, 14:41
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... Well, if you transmit via electromagnetic radiation of some wavelength so it propogates at c = ~186,000 miles/s, and you've got a REALLY slow modem, so that it takes 3.76 sec …
05 Apr 1999, 17:11
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"If it's possible for someone to lose his humanity, surely it must be possible for something that once had none to find it. What one loses, another finds, everywhere." - Severian, …
04 Apr 1999, 22:18
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Thanks, Roy You meant to say Dollo's law, I presume. Actually, I had never heard of Dollo's Law until I read 5HC almost twenty years ago, and I never heard of Lamarck until I read…
03 Apr 1999, 17:10
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In Reference to Robert Borski's "Ascians" of 3/29/99 I made much the same objections to the first draft of Mr. Borski's hypothesis when he published it on his Web site. Since Dan …
02 Apr 1999, 21:18
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Thanks Mark. When I considered that possibility, I recognized that it is problematic also, especially if you accept the "near future" theory. Consider: some very long, forgotten p…
02 Apr 1999, 20:50
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I was hip from the first with the fact that Latin was used in BNS as a stand-in for some language which to Severian was "dead", but from our perspective probably has not even come …
01 Apr 1999, 21:47
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... ... Thanks, Matthew. I myself have always been a "far future" partisan too. It pained me to reach that conclusion, believe me! I'm glad you mentioned Casdoe's cliff - that s…
31 Mar 1999, 15:06
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<< From: Dan Parmenter <dan at lec.com> Subject: (urth) Green Date: Wed, 24 Feb 1999 09:25:00 ** Spoiler Warning ** This post obliquely refers to events at the end of EXODUS FROM T…
31 Mar 1999, 12:30
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