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(UK reader) yeah I just use AddAll, to be honest. I don't know of any dealers who would specialize in this kind of thing. best, Mo…
06 Oct 2019, 09:24
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They exist in the UK parliament, although they're pretty unusual. Most recently I think a few years ago a motion to put us onto the same time zone as neighbouring countries was f…
04 Sep 2014, 15:00
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It seems to me very unlikely that, as a bookish Catholic, he wouldn't have read it. It's one of the key texts of the early Church. Mo # ~ # ~ # WolfeWiki -- a wiki about Gene …
04 Sep 2014, 09:02
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In the Ussherian Biblical chronology, five thousand years prior to the 1990s (ie. 3000 BC) is some time prior to the Flood, among the uneventful list of patriarchs in Genesis 5.…
29 Apr 2014, 21:47
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I have wondered 'why Bath?' In real life it's a smallish antiquated town, with no industrial tradition, and not at all a likely candidate for the hosting of such an exposition. …
24 Aug 2013, 09:50
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Yes, Wat is a version of the common medieval English name (Germanic origin) Walter. (I have always felt the setting was a kind of non-specific mixed Europe, though, as it mingle…
24 Jun 2013, 07:33
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Just on this point, I think the battle of Verdun (WWI, on the Western Front) is the primary reference for this character. The historical Verdun family is a red herring. This bat…
27 Dec 2012, 10:39
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I have read it, some years ago. I found it pretty enjoyable. It is slightly 'easier reading' than most Wolfe, because a lot of the puzzling elements are explained in the text rat…
15 Nov 2012, 19:09
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I always thought that the eyes peering at Quoquo "bright with an intelligence not found in any animal" are those of newly returned humanity, which have been regenerated in reson…
09 Sep 2012, 10:18
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Surely if it were really the Gazelle, then the soda bottle's label wouldn't be crumbling -- it would be brand new. (Unless it had been floating around up there through the interv…
12 Jun 2012, 15:40
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Nice post on Fred Pohl's blog about GW: http://www.thewaythefutureblogs.com/2012/05/gene-wolfe-the-unknowable/ (There's loads of great stuff on this blog, if you don't know of it …
30 May 2012, 08:18
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He didn't -- he hadn't won the award. Asimov's mistake was to say that he had. The actual 'winner' was No Award, although Wolfe's was the highest-rated of the contenders after th…
22 May 2012, 08:02
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Thank you, Marc, that's very generous! best wishes, Mo…
21 Mar 2012, 21:22
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It seems to be OK now, to my click: http://www.wolfewiki.com/pmwiki/pmwiki.php?n=WolfeWiki.Contents so hopefully that was just some mysterious temporary internet glitch, Mo #…
20 Mar 2012, 23:51
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Yes, WolfeWiki contributors have worked enthusiastically over a selection of stories, but it's very patchy. I'm hoping that Marc and those who discuss indivdual stories with him …
20 Mar 2012, 14:16
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Maybe I'm reading you wrongly, but you seem to be tacitly assuming that the various books are accurate descriptions of God as manifest at the time of writing? I have a different…
07 Mar 2012, 19:34
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Will be interesting to hear how (if) this handles the interesting interpretative theories about the identities of the narrator, puppetmaster, etc, as discussed on the wiki: http:…
17 Jan 2012, 09:31
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I was thinking that this insight opens up Andrew Marvell's 'To His Coy Mistress' as a key to the BotNS, with its famous lines: "My vegetable love should grow Vaster then empires, …
09 Nov 2011, 15:53
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It's called A Cabin on the Coast: http://www.wolfewiki.com/pmwiki/pmwiki.php?n=Stories.ACabinOnTheCoast best, Mo # ~ # ~ # WolfeWiki -- a wiki about Gene Wolfe http://www.wolf…
25 Oct 2011, 14:14
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There has been a bit of discussion relating Severian's name to the character Severin in Sacher-Masoch's Venus in Furs Wolfe being Wolfe, there are likely several strands of ref…
24 Aug 2011, 09:13
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This has been fixed now (by DarthEd) -- thanks for spotting! Mo # ~ # ~ # WolfeWiki -- a wiki about Gene Wolfe http://www.wolfewiki.com/pmwiki/…
30 Jun 2011, 08:30
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I first read the four books of BotNS in the wrong order, as they became available in our local library (I was about 14-15 at the time). The later books are so packed with back-re…
23 Jun 2011, 16:50
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Mm, it's pretty poor really. You could tell your spam filter to automatically junk anything from the linkedin.com domain: that way, they may continue, but they won't bother you. …
09 Jun 2011, 09:00
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No, I don't think that can be right -- the "it" that descends from the sky is the "enormous darkness", the subject of the previous sentence (ie. a ship above them, which first ap…
02 Jun 2011, 08:14
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Mm, it's an interesting book (although, I think, an extrapolation of 1978 Britain rather than 1984 Britain). I didn't read it until the mid-80s some time, by which point the idea…
11 May 2011, 11:42
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It's interesting that you had that reading of Nineteen Eighty-Four. I read it not as trying to depict a development of USSR society, but as trying to depict what a collectivist s…
06 May 2011, 09:00
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That certainly makes sense, although I think I would need to know that ancient Greeks / mythic beings had a tradition of marking such deaths in such a way. It would seem a bit we…
19 Apr 2011, 08:03
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I suppose readers who hold the view that when Severian makes errors, they are significant, might interpret that as meaning that actually Hildegrin is Vodalus's 'mistress' -- or a…
19 Apr 2011, 08:01
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Mm, good point. OK, I am convinced now :-) Thanks for explaining in detail! Yes, this interpretation makes it an even sadder story than I'd thought... although he has previously …
17 Apr 2011, 15:38
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'The Fat Magician' and 'The Eleventh City' also involve him, according to the wiki, although I don't have those so can't confirm details. best, Mo # ~ # ~ # WolfeWiki -- a wi…
17 Apr 2011, 15:28
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That sounds like a great theory -- she supposedly had special responsibility for sandy beaches, it seems: http://www.theoi.com/Pontios/NereisPsamathe.html best, Mo # ~ # ~ # …
17 Apr 2011, 15:24
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My understanding is the same, except for this last bit about how/why the maid died. I think that the Nereid took her life, in exchange for facilitating the experience. (Or possib…
17 Apr 2011, 10:01
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It's one of my favourite books too, but the accumulated weight and years of Nabokov scholarship out there make me wary of saying much more than that about it :-) best, Mo # ~…
14 Apr 2011, 06:32
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Hate the sin, love the sinner... Mo # ~ # ~ # WolfeWiki -- a wiki about Gene Wolfe http://www.wolfewiki.com/pmwiki/…
18 Jan 2011, 09:44
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Although he could see if Lune was clouded or not, surely he couldn't possibly see if it was actually raining there at the time? So imo this unambiguously means that the clouds an…
13 Jan 2011, 10:39
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That word also serves neatly to describe the Vodalarian method of recruitment, Mo # ~ # ~ # WolfeWiki -- a wiki about Gene Wolfe http://www.wolfewiki.com/pmwiki/…
07 Jan 2011, 12:05
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There's a list of links to various Wolfe interviews on the wiki: http://www.wolfewiki.com/pmwiki/pmwiki.php?n=WolfeWiki.Interviews if that's any help, best, Mo # ~ # ~ # Wolfe…
06 Jan 2011, 17:31
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This is why one has to seek for truth AND penitence... Mo # ~ # ~ # WolfeWiki -- a wiki about Gene Wolfe http://www.wolfewiki.com/pmwiki/…
06 Jan 2011, 12:51
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There was a discussion about this on here a few years ago: http://lists.urth.net/htdig.cgi/urth-urth.net/2006-July/thread.html#6578 I wondered myself if it might be the biohazard …
14 Dec 2010, 15:14
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Added a link to this from the WolfeWiki page now! best, Mo # ~ # ~ # WolfeWiki -- a wiki about Gene Wolfe http://www.wolfewiki.com/pmwiki/…
08 Dec 2010, 12:42
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I assumed this dog-headed ape was just an ordinary baboon (albeit rather well trained), as they're generally referred to by Classical authors as cynocephalid: http://en.wikipedia…
07 Dec 2010, 08:44
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At that point, the answer really could have been "No, maybe it wouldn't actually", imo. When, on reading the books, it became apparent, my reaction wasn't that delightful feelin…
21 Sep 2010, 22:03
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Horn's children are named after co-parts of a similar animal, not after parts of a horn. And what might Blood's sons be called -- Corpuscle? Platelet? You'd really be grasping a…
06 Sep 2010, 20:45
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In Classical times Africa was seen as a land of mythic wonders, hence "ex Africa semper aliquid novi". So I think this fits into the fantastical pattern of the other suggested ho…
06 Sep 2010, 08:47
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Good stuff! Having watched closely as you gradually assembled the elements of the explanation, I moved from sceptical to pretty much convinced. Although I should probably now clo…
26 Aug 2010, 08:07
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This kind of conversation is doomed to misunderstanding, frustration, and breaches of the 5-posts-a-day limit, unless you use a standard phonetic representation. May I suggest th…
25 Aug 2010, 16:42
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Although that is certainly a possibility, it would seem to render vain any attempt to infer meaning from any of the character names. For example, if I was trying to persuade peop…
16 Aug 2010, 14:38
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Although they are in that sense more closely culturally associated with gulls than are owls and ostriches, really they are no more closely related to them than those other birds …
16 Aug 2010, 09:53
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Just on a zoological note: a fulmar is not a type of gull, but a type of petrel. Apart from both being birds, fulmars and gulls are not related at all. best, Mo # ~ # ~ # W…
15 Aug 2010, 17:31
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I was thinking of 'It's a Wonderful Life', I must admit. Which of these three/four films is more likely to be dear to Wolfe's heart, would we imagine? Mo # ~ # ~ # WolfeWiki …
30 Jul 2010, 08:00
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