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This is pure speculation on my part, as I was raised Protestant, so please forgive me if I stereotype. 1. SF authors are interested in, um, science. Science being a logical and …
18 Dec 2009, 08:21
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I don't think that Card became didactic until his later years. I found Seventh Son to be much more The King Must Die than Atlas Shrugged. I didn't know he was a Mormon when I rea…
18 Dec 2009, 07:27
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Apologies - I was thinking of this remark by Mr. Lackey: "Given that he is a religious man, it might be assumed that he resented the implication that people in Old Testament times …
19 Apr 2007, 16:52
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At 05:10 PM 4/18/2007, you wrote: However: "It is the interior change that suffices, the transformation that rewards" This statement is Christian doctrine reworded, so I doubt …
19 Apr 2007, 02:54
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Thank you both for your replies. My reading was more sympathetic to Mr. Lackey's, but I wish I hadn't taken the book back to the library so I could read the story again to look fo…
18 Apr 2007, 22:10
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I'm not trying to be snobbist. If anything I would say that Wolfe has broken ground Tolkien never could have conceived of. However, I would also say that Wolfe has never been lim…
17 Apr 2007, 07:12
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I think the distinction is a matter of foundation - the bedrock for Tolkien's creation was the ancient Finnish myth, Arthur, etc. The bedrock for much of what is being referred to…
16 Apr 2007, 21:30
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I'm not sure whether the film was intended as a satire or not - but that's certainly the only way it can be enjoyed. Witness dialogue like the following: Rico: "You're some sor…
13 Apr 2007, 01:40
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----- Original Message ---- His memory is affected but it is a different type of damage than Latro's. He lacks the ability to sequence normally, for instance, and also has some d…
11 Apr 2007, 16:48
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There Are Doors could be a great movie - the novel is driven mostly by action and dialogue, rather than atmospheric prose, philosophizing, or textual games. The themes in There Ar…
10 Apr 2007, 18:30
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I'm glad someone asked this question. I've enjoyed reading all the responses because I've often tried to understand why Wolfe has Severian act this way. The way Severian treats t…
08 Apr 2007, 07:14
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First of all, it is possible that the wet-nurses live very near the Tower but are not housed in the grey metal cells, leading to Severian's deduction. It's difficult to imagine Wo…
01 Nov 2006, 03:03
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I don't think it's very difficult to imagine a scenario in which the statements are consistent. Here is an excerpt from your email: "The tautology set up by Severian is that 1) h…
01 Nov 2006, 00:00
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You're conflating the "take" from "take from the womb" and the "take" from "the children the torturers take." As several people have noted, they don't have to refer to the same co…
31 Oct 2006, 20:43
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I wrote as much, albeit much abbreviated. I should have put together the final piece - Severian himself is stating that he breastfed, and obviously he is a torturer. So the only …
31 Oct 2006, 16:30
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Aha! I missed that. It does seem like a contradiction. But in a world without baby formula, perhaps the wet-nurse puts her milk in a bottle. The torturers might refuse to let t…
29 Oct 2006, 04:13
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What statement about wet nurses? Looking at the Baby Sev post I found this line: but I'm not clear on what the earlier statement is.…
28 Oct 2006, 20:47
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"?Usage note Since the latter part of the 18th century, a distinction has been made between born and borne as past participles of the verb bear1. Borne is the past participle in al…
27 Oct 2006, 14:34
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http://www.allwords.com/word-born.html If the "borne by" means "to bear a burden" then the sentence seems clunky. It takes a right turn and makes Catherine the focus rather than …
26 Oct 2006, 21:17
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Roy, I'm confused about the contradiction you are trying to point out. The passage from Urth names his mother and says that she bore him in her prison cell, and the passage from C…
26 Oct 2006, 19:50
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I agree with you that our emotions and our thought-processes may not be as different as they have been portrayed. Our experiences, however, are far more divergent than the tools wi…
20 Oct 2006, 03:48
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You have good reason to suspect Elie Wiesel of anti-Semitism, I suppose. I agree with the poster who said that Wolfe is a misanthrope. Many of his characters suffer terribly. Th…
19 Oct 2006, 18:23
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There Are Doors, an understated, observed piece by Steven Soderbergh. Has a Gattaca-like path to acceptance. I think TaD has the least amount of machination and hidden meaning/pl…
16 Oct 2006, 23:09
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He refutes this view on the basis of two ideas -- first, the writer is not operating in a vacuum, but is a conduit through which species- and culture-universal as well as indiv…
21 Sep 2006, 23:46
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As an organizational comment - isn't what you are looking to create something like a Scofield's Bible? http://bible.crosswalk.com/Commentaries/ScofieldReferenceNotes/srn.cgi?book=…
21 Sep 2006, 23:17
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I think this sort of interpretation is diversionary at best. If what an author achieves is greater (or more significant) than what he intended, then his skill as an author has fai…
21 Sep 2006, 21:55
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http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0060007451/sr=8-1/qid=1145478824/ref=sr_1_1/102-7129126-3506518?%5Fencoding=UTF8 I saw this in a bookstore today but didn't have time to read all …
19 Apr 2006, 20:39
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I'm with you. But for those who believe in the story literally, or even those who look to Biblical story as templates for their own actions, the fact that it is symbolic of later …
11 Apr 2005, 15:24
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I don't condemn you but . . . don't you read Gene Wolfe? I admit that I never assumed that the author was speaking through the characters because the characters presented such a b…
09 Apr 2005, 17:00
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I apologize if someone has already said what I'm about to say: I still have about 160 unread posts but I wanted to point something out here before I forget it. The problem with t…
09 Apr 2005, 08:34
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I would say that defining happiness as the pursuit of one's desires is semantically empty, because one can always say, "Of course you're pursuing that which you desire; how else ca…
16 Feb 2005, 07:34
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As I've gotten older, I've noticed more and more that I read my own motivations into other people's actions. Not that I *do* it more and more, just that I've noticed how much I do…
14 Feb 2005, 20:10
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That sounds like a colonic. Do you guys think you could spend a little more time thinking and making your points clear before submitting a post? A proofread or two would also go …
02 Feb 2005, 20:33
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But are the similarities superficial? That is, are they solving problems for themselves using human methods, or for the same reasons humans would have? Do they believe that they …
02 Feb 2005, 10:38
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I'm not sure I get the "have to nuke the asteriod" bit. If the computers ran off solar energy than it would be a legimate problem, I suppose, although not for the reasons they wer…
02 Feb 2005, 06:47
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You're right; I was confusing the two stories in my head. Wikipedia says: It has been claimed that the psychedelic "stargate sequence" that concludes the film, entitled "Jupiter …
26 Jan 2005, 13:53
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Interesting. I'd heard that you can play Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon with 2001: A Space Odyssey (the film) simultaneously, and that the band timed the music that way. Let …
26 Jan 2005, 12:20
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This isn't a scholarly post; just a strange observation. I loaned my brother Book of the New Sun and Radiohead's Amnesiac at the same time, and afterward he said he noticed so man…
26 Jan 2005, 11:29
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Which ones? How do you get to Wales in a mini? This is a Marx brothers type joke. It's like "to get to the other side" . . . the practical answer to a ridiculous question. I do…
19 Jan 2005, 17:05
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Yeah, I think the killing was motivated mainly by bitterness; Idnn was marrying an unworthy soulless creature for her father's political gain; Garvaon was unaware of the true natur…
04 Jan 2005, 12:34
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I got the impression it was because the males felt emasculated by their women, who are larger and stronger than they are, and perhaps because the giantesses don't want them around.…
04 Jan 2005, 10:12
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James Wynn said: I've been mulling on this, and I think you're saying that he's going to wake up in America to discover that he's still a young boy, similar to King Peter and the …
03 Jan 2005, 13:14
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I second that. Able spells it out a little bit at one point, when he mentions that the archers who marched out to the battle before the gates of the giants' castle (can't remember…
03 Jan 2005, 11:30
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I'd like to know this as well, but I also feel that Smiler was a little too deux ex machina. Is there something about that character that I don't know? Why is it significant that…
03 Jan 2005, 07:47
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Out of several thoughts on the Wizard, I tried to cull those which I think this group is likely to find most interesting. The first is a question that I will attempt an answer to.…
03 Jan 2005, 07:22
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May I say "Merry Christmas" to everyone who wishes to hear it? I finished the book yesterday evening; I currently have mixed feelings about it. I'm sure you will all change that …
24 Dec 2004, 13:49
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The reason I loathe Donaldson is because I felt like I was going to be sick fifty pages into the first book in the gap series. I rarely stop reading a book, because I don't think …
09 Dec 2004, 10:15
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I think you're right about the Wolfe's mystical take of the problem. The scene that comes foremost to my mind is in the tomb of Apu Panchu; the aliens have resurrected Severian fr…
03 Dec 2004, 06:43
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I think what he was getting at was that Tolkien had broken some fundamentally new fantastic ground, in a unique way. He created a world from scratch; even though it was informed a…
01 Dec 2004, 19:13
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Good grief. I feel like I'm drowning in ideas. I buy this. I'm not sure what he's getting at, except that your name isn't exactly flowery. Also, I don't think people like gende…
30 Nov 2004, 14:00
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