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That's what I get for not doing the homework! I don't know about the rest, but of the NECRONOMICON, Gold claims to have "just wrote it" (215), and that it was "never mentioned in…
13 Jun 2001, 13:32
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Further perusal of HEBREW MYTHS yields the following wrt the fratricide of Cain and Abel: "Still others hold that the brothers quarrelled for love of the First Eve, whom God had f…
22 May 2001, 16:08
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The search engine was working last night, and I found the post by alga (vol.19, 10-22-98) I remembered, where she mentioned Lilith's disinclination for the missionary position. Bet…
22 May 2001, 12:24
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Adam wrote: [snip] [snip] But that Lilith (the one in Eden) couldn't! There weren't any other people around; not even Eve had been invented yet! <g> [snip] [snip] The minute …
20 May 2001, 04:50
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So the short answer: she could have co-operated ("submitted" sounds so heavy-handed) and allowed herself to be beamed back to her homeland. Instead she opted to sow more confusion …
17 May 2001, 01:36
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As mantis pointed out, some person or persons *had* to have been experimenting with the device for the NP to know as much as he did about it. So far as we know, it has been in the …
15 May 2001, 00:34
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Rostrum asks: Well, they weren't part of a larger flock, per se. The spell laid on them by Aeife was that they retain the forms of swans (but with minds and speech intact) for thr…
10 May 2001, 23:00
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Dan'l having written: And mantis replying: There is too much evidence in the story of an election-as-usual to support the theory that the NP came to the office through the back d…
10 May 2001, 21:13
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Rostrum asks: The basic story told by Wolfe--the children being turned into swans and their eventual passing--is one of the "Three Sorrowful Stories of Erin", known as the "Fate o…
10 May 2001, 14:25
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Matthew and Jeff Wilson wrote, respectively: There are no justifications within the story to indicate that it takes place in a world much, if any, different from our own. And the …
10 May 2001, 01:45
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Here is my spin on "Copperhead". As others have mentioned, the "boys" mentioned by the naked woman are, indeed, Cain and Abel, as well as the murdered man and his murderer in the s…
09 May 2001, 03:20
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Anyone else notice the temporal problems within the story? GW is on record as stating that he doesn't like to repeat himself wrt important story information. Yet, the protagonist i…
08 May 2001, 01:32
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Adam, re: the end-of-the-world hypothesis: Not I. I agree about the "dreamlike quality", but I think an even more telling detail in the passage is that when Weer enters the waiti…
10 Dec 2000, 13:09
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Almost all of the stories in PEACE, imbedded or "real-life" ones, are unfinished, presumably because they are painful to Weer, one way or another. The imbedded stories are analogie…
27 Nov 2000, 23:40
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Julius Smart grew up on a farm not too far from Cassionsville, which is why he went back there to buy a drugstore (148). He was about 25 years old at the time of Macafee's birthday…
18 Nov 2000, 03:06
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About Miss Birkhead: I've had to talk myself out of the idea--more than once--that she and Sherry Gold were the same person. Sherry dies; Den has a stroke. Birkhead dies; Den has a…
10 Nov 2000, 01:27
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For background about what mantis and I have been struggling with, and for those who may be interested, and/or want to make a stab at establishing their own timeline for PEACE, here…
10 Nov 2000, 01:24
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Hattiesburg, Mississippi (where Doris joined the carnival) is just about as far east of the Mississippi River as Gladewater, Texas (where Doris died) is west of it. Memphis, Tennes…
06 Nov 2000, 02:03
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Dan'l wrote: <<But... Perhaps his life is "Kansas" and his LAD "Oz?" Idunno. That doesn't seem to work too well. I sort of want to see Part 5, which takes place more in the LAD off…
03 Nov 2000, 13:48
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It occurred to me that there should have been no duplicate office in Den's museum-roomed house. There seems to have been one, as real as any of the others, but I still have a probl…
27 Oct 2000, 00:49
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Speaking of timelines for PEACE, here is my version. It is what mantis calls the "EZ" timeline, because it is based on accepting at face value the date of 1938 for the coldhouse pr…
26 Oct 2000, 15:10
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What is it with Miss Birkhead? Like Fr. Inire, she is often mentioned but seldom seen, in fact only makes one direct appearance in the book, when she brings coffee to Den and Bill …
26 Oct 2000, 15:04
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Dan'l Danehy-Oakes' wrote: (Excellent post, btw!) To which Adam Stephanides replied: And Dave Lebling asked: Then we have Den saying to Lois (and this right after learning that …
20 Oct 2000, 23:55
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Talarican: Here is another important datum which must be factored into your chronology, as it relates to Gurloes' age and informs us approximately how long he has been a maste…
20 Aug 2000, 02:35
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Judging from comments Gurloes made to Sev shortly after the trip to the library, Gurloes must then be about fifty years old. He refers to his own "...hard boyhood. For it was harde…
16 Aug 2000, 01:42
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I have been reading the Urth Cycle yet again, trying to ignore the story line (which isn't easy), and pay attention to the details, the little clues that Wolfe drops here and there…
15 Aug 2000, 00:48
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Last year, while pointing out some of Severian's inconsistencies as a narrator, I noted the fact that the night before Thecla's death Sev went to his mausoleum to sulk. He said the…
06 Aug 2000, 23:58
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Seconded. Nigel Price wrote (back on June 6): Surprisingly, very little has been posted to either list about Jonathan's first edition of Ultan's Library--doubly so because mo…
27 Jul 2000, 02:31
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mantis wrote a very insightful piece (as was the recent one about Foila, BTW) with which I quibbled on a small point: Yes, assuming, that is, that that is the source. I d…
02 Dec 1999, 18:49
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Dan Rabin wrote: [snip] From what we are shown in the text, the Conciliator was known to most people of the Commonwealth in Severian's time, but his cult was not widely establishe…
24 Nov 1999, 14:07
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Yes, Triskele was already dead, but he wasn't an aquastor after Sev touched him. An aquastor is rather like a solidified hologram, created and maintained by machinery which has a l…
23 Nov 1999, 01:25
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(Did we already discuss this question? It seems familiar, but I can't find it in the archives.)<< Yes, we (I) did. V25, Sun, 18 Apr 1999, "Inire & the Flood" Yes. We take it as …
22 Nov 1999, 17:46
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Apparently, the Hierogrammates intend to exact revenge/retribution on all of mankind, not just Urth. From (V, XIX), Sev to Apheta: ------------- "Is Urth really so important to yo…
22 Nov 1999, 17:45
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(A) is too strong a summation of my approach. I think the text is roughly accurate--so far as it is given--but Severian deceives himself often enough that his judgements can't be t…
18 Nov 1999, 16:29
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Two instances where Severian admits to lying have already been given (I,III and IV, XXXV); below I will give a third. First, an instance where he acknowledges his memory isn't per…
17 Nov 1999, 01:45
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Jim Henley wrote: -------------- This is another case where someone seems to confuse the specific case (Sev lies) with the general (Sev is a Bad Guy). Evidence of the latter does…
12 Nov 1999, 05:15
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Here are some occasions where Sev lied to the reader; that, or his perfect memory failed him. The day after his elevation he saw the order for Thecla's excruciation to begin on the…
08 Nov 1999, 16:49
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In defense of Jeremy Crampton's argument that Sev lied about "I have never known my father or mother", I offer this: In CLAW, third page of chapter XXVII, Sev does remember his mo…
08 Nov 1999, 01:02
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In the context of the recent discussion of the veracity of Severian's In this sense, Severian is an unreliable narrator.<< Compare that with this excerpt from John Clute's review…
05 Nov 1999, 00:05
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I note that none of the responses to Carlton Greene's "Dorcas as outcast?" post addressed the larger question he raised: was Dorcas really the "nice Catholic girl"--as I believe so…
01 Oct 1999, 16:47
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From a local reviewer--Michael Barrett--of the anthology _999_ in the _San Antonio Express-News_, Sunday, September 26, 1999: Yeah, sounds like Wolfe. Roy…
27 Sep 1999, 21:17
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I have spotted our alga on today's noon news on the local CBS affiliate. The URL is: http://www.broadcast.com/television/kens/archive.stm Scroll down the page to Wednesday, E…
01 Sep 1999, 15:11
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towards the Antarctic icecap, which *must* extend further than it does now. The ice at the other pole stretched right down into Britain during the ice ages, and that was with the S…
24 Aug 1999, 00:30
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mantis, Looking at the exact way it is expressed in the appendix to CLAW, "The *month* is the (then) lunar one of 28 days...", it would seem that the parenthetical "then" is inten…
20 Aug 1999, 03:27
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[snip] I envisioned it as being a large, circular ruin, with small populations living along the river and nearby. And that population doesn't extend the full length of t…
16 Aug 1999, 16:26
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I could find no mention of Spading Moon, but the following is a compilation of various lists of moon-month names found on the web. The traditonal moon name in the OLD FARMER'S ALMA…
12 Aug 1999, 22:52
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mantis, I think you're too early, and that the text bears me out. When Severian says that the feast occurs "in the fading of winter", I believe that he is referring to the "pe…
12 Aug 1999, 03:10
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I can only recall a single instance when a specific date is mentioned in the Urth cycle, and that is only a day of an unnamed month. After the elevation of Roche and Drotte to jour…
11 Aug 1999, 16:35
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Tony: Once I found the scientific name of the angel's trumpet I stopped looking, but alga's answer caused me to look further. I thought the scientific classification of plants…
21 Jul 1999, 10:52
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I would like to say thank you to those who have responded kindly to my flowers post. I wrote it a few weeks ago and only posted it because Robert Borski bullied me into it. And MA-…
20 Jul 1999, 09:56
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