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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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mantis writes: <<What a day that was for President Den: Bill Batton with his clockwork orange, er, clockwork elephant; Eleanor Bold with her rather ominous request to plant a tree…
26 Oct 2000, 14:30
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mantis wrote: <<Crafty Roy seems to be saying that the memory mansion was begun on the grounds and form of Olivia's house. Outrageous!>> <<Or sneaky Roy might be saying that the…
25 Oct 2000, 01:36
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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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mantis wrote: [snip] [snip] A minor quibble: My take on the earthquake is the exact opposite of that; the earthquake was the effect, not the cause, of the energy exchange. S…
02 Dec 1999, 00:33
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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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mantis, Yes, that occurred to me, too. I wonder if Dorcas's basket was the same color. <g> It was just an aside, leading to this question: Where was Severian born? He states than …
09 Nov 1999, 02:17
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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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ended our dry patch; I'm also gratified that mantis agrees with me in part, a rare event. But to take up the cudgel again: I still contend that Inire's description of the working o…
02 Nov 1999, 02:10
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I'm glad to see amid all this discussion of authors, writing styles, influences, and contributions to literature, in and out of the genre, Heinlein get some credit. The younger lis…
28 Oct 1999, 01:30
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alga wrote: [snip] [snip] How can I possibly argue with that!? <g> I surrender my sword, for... "Where in dreams I have not wandered, my heart is slow to go." Roy…
28 Oct 1999, 01:25
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I thought the question of whether the Commonwealth was in the Southern Hemisphere or not was settled. It is in the Southern Hemisphere, and there's no doubt about it. In addition t…
27 Oct 1999, 02:22
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First of all, welcome to Daniel Fusch! Most of the questions you raised have been addressed elsewhere in the archives. Note that I didn't say they had been answered. <g> Actually, …
22 Oct 1999, 01:30
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My Dorcas post was more a case of speculating in public than anything else. I don't see any good reason, in the context of TBOTNS, for Dorcas to be a vampire, either, and I am cert…
03 Oct 1999, 00:26
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Roy's estimate for Dorcas is plausible, although I tend to suspect that she looks younger than she is, and this has lowered Agia's estimate (she also has some motive for (a) jealou…
02 Oct 1999, 04:30
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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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The fauna and flora of the Commonwealth are all South American, but not all of South America is in the Southern Hemisphere. When Severian is walking along the coast in _Citadel_, c…
23 Aug 1999, 01:05
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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, Actually, your definition of the Harvest Moon is incorrect. As stated, the Harvest Moon could occur as late as October 21 (in the Northern Hemisphere), which is not so. Th…
12 Aug 1999, 06:45
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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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alga: Thanks for taking an interest in the subject. And, as I said, there's a lot more of it in the NEW SUN books, more than is commonly realized, else someone would have writ…
23 Jul 1999, 23:48
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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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Some time ago I mentioned posting something about florigraphy in the Urth Cycle. What follows is not what I originally intended to write about--the message Wolfe intended to convey…
17 Jul 1999, 10:05
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Remember how Uncle Gene says in CASTLE OF THE OTTER (eaten by CASTLE OF DAYS) that the enamel of the pictures in the religious book link to the enamel work sold by Dorcas and done …
08 Jul 1999, 06:52
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he's on Earth, rather than some very odd colony world. His knowledge is obviously based on reading the odd glyphs (there must be mirror-teleporters all over the galaxy). Perhaps th…
23 Jun 1999, 16:55
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mantis, To which you replied: he I took "the one" to refer to the "crimson teratoid sign" on the door. My mistake. You have written: I don't think it does. Why should …
23 Jun 1999, 16:21
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Actually, it's less than obvious from the text that the teratoid sign is what prompted Jonas to say that. He had been walking with Sev like, well, the automaton that he is. The cri…
22 Jun 1999, 15:52
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