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There are difficulties inherent with trying to map a person's life to some lines from a play. But let's assume that your basic idea is correct, that the woman Sev saw in the loggia…
29 Jun 2008, 03:48
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Yes, it was. August 16, 2006, to be specific: http://lists.urth.net/pipermail/urth-urth.net/2006-August/006684.html Nope. I was responding to your assertion of this June 25th tha…
27 Jun 2008, 05:06
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show lameness are family members. There is a lame character who resides in the Citadel and who has the power and authority to find and capture a runaway wife, sequester her in a t…
26 Jun 2008, 17:43
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It was someone else, not bsharp, who suggested that Catherine was Valeria's daughter by way of her second husband. I screwed up and should have left off the last half of that last …
25 Jun 2008, 23:21
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But Valeria and her family (conspicuously absent; all we see is her maid) live in the lower levels of the tower, thus they live in Severian's past. Catherine's name is notable desc…
25 Jun 2008, 22:23
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Sev saw only three figures on the roof. The third figure who hid, and who was larger than the other two, was Hildegrin. -Roy…
18 Jun 2008, 18:24
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Chapter VIII. "You were correct when you said Erebus and Abaia are as great as mountains, and I admit that I was surprised you knew it. Most people lack the imagination to conceive…
18 Jun 2008, 17:55
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Huh. My second thought after reading that was about the scene depicted on an inner door of the Old Autarch's whorehouse: "It had a stained-glass insert showing the Temptation." (SH…
16 Jun 2008, 19:28
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If neither version of Sev became the Conciliator, then no one did. The circumstances of his birth were contrived, and some power or powers had been orchestrating the event long bef…
15 Jun 2008, 18:00
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Without the Conciliator, there would have been no Claw, no order of Pelerines to guard it. If no Pelerines, what was the monastic order Catherine ran away from that led to her impr…
15 Jun 2008, 05:21
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Right. Because you seem to have done homework in the archives, I assume you have read what I said on this subject a couple years ago and won't repeat it. Looking back on that stuff…
14 Jun 2008, 07:53
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Then your quarrel is with Wolfe, not me. The text says what it says. Like I said before, the Wall of Nessus just can't be that tall and not be visible from ground level virtually a…
12 Jun 2008, 09:05
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A league is set at "about three miles" in an appendix to CLAW, and even if you set "a few" to equal the more conservative three, you get some pretty wild figures. Frankly, when yo…
12 Jun 2008, 07:25
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These are the facts: Dan'l said: "Tzadkiel's Ship -- *counting its sails*, is significantly bigger than a mile in diameter, at least for purposes of shadow-casting. Solar sails ha…
12 Jun 2008, 05:09
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Dan'l is correct. The Ship has seven sides, the decks covered by "masts beyond counting". (URTH, I, 2) Some of the masts are "separated by tens of leagues at least". (I, 6) Many sa…
12 Jun 2008, 00:05
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Or I don't believe there is any mention at all of Typhon's children in the Urth Cycle, and the only black bean story I recall is the one told by Jonas at the very end of SHADOW, w…
11 Jun 2008, 05:05
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-------------------------------------------------------------------------<< Neat trick, that, if the Ship can hold it below or above its decks without getting sucked in. Stipulati…
11 Jun 2008, 02:52
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Even the most ignorant savages can tell the difference between an eclipse and a man's shadow. Dawn had been delayed by an eclipse. The natives knew that the sun should have been up…
10 Jun 2008, 19:23
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There is a scene when severian is simming and looks up to feel watched from the moon. Unfortunately I really need to read urth again.<<< The bigger problem is that "aphetas plane…
10 Jun 2008, 18:46
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I have always thought that the Ship really was there to stage the eclipse that saved Sev's bacon. The eclipse was not a coincidence. Obviously, it is a physical impossibility for a…
10 Jun 2008, 08:52
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Maybe I didn't convey the sense of it clearly enough. In context, it is apparent that something unusual had happened to the sun *before* the astronomers made there predictions as t…
10 Jun 2008, 05:04
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I suppose one might draw that conclusion from what I have said in this latest round of an old argument, but that's not my position. In past discussions I argued that the Hierogramm…
09 Jun 2008, 09:06
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My judgment has no bearing on what the Increate may have wanted them to do. I don't know what or even if the Increate wanted them to do anything. Either they were acting on orders …
09 Jun 2008, 08:14
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Against this are Typhon's comments about his astronomers being wrong in their predictions about the rate of change in the sun's output. Contrary to their predictions, it had declin…
09 Jun 2008, 04:15
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No argument. I understand what you are saying, and it's quite true that Wolfe has made characters express exactly that school of thought. The problem with the "everything that hap…
09 Jun 2008, 02:24
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Just a follow-up on what I said before. There is no doubt that the black hole came to be in the sun during Typhon's era. At issue is whether he or the Hierogrammates was directly …
08 Jun 2008, 07:23
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I meant "written off". -Roy…
08 Jun 2008, 04:47
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You mean Hierogrammates, not Hieros, who were a race of beings cognate to the humans of Briah and who fashioned the Hierogrammates in another universe, since collapsed. That's why …
08 Jun 2008, 04:34
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Here's the quote: "It has arrived at last, madame. The force that made your bells sound has warmed the cold heart of Urth once more. Now they toll the death of continents." (URTH, …
08 Jun 2008, 04:27
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He certainly had ambitions; but he died and his dreams of empire died with him. I still see no evidence that Typhon was waging an interstellar war, still less that Urth's sun was d…
07 Jun 2008, 08:58
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Andrew wote: [snip] Looking at that quote again just now, it occurs to me that it offers support to my earlier speculation. If the white fountain had actually been created *in* th…
07 Jun 2008, 07:02
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Andrew wote: [snip] I agree that the picture painted for Sev in NEW SUN isn't the same picture painted in URTH. Apparently almost everyone on Urth seemed to believe that when the …
07 Jun 2008, 05:51
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Severian, unlike Moses, did get to the Promised Land, which rather spoils the analogy. Whether he waded into the gene pool there or not is undetermined, I think. -Roy…
06 Jun 2008, 18:58
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**Moral** flaw? I almost choked on a mouthful of roast beef when I read that! I've been a news junkie since at least the Cuban Missile Crisis, yet it somehow escaped my notice that…
06 Jun 2008, 06:38
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There are two basic types of sacrifice -- those made voluntarily and those in which the subject of the sacrifice is a reluctant participant. The overwhelming majority of sacrifices…
05 Jun 2008, 20:59
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For purposes of this discussion, it doesn't matter which document Wolfe translated. The text we have is all there is. The conceit is that, thanks to Severian's vaunted memory, the …
03 Jun 2008, 05:34
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By "reconstructing", I can only conclude you are referring to the copy Severian made from memory shortly after boarding the Ship. [snip] Again, what do you mean by "rewrite" and …
01 Jun 2008, 06:45
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He That's possible, but there is a problem with the timeline. When the King said that things would be as they were before Lissy was taken, he didn't specify exactly how long befor…
29 May 2008, 07:23
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I should probably just leave this alone, but there is one nagging detail that I can't explain or ignore. It's that damn "already damp and a trifle sandy" towel Tim used after he sh…
28 May 2008, 18:14
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No. She had never met Tim's father; she had seen him only in pictures. In the pictures, he was very gaunt. Though the fairy King had promised things would be just as they were for …
28 May 2008, 08:09
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Dave, If, as you contend, the last three pages of the notebook were forged, and if, as you also contend, they were forged by an automated writing machine, then the climax of the s…
15 May 2008, 05:40
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As the first two sentences of the story make absolutely clear, the private investigator hired by Nadan's family had already unearthed sufficient evidence to lead him to believe tha…
11 May 2008, 06:43
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Welcome, Oliver! I believe that you are referring to how your post appears online; that the text shows up as one continuous line, requiring the reader to scroll way off the page t…
11 May 2008, 06:40
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And in a subsequent post: If the F.E.D., for reasons unexplained, wanted Nadan dead, and in fact killed him, they would have to have gone to extraordinary lengths in forging an ac…
09 May 2008, 16:44
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I believe Scrudder is a typo. In the 1985 Chatto (British) hb edition the pagination is different but the name is Scudder in both places you cite in the Berkley pb. -Roy…
27 Apr 2008, 21:37
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Quite right: During Vi's story she interjected: "Shut up, Jimmy. Just because it's your birthday you don't have the right to interrupt." (p. 111) -Roy…
26 Apr 2008, 20:24
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[snip] Uh, I hate to play Dickens with this theory, but . . . The party took place shortly after the July picnic. The occasion was Macafee's 41st birthday on August 3 (p. 75) and…
25 Apr 2008, 19:55
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Wolfe was in his early forties when he wrote that, so he wasn't speaking from personal experience. My experience is just the opposite. Older people tend to be less constrained by s…
23 Apr 2008, 18:24
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-----Original Message-----…
25 Feb 2008, 19:10
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John, I can't answer many of your questions, but I dislike seeing honest, thoughtful queries such as yours about two stories that have not been discussed here before be ignored. T…
10 Feb 2008, 06:25
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