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As I understand it, there's an endless succession of our Briahtic universes, and Yesod is the hyper-space - and hyper-time - within which that succession takes place. Severian's l…
10 Aug 2010, 22:26
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and David Stockhoff : In chapter XXII of UotNS, when Severian is in Yesod, he says: "They were people I'd known... Thecla, Agilus, Casdoe... Perhaps they're all dead now, all ghos…
10 Aug 2010, 18:26
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and Lee Berman: I don't think so. At the end of UotNS, Famulimus tells Severian that the Sev who died on Tzadkiel's ship 'was the son your mother bore', or words to that effect. …
21 Jul 2010, 09:58
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Ah, I think I understand now. We are talking at cross-purposes. When you talk about the Dorcas theory being 'explained' or 'understood' you mean 'explained in circles of Wolfean c…
10 Jul 2010, 13:13
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No, the issue in this thread is whether it was explained in terms so *un*convincing that you were right to call it 'a half-baked theory' or 'only understood 20 years after the book…
09 Jul 2010, 21:53
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The subject is humanity. 'Us' is the family - for want of a better word - of which he is a part. Someday humanity will want us. They haven't been experimenting on themselves for g…
24 Jun 2010, 14:08
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"Chems are wonderful constructions, a race that we bios created long ago, our own image in metal and synthetics." LOTLS, chapter seven. "No, no." Maytera Marble's one functioning …
17 Jun 2010, 22:32
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Agia is definitely a robot, and of a particularly expensive kind. But she was initially human. We can actually pinpoint the moment her robofication begins, when Severian sees her o…
17 Jun 2010, 18:18
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The sails in question aren't your common-or-garden solar sails, but the same monster-summoning, space-warping mirrors found in the Autarch's book and Father Inire's workshop. It's …
09 Jun 2010, 16:55
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Agnosticism is the word for being without *knowledge* of divinity. It is not a rejection of belief. I am agnostic about whether ancient civilisations were contacted by aliens. I h…
06 Jun 2010, 21:14
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Well, no. Atheists by definition reject *belief* in the existence of a deity. Not the same thing.…
06 Jun 2010, 20:07
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I'm not sure if that was a rhetorical question or not, but anyway: Mary Shelley, famously, was inspired to write Frankenstein by a *dream* she had. At a villa on Lake (hint hint) …
04 Jun 2010, 12:31
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She's cynical, secretive... and a prostitute, with all the hardened self-interest that implies. Works for me. Also a good explanation. But as I say, Thais doesn't start to speak u…
03 Jun 2010, 11:02
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Yes, I suggested much the same thing a while back: http://lists.urth.net/pipermail/urth-urth.net/2007-June/007862.html It's occurred to me since then that The Lost Pilgrim, collec…
20 Apr 2010, 19:58
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Cymbidium is certainly an interesting discovery, Tim. But notice that Cim gets a capital C, like a proper noun - something that has always bothered me. That, and the fact that it …
20 Oct 2009, 08:24
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The multiplicity of brooks that lead to Briah is the evidence. But as you say, we just aren't going to agree on this. :-)…
18 Jul 2008, 22:08
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Yet at least three of these brooks lead to Briah. The Green Man races beside one, and you say he travels only within Briah. Small Tzadkiel flutters beside a second, which is Madreg…
17 Jul 2008, 21:16
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I think if that was true, there would only have been one corridor, as there was when Tzadkiel first showed Severian the Brook Madregot. Severian is now talking about a multitude: …
16 Jul 2008, 09:15
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For what it's worth, speaking as a copy editor I have absolutely no problem believing Wolfe could have made that mistake. Writers make all sorts of mistakes, and one I regularly se…
04 Jun 2008, 13:53
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I think the stuff about Sev1 has to be read in the context in which it was written, that is, as part of the final words in a tetralogy that was intended to make sense by itself, wi…
23 Dec 2007, 19:45
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...Yet Sev1 had the chutzpah to try, just like Sev2. If they're both men-in-a-million in that respect, why not in another? I'm not sure I know what you mean by the agents of Yesod…
22 Dec 2007, 15:27
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and Jeff Wilson: Where does this idea come from that 'the first Severian' failed the test in Yesod? I've always understood that he passed. Severian doesn't tell us either way, bu…
20 Dec 2007, 22:45
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Anyone could have built the tomb, as far as I can see. But either Severian, or someone else who knew the cosmic secrets of his life, must have designed its coat of arms.…
06 Dec 2007, 09:47
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The symbolism does have a valid context in the fictional setting. Severian, a character in the fiction, has chosen these symbols. The fact that other people won't recognise the mea…
05 Dec 2007, 16:44
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The reference is surely to the White Fountain, that being the great achievement of Severian's life and everything. :-) I don't know what it looks like but as with the flying ship …
03 Dec 2007, 22:04
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I'm not sure Dan'l would thank you for putting my words in his mouth :-) The ship is on a coat of arms, and volant has a special meaning in heraldry: 'depicted as in flight'. Or e…
28 Nov 2007, 21:37
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I could dispute those examples, in the unlikely event that anyone is interested. :-) My problem with this oft-invoked line of argument is that you can prove anything by saying "ah…
21 Jul 2007, 14:31
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Less than two years have passed. No one changes that much that fast. And even if they did, a similar amount of time passes between Severian's seeing another old man, Rudesind, in t…
20 Jul 2007, 22:46
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I'm not saying the boatman infers that undines are involved. I don't imagine he knows what an undine is. But if he has previously heard a woman's voice coming out of the water, or …
19 Jul 2007, 22:40
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and Dan'l: This has been said before, and I'm not quite clear why everyone seems so certain. Yes, Dorcas's husband is looking for a woman underwater, and yes, he says that some bo…
19 Jul 2007, 19:43
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Yes, the narrator's friends do sound like a bunch of fun guys, don't they?…
21 Jun 2007, 19:50
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1) Cutthroat's amnesia doesn't seem to be the result of a head injury - he has none. The implication is that the people on the Sleigh have deliberately wiped or suppressed it. If …
19 Jun 2007, 22:09
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I take your point that the April 23 entry reads a lot like a normal Marsch entry. But the idea that the reader is supposed to infer VRT copied out an entry in someone else's bad ha…
09 May 2007, 20:48
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I don't think the cat bites anyone. When 'Marsch' reports the incident in his journal, he does so to explain why his handwriting has suddenly become so bad. But if Marsch is no lon…
07 May 2007, 09:51
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If the aliens were trying to teach the natives compassion and mercy, fair enough. But they're not. They're telling them that the value of knowledge doesn't lie in its use - an absu…
19 Apr 2007, 15:51
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This sort of chimes with my reading, but I'd go further and say that we're being invited to feel outright contempt for the narrator. Far from being divine, he's an ass. Almost the…
18 Apr 2007, 20:43
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Oh, so *that's* the theme of atheism. Silly me, I've been doing it wrong all these years.…
14 Apr 2007, 17:19
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Completely internal? Oh no, I think that Wolfe expects his reader to be far too well-read for that to ever be the case. What I *don't* think, on the other hand, is that Wolfe wro…
10 Sep 2006, 15:29
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I think you're reading too much into what I've said. I don't believe in 'the sanctity of the words', or any sacred bond between reader and author. You seem to be talking primarily…
10 Sep 2006, 00:22
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bsharp wrote, quoting me: Possibly I didn't explain myself very well. All I meant was that we should be able to solve the conventional mysteries of a Wolfe story from the story al…
07 Sep 2006, 22:37
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I *think* the Shadow Children - who I might not have called Shadow People if I'd drunk slightly less wine last night - are the native creatures of St Anne, while the 'abos' are hum…
07 Sep 2006, 21:42
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There's definitely an air of that about the relationship of Talos and Baldanders, isn't there? Who could imagine Baldanders creating Dr Talos's wonderful play, and yet Baldanders c…
06 Sep 2006, 21:58
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bsharp wrote, quoting Wolfe: Heh, and to me this says that some of the people I've argued with about 5HC just haven't read the same book as me. To be fair, it sometimes feels lik…
06 Sep 2006, 21:40
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They're just returning to the Citadel after swimming in Gyoll - perhaps later than usual because Severian almost drowned. And they *want* the guard to return - he was supposed to l…
05 Sep 2006, 18:03
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Rex (http://listserver.dreamhost.com/pipermail/urth-urth.net/2006-August/002 622.html) and Roy (http://listserver.dreamhost.com/pipermail/urth-urth.net/2006-August/002 629.html) ha…
30 Aug 2006, 23:27
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I don't think it matters. Maybe Wolfe thinks that 96 is a plausible age for Lomer, and maybe he never stopped to think how old he was forcing Lomer to be. Either way, 62 years rema…
29 Aug 2006, 23:01
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Rex Lycanthrosaurus said: Again, you're either misreading or misquoting me. I didn't say the Autarch was 40, I didn't even say he looked like he was 40. I said Severian said that …
28 Aug 2006, 23:45
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You're either misreading me or misquoting me. :-) I have never said that 62 years was the length of the penultimate Autarch's reign. 62 is the number of years that have passed betw…
28 Aug 2006, 17:49
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And Bob Miller: Absolutely. Wolfe uses synchronicity because it's realistic. As Dan'l says, Wolfe is a Dickens fan and Dickens put a lot of coincidence in his novels - but *why*…
20 Aug 2006, 15:16
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You are slightly misreading me, I think, or more likely I wasn't being as clear as I thought I was, as I thought I was being very careful *not* to say "because there's so much hear…
01 Aug 2006, 18:04
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