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I was thinking of lowercase thorn, silly me. Uppercase thorn is indeed a "d" with a line through it - but a capital "D". So I was sort of right. A bit. No wonder I only got C's in…
30 Mar 1999, 12:46
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-That's- thorn, yes. But I wouldn't describe it as a crossed "d", more an angular "P". Me too. But then the prefix "ur" is used to mean earliest, or most primitive, so technically…
30 Mar 1999, 10:36
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Urth is also Norse. It's another name for Urd, the third of the three Norns. Verthandi was the Fate of the Present, Skuld Fate of the Future, and Urth Fate of -surprise surprise - …
29 Mar 1999, 16:19
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Well, like the note the protagonist gives to himself in "The Technicolour Time Machine", or the poems of William Ashbless in "The Anubis Gates", the joke here may be that no one qu…
29 Mar 1999, 12:52
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Well, like the note the protagonist gives to himself in "The Technicolour Time Machine", or the poems of William Ashbless in "The Anubis Gates", the joke here may be that no one qu…
29 Mar 1999, 12:25
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(Just to pedantically set the record straight, Moses is only referred to as he\him. The title you're remembering, "the Compassionating", referred to God.) I used to think that the…
18 Mar 1999, 14:50
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The latter, I suspect. But, don't forget that there are actually two explanations for what the couple are doing in the Jungle Garden in the first place: Explanation One, that the t…
17 Mar 1999, 13:33
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You're suggesting that as well as the elder Malone and Betty Malone, there were another -two- Malones on the estate who were KM's parents. To have two Malones on an estate may be c…
08 Mar 1999, 17:41
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Absolutely. We don't -know- how or when this happened. The story doesn't tell us. Like the question "how many children had Lady Macbeth?", it's not important. Once again: since th…
04 Mar 1999, 18:07
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If my personal reluctance to spell out the ending of a good story is making other people reluctant to post, or just plain annoyed, it's obviously time for me to stop standing on my…
03 Mar 1999, 10:56
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Great idea, but... the couple see a plane (or what they interpret as a plane, it could be a flyer) passing over head. RLS died in 1894, long before the days of powered flight. But…
02 Mar 1999, 10:52
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I can just about see why you might want to say that Prufrock the character was an "embittered and horny old man", but Prufrock the poem is something much bigger, and I really think…
01 Mar 1999, 14:53
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Certainly, but in this case I prefer to exercise my right not to spoil a fine story. One private e-mail on its way!…
26 Feb 1999, 11:06
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Madregot is a kabbalistic term which can be translated either as "the stages" or "the steps". I think. Ties in with the whole Briah-Yesod kabbalah thing, clearly. I couldn't agree…
25 Feb 1999, 15:36
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A gem of a story, which I've often re-read purely for the pleasure of doing so. And I have no intention of spoiling it for you or for anyone else, but here are a couple of hints: …
25 Feb 1999, 10:18
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Of course, but on the other hand Wolfe does like to have his is characters make the wrong assumption for the right reason (like Number Five mistaking the sepia tint of an old photo…
17 Feb 1999, 10:28
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Actually, we don't have any reason to believe that the narrator -is- older than David. He -thinks- he's older because his father tells him that he's the heir. Not so. One of the t…
16 Feb 1999, 11:39
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... Why assume that Severian1 failed the test? What "our" Severian tells us is that the first Severian went to Yesod, but did not return, becoming instead a traveller of the corr…
11 Feb 1999, 09:51
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It reminds me immediately of the story of Ymar in BOTNS, where he waits under a tree while the merchant goes by, and the beautiful woman, and finally follows the dog. But that sugg…
09 Feb 1999, 16:09
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The computer theory was raised a while ago, but I could argue any one of a dozen different explanations just as convincingly. I don't believe there is supposed to be any one "real"…
12 Jan 1999, 10:21
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A (slightly belated) Happy New Year to everyone on the list. Since things are a little quiet right now, and since we sometimes recommend non-Wolfe books likely to be of interest, c…
05 Jan 1999, 13:08
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Yup, that works for me. Strictly speaking, I think the passage can be read either way: when Miles says "Seeing my own face, multiplied again and again. A girl with hair like red …
30 Oct 1998, 09:58
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Severian omits a number of important details from his narrative, but I can't believe he could stumble across a dead soldier who looked like Jolenta's twin brother and not mention t…
29 Oct 1998, 13:47
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Now that -is- interesting. I was actually thinking of Aickman when I wrote that! He's one of my favorites too. But for me he's very much a writer of supernatural horror, rather tha…
20 Oct 1998, 09:38
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Apologies for prolonging a thread that steered due west of topic some time ago, but this is getting interesting: I'm on Alex's side. I don't think you can say that the normal worl…
19 Oct 1998, 16:27
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Absolutely. The story is allegorical, and to collapse it down to a single, mundane "this is what is -really- going on" explanation is greatly to diminish it. I don't see -any- evid…
16 Oct 1998, 08:08
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No offence intended, but having read Free Live Free several times, I can't for the life of me see how you arrive at this conclusion! I'm intrigued - could you explain, please? Joh…
23 Sep 1998, 14:11
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<snip> I really think you're seeing complications that aren't there with this one. TBOTNS is full of moments where Thecla's personality surfaces and speaks, or rather writes, in t…
22 Sep 1998, 15:42
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I don't see any "them" to build a case against. As I understand it the whole idea is just the result of people misreading what Severian says in that final chapter.…
07 Sep 1998, 15:11
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For starters, can we throw this curious suggestion that the naked couple are the descendants of the sailors right out of the ring, please? If the sailors had -won- the battle with …
05 Sep 1998, 16:22
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:-) I've been living with this solution for so long now it's rather a pleasant surprise to hear it called "wacky". The relevant quote is in the final chapter of Urth (Chapter LI)…
04 Sep 1998, 08:30
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They are Severian's children. Sev makes this quite clear (or about as clear as he makes anything <g>) at the end of Urth.…
03 Sep 1998, 13:15
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That "plumbing" accounts for some pretty major differences, actually. It has been proved that men and women's brains work very differently, often using completely different parts t…
01 Jul 1998, 17:46
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I can clearly remember appreciating that Severian was both Conciliator and New Sun long before URTH was even published. For me, all the conclusive evidence was in the chapter entit…
30 Jun 1998, 16:05
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Absolutely. Once you start writing your own story into the gaps in someone else's, it's really not that hard to find connections suggesting that it was there all along. "Rosencrant…
25 Jun 1998, 09:10
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The Shadow Children are secretive even by Annese standards, and the colonists have a very shakey idea of who the Annese were, so you can't expect too much. But Mrs Blount does say …
23 Jun 1998, 09:59
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Sgt. Rock quoted: It's just a little verse that the interrogator recites to show how clever he is. I suppose it _may_ be a quote from somewhere, or a parody of a quote from somewh…
23 Jun 1998, 09:34
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<snip> What can "Marsch" possibly gain by pretending to belong to a native race everyone thinks died out a century ago? In our terms, it would be like O J Simpson trying to fool t…
23 Jun 1998, 08:26
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Hmmmm.... depends how you define "PC", I suppose. If, like me, you regard it as deplorable right-wing Newspeak, you're very happy to think of Wolfe as anti-PC. <g> The Old Wise On…
18 Jun 1998, 09:03
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I've never thought that #5 sees through VRT's impersonation. I've always assumed that he was just being offensive. As he says: "I had come to kill my father, and it was necessary t…
17 Jun 1998, 09:02
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Nor me. It's funny how any evidence for shape-shifting sort of melts away when you look at it closely, isn't it? (The one exception being the Old Wise One's mention of this ability…
16 Jun 1998, 10:21
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Surely if such earlier expeditions had ever taken place Marsch and Number 5 would raise this theory themselves? Why would they suggest such a way-out idea as a prehistoric migratio…
11 Jun 1998, 11:58
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Sorry, but the artifacts the Trenchards sell are clearly manufactured fakes. Dr Marsch notes "several... I am fairly sure had been made from coloured glass, probably from pieces of…
11 Jun 1998, 08:15
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It may be just me, but do I detect a teensy note of irony here? <g> <snip> If you find this too fantastic blame GW, not me, Robert. Because however illogical, the Gondwanaland t…
08 Jun 1998, 07:45
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Let's start by clearing up some misconceptions: No it's not. I'm saying that the Free People are humans, from Gondwonaland - a theory that is raised far too often to be dismissed …
05 Jun 1998, 15:24
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This is an inventive, imaginative theory, but I don't see any evidence in the text to support it. I do see plenty to the contrary. You asterisk several lines in VRT's rowboat memo…
04 Jun 1998, 17:32
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Veil's Hypothesis is already a reversal - of the accepted view that the native Annese were wiped out during the first days of colonization. If Liev's Postpostulate was a simple rev…
03 Jun 1998, 11:05
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I say you're closest with theory 2. The Annese _are_ the descendants of an earlier wave of human colonization, but the Shadow Children are not. (Although they may yet be of human s…
02 Jun 1998, 10:15
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The letter from the authorities at Port-Mimizon states that the prisoner is "an illiterate woman who is a habitual petty thief". This is on the penultimate page of the novel. Why t…
29 May 1998, 11:57
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An intriguing idea. My biggest problem with it is that surely Mlle Etienne is too young to be David's mother. Marsch judges her to be 27 or 28; Gene he judged to be 18, and David i…
27 May 1998, 13:50
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