Subject: Macavoy, Gene Wolfe

From: decwrl!rhea!mrvax!ddb <decwrl!rhea!mrvax!ddb@shasta>
Date: Wed, 11 Jan 1984 10:23:31 +0000

(Caro.PA at PARC-MAXC.ARPA) I liked Tea With the Black Dragon very
much, but I thought the writing was only mediocre (compensated for,
in my opinion, by the quality of the characters and concepts; plot
was also pretty vanilla).  All in all, a very satisfactory first
novel.

Now, Damiano may not have any flaws.  I can't think of any.  I find
this particularly pleasing because of the increase in writing skill
from first to second novel (of course, I don't know when either book
was actually WRITTEN, just when they were published).

(duntemann.wbst at PARC-MAXC.ARPA) Actually, Castle of the Otter is a
book containing a collection of essays by Wolfe about the writing of
Book of the New Sun, and it's out now (it has been an SFBC
selection).  The title comes from an interesting sequence -- Locus
mistakenly reported that the last volume of Book of the New Sun
would be called Castle of the Otter (it's actually Citadel of the
Autarch -- I presume Locus got its information verbally in this
case).  Gene Wolfe liked the title, so he used it.