{ "export": { "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/1113", "note": "Exported from an unofficial mirror of a public mailing list. Copyright in each message remains with the person who wrote it. Email addresses are obscured as `user at host`, the form the original archive published. This file was rebuilt from parsed fields rather than retained headers, so it is faithful in content but not byte-exact.", "addresses": "obscured as 'user at host'" }, "archive": "urth", "thread": { "id": 1113, "subject": "Forlesen", "messages": 2, "voices": 2, "first": "1998-09-26T22:23:11+00:00", "last": "1998-09-30T17:48:50+00:00" }, "messages": [ { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Robert Borski", "address": "rborski at coredcs.com" }, "date": "1998-09-26T22:23:11+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Forlesen", "in_reply_to": null, "reply_link": null, "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "For a long time my favorite explanation for the events that transpire in\n\"Forlesen\" was provided by the undertaker-type character at the story's\nend--namely, that Emanuel Forlesen has been \"revived by unseen aliens who,\nlanding on the Earth eons after the death of the last man, have sought to\nre-create the life of the twentieth century.\" Kind of GW's version of THE\nEINSTEIN INTERSECTION, so-to-speak, with Dilbert as Lobey. On the other\nhand, for Wolfe to be so generous as to actually provide an explanation for\none of his more enigmatic pieces, seems so uncharacteristic of him that\nthis, as well as the other explanations offered, are almost certainly\nmisdirection. I've therefore gone back to the text to see if I could find\nyet another platform for what happens--one more implicit and subtextual\nthan outright given to us. I guess--to use the parlance of the story--that\nmakes me an Explainer. Should you find my version wanting, you might\nconsidering writing your own, and we can add it to those provided by the\nnovelist, aged loremaster, National Hero, warlock, actor, etc.\n\nThe first interesting datum, I'm going to argue, originates in the name of\nthe title character. As has been mentioned before, forlesen means \"to lose\ncompletely;\" and \"perdition.\" Valid as well is its German equivalent,\nvorlesen (pronounced exactly the same, since v = f in German). But not only\ndoes vorlesen mean \"read aloud,\" (I believe Sgt. Rock mentioned this\nearlier), but also \"to read out; to retrieve information from a computer.\"\nIs it therefore possible Forlesen somehow combines the ideas of damnation\nand computers, a la Harlan Ellison's \"I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream\"?\nGiven the plethora of both computer and hellish imagery all through the\nstory, I'm going to argue yes.\n\nFirst, let's consider the hellish imagery.\n\nOne of the books that Forlesen finds in his house has a red cover with \"a\ngroup of men surrounding a winged being.\" It's supposed to tell you how to\nbe good, according to Edna, but its left side is printed in a scarlet\nunknown language. The red book is later associated with Revelations, i.e.,\nthe Apocalypse.\n\nForlesen sees something upsetting under the concrete ramparts of the\nhighway, but is \"not sure if the casters of these shadows (whatever they\nmight be) were themselves bowed, twisted and deformed.\" Could these be\ndemons or something akin to Hieronymous Bosch's various grotesques?\n\nOn the front of the factory into which the mustangs are being herded,\nForlesen sees a picture of \"a dog's head in a red triangle on a field of\nblack.\" Could this be my old friend Cerberus?\n\nSmoke from a stubby flue blows across Forlesen's parking place.\n\nOne of the passageways contains \"the burnt metal smell of arc welding.\" Its\nfloor is suggestive of \"charred wood.\"\n\nThe windows are boarded up.\n\nA drill operator burns his hand on a smoking drill.\n\nCompany executives at Model Pattern Products have the option of being\ncremated and interred on site.\n\nThe referee of Bet-Your-Life wears a red jacket.\n\nFrick's fellow executives sit in his office smoking and knocking out pipes.\n\nThe undertaker tells Forlesen that he \"may have been oppressed by demons.\"\n\nAnd lastly the word \"hell\" itself is mentioned six times in dialogue, and\none of Forlesen's first utterances is \"Where in hell am I?\"\n\nNow for the computer imagery.\n\nForlesen's eggs and coffee taste of motor oil.\n\nThe sidewalks are stenciled with the following: Go To Your Right--Not To\nYour Left (which echoes an earlier guidebook caveat: Do Not Go To The House\nOn The Left). This same message appears nonsensical--well, upside down\nanyway--to someone going sinisterly. Binary notation, of course, must be\nread left to right in order to yield valid information.\n\nThe address of Model Pattern Products is incredibly high (19000370 Plant\nParkway) and reads more like a sector address on a huge mainframe.\n\nOn his way to work, Forlesen sees diamond-shaped signs that read Hidden\nDrives. Not driveWAYS, but drives, as in disk drives.\n\nThe traffic signals alternate between red and green at 1/4 second\nintervals, something a human would have trouble processing, but not a\nmachine.\n\nAll the character names follow a rigid, hierarchal pattern based on\nalphabetization. Last names begin with one letter later than first names,\nand each new generation appears to be named one letter later. E.g., G1«,\nG2¼, G3Í, G4Þ, and G5ï, which is Forlesen's generation. Similar\norganizational trees are used by computers. \n\n[Curiously, while we meet members of generations both before and after\nForlesen's, we don't encounter any others, with the exception of Abraham\nBeale (aka Adam Bean, the founder of MPP). Beale also has more of a history\nthan any other character, having been a lawyer, soldier, cowboy,\nlumberjack, railroad worker and a farmer. He's also far exceeded his\nlifespan since each generation seems limited to a single day's duration.\nSince he's living a vagabondish lifestyle I'm tempted to identify him as\nthe archetypal Wandering Jew. \"Abraham\" and \"Adam,\" on the other hand,\nsuggest paternity (I also note that each name begins with A and ends with\nM, recalling Harlan's Ellison's cybermonstrosity, AM). Could he be the\nengineer/programmer who created the computer housing the events in\n\"Forlesen\"? Is he the embodiment of the computer itself? Or is he indeed\nAhasuerus, awaiting the Second Coming--\"Emanuel\" in the Bible is identified\nas the future Messiah, but Forlesen seems a poor Christ.] \n\nThe cop car which stops Forlesen is painted with wholly abstract symbols.\nASCII characters?\n\nDriving, Forlesen imagines himself \"a mouse descending a clear stream in\nhalf an eggshell.\"\n\nAbraham Beale mentions, \"We had as tree once on the farm, a apple\ntree--McIntoshes I think they were.\" He also remarks about his father's\nfarm, \"That's Dad's farm, them little numbers in the book.\"\n\nNumbers, indeed, run rampant through the narrative. We're also told that\n\"Waits and Measures\" are much more important than any of the other\ninformation provided by the guidebooks.\n\nAlso frequently mentioned once we reach MPP is its metallic nature, from\nthe building itself to various doors, desks and chairs. \n\nForlesen's desk speaks to him, but he can find no speaker in it.\n\nPeople appear differently when seen through glass: i.e., after they've been\nsiliconized. Are they electrons in motion?\n\nFairchild, in commenting on the Sample Leadership Problem Forlesen attempts\nto solve, says, \"I don't know what the right answer is, only the machine\ndoes.\"\n\nA film on creativity is a re-creation of an actual meeting of real teachers\nthat they photographed and taped, \"then had the actors reproduce the\ndebate.\" Are the events in \"Forlesen\" similar computerized re-creations?\n\n\"A glacial corridor, filled with quiet wind and memory of ice\" very eerily\nrecalls the ice caverns of Ellison's \"I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream.\"\n\nAs Forlesen is returning home, he sees orange and black machines eating the\nhouses just beyond the light. Anybody ever watch the visual representation\nof their disk defragmenter at work?\n\nForlesen's coffin may be a little tight about the shoulders, \"but it's got\na hell of a good engine.\"\n\nAnd lastly there are the final words of the undertaker, in answer to\nForlesen's wanting to know if his life has been worth anything: \"No,\" says\nhe. \"Yes. No. Yes. Yes. No. Yes. Yes. Maybe.\" But surely, this mishmosh is\nbinary notation, where no=0 and yes=1, don't you think?\n\nRobert Borski\n\n\n\n " } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "mary whalen", "address": "marewhalen at yahoo.com" }, "date": "1998-09-30T17:48:50+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Re: Forlesen", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "This is Sean Whalen (prion).\n\nI read this story for the first time today because of the recent\ndiscussion of it. First of all, I'd just like to make a minor\ncorrection to what Robert Borski recently wrote. He said that the\nfirst and last names of the generations of people went AB, BC, CD, DE,\nEF, etc. Actually, as far as I can see, it just goes in the pattern\nAB, CD, EF, GH, etc. That is, we meet people with names like Adam\nBean, Cappy Dillingham, Enid Fenton, and George Howe. Since E.\nForlesen replaces Cappy Dillingham and is replaced by George Howe, I\nthink this those are all in the series. Also, the story seems not to\njust happen in one day, but to be at least two days, and possibly\nmore. On the first day, he goes home to eat lunch, then goes back to\nwork at 129 \"ours\" or a little later. When he arrives, he finds out\nthat he's been promoted. Then there is a break in the text, and the\nnext paragraph has him at the time 125 ours, presumably of some latter\nday (there are only 240 hours in a day, so this is not the second 125\nin the first day).\n\nI also have a few observations. Part of the story seems to be about\nwhat Wolfe regards as the loss of personal freedom in the modern\nworld, especially in the section when Forlesen is reading the pamphlet\non how to drive a car. Also, I'm surprised that no one has mentioned\nthe possible significance (since this is Wolfe) of the name Emanuel. \nFirst of all, it resembles the word \"manual\" so this might have added\nsignificance with the German word vorlesen (to read out), a manual\nreadout, or something, of a computer. But also, Emanuel (or Immanuel)\nis supposedly the name that Christ was to be given (if I remember\ncorrectly, it means \"God will save us\" or something similar).\n\nFinally, what does it signify that the units of measurement of time\nare called \"ours?\"\n\nprion" } ] } ] }