# (no subject) *The Urth list — 1 messages, 1 voices, 05 Apr 1999* > 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. --- ### Dan Parmenter *05 Apr 1999, 07:52* > From: "Mitchell A. Bailey" > I think that Wolfe conceived of Ascia as Orwell's Oceania from _1984_ > carried to the ultimate degree. The Ascians do not merely speak > Newspeak, but are limited to quotes from "The Group of Seventeen's > Little Red Book". Yet the boot stamping on the human face has failed > after millenia to totally stamp out the humanity. Wolfe is much more > optimistic than Orwell was. In my view, to postulate that Ascians are > from another planet detracts from that idea. I agree completely. To my mind, Severian's conclusion that there is no thought that LTTGO17 could not express is essentially Severian's (and Wolfe's) rejection of the simplified version of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, that the structure of language delimits thought (I know, way oversimplified, but I don't want to start a S-W thread!). And furthermore, it demonstrates that depsite their 4th world (not in the Kirby sense :-) living conditions, they too have stories and folklore. Finally, it allows Wolfe to pull yet another bit of Borgesian abstraction: Foila herself having to "translate" LTTGO17's story. The "story competition" is one of my favorite parts of the whole series. Lex Shellac ---