{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/1516",
    "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": 1516,
    "subject": "Inhumi, and Wolfean authors",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "1999-04-11T06:42:23+00:00",
    "last": "1999-04-11T06:42:23+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<urth-v0025-0048@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Nicholas Gevers",
        "address": "potto at webmail.co.za"
      },
      "date": "1999-04-11T06:42:23+00:00",
      "subject": "(urth) Inhumi, and Wolfean authors",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Regarding rostrum's point about Horn as a perhaps biased narrator,\nthis influencing his perceptions of the inhumi: yes, this makes\nexcellent sense, especially as the Horn who writes The Book of Silk\nevidently doesn't have much first hand knowledge of the inhumi, having\nto compare them with the \"hus\" via the testimony of others. Horn is\nvery much the observer, Patera Silk's Boswell; he reports what others\nsay and do, and is limited to the prejudices of his fellow colonists.\nI thought I'd add some notes of my own to what others have said in the\npast about authors whose works would appeal to the Wolfe audience. One\nobvious candidate is Paul J. McAuley; there has been comment on his\nseries CONFLUENCE being a homage to TBotNS, but all his later work is\nWolfean, especially RED DUST, and even his neo-cyberpunk novel\nFAIRYLAND has many conscious Wolfean echoes. Also worthy of mention is\nthe British Horror/Fantasy novelist Tom Holland; people may have been\ndiscouraged from reading his work by comparisons of him with Anne Rice\n(yecch!) and the absurd retitling of his first two vampire novels by\nhis US publishers as LORD OF THE DEAD and SLAVE OF MY THIRST (original\ntitles THE VAMPYRE and SUPPING WITH PANTHERS). In reality, Holland is\na very literate and ambitious writer, who plays elaborate games of\nallusion and literary disguise; his most recent novel, THE SLEEPER IN\nTHE SANDS, is a masterpiece along the narrative lines of THE ARABIAN\nNIGHTS and PEACE, with stories within unreliable narratives within\nstories. All his work is highly recommended.\nOne other Wolfean parallel, which strikes me as particularly close:\nwhat about Brian Aldiss' THE MALACIA TAPESTRY, which was published in\nthe mid-1970s? It could easily have helped inspire TBotNS, in\nparticular THE SHADOW OF THE TORTURER; it is set in an ancient\nshirt-of-Nessus city, which is under a curse of changelessness; it's\nhero, whose name is Perian (!), is, like Severian, a member of a\ndisreputable profession, and is thus peripatetic; Aldiss's uses a\nbaroque style not unlike Wolfe's and also invokes a lot of archaic and\ngnostic terminology. I also find suggestive a curious literary\ncoincidence: shortly before Wolfe began publishing TBotNS, Aldiss told\nCharles Platt (in THE DREAM MAKERS) that he was planning a Malacia\nsequel; then Wolfe's Book appeared, and Aldiss did THE HELLICONIA\nTRILOGY instead, as if TBotNS had pre-empted his Malacia scheme,\ncovering overly similar territory; finally, in his 1986 critical study\nTRILLION YEAR SPREE, Aldiss damned TBotNS with incongruously faint\npraise. Am I on to a hidden literary rivalry here, or is this a\nphantom? Any comments?\n//--------------------------------------\nNicholas Gevers\npotto at webmail.co.za"
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}