Subject: (urth) UOTNS

From: Nicholas Gevers <vermoulian at yahoo.com>
Date: Sat, 06 Nov 1999 07:03:49 +0000

Re the necessity of URTH as a coda to TBOTNS: I
personally see THE URTH OF THE NEW SUN as Wolfe's best
single book, both for its rich eclecticism of focus
and its superb flights of poetic language. To me, it
completes and transcends THE BOOK OF THE NEW SUN; in
fact, I've at times thought of it as the best SF novel
ever written. This may seem extravagant praise, but
what other work of SF has come so close to the
intensity of writers like Joyce? 
Maybe I'm using the wrong criteria...

=====

__________________________________________________
Do You Yahoo!?
Bid and sell for free at http://auctions.yahoo.com

*More Wolfe info & archive of this list at http://www.urth.net/urth/

---

From: Alice Turner <akt at attglobal.net>
Date: Sat, 06 Nov 1999 22:21:32 +0000

>
> From: =?iso-8859-1?q?Nicholas=20Gevers?= <vermoulian at yahoo.com>

> Maybe I'm using the wrong criteria...

I agree here. I have never understood the hostility toward this book. It
seems radiant to me, a truly beautiful, immortal book and entirely necessary
to the series. Tzad is wonderful, Juturna is wonderful, the connection with
Apheta may be strange and even distasteful to some, but there is magic in
it. The descriptions of the leaps among the sails of the starship are
unrivaled, except by perhaps some of  Cordwainer Smith. The legend is that
it was written at the express order of Dave Hartwell, who said that the
series was too truncated and confusing without a wrap-up. If that is true
(and I have my doubts), hooray for Hartwell.

-alga

---

From: Kevin J. Maroney <kmaroney at crossover.com>
Date: Sun, 07 Nov 1999 14:13:39 +0000

At 10:21 PM 11/6/99 -0500, alga wrote:
>The legend is that [_Urth of the New Sun_]

I asked David Hartwell about this a few months ago, and meant to report
here. Here's his version:

David, John Douglas (then Hartwell's assistant editor at Timescape) and
Wolfe were dining together to discuss _Citadel of the Autarch_, which Wolfe
had just delivered to them. Both David and John agreed that the book was a
triumph, but that they felt that it really should show, on camera, the
ceremony in which Severian became Autarch. Wolfe, in Hartwell's terms,
immediately started adding up words like a calculator, and then declared
that he'd be delighted to show it, but that it would take an additional
50,000-100,000 words to do justice. 

All agreed that adding this much material to _Citadel_ would be
problematic, and on the spot they agreed that it should be an additional
novel. 

So _Urth_ was written at David (and John's) suggestion. 

-- 
   Kevin Maroney | Crossover Technologies 
   kmaroney at crossover.com | (212) 777-1190