Subject: (urth) New Sun Mysteries FAQ?

From: Ron Hale-Evans <rwhe at apocalypse.org>
Date: Thu, 02 Dec 1999 12:38:20 +0000

We all know that the New Sun cycle is filled with deliberate little Lupine
mysteries for the reader. Some are relatively easy (who were Severian's
parents and grandparents?) and some are very hard, so hard that maybe not
one of us on the list could accurately answer every question on a
substantial list.

I know of two lists of these mysteries. One is in an old Usenet message by
Donn Seeley that I have kept and treasured since the early Eighties.
Another is in _Lexicon Urthus_ by our own Mantis. Perhaps we could combine
these lists (authors willing), add a number of our own, and set about
answering them in FAQ form. We could warn the reader that these are major
spoilers and that the FAQ is not to be read until the New Sun books have
been read at least twice.

If we decide to do this, I would prefer that someone else coordinate the
effort, as I have too many irons in the fire already. (Hmm, in light of Our
Hero's trade, that doesn't sound good...) If no one steps forth, however, I
would be willing to do so.

This could become an important resource for future readers of the New Sun
books, and would likely be a lot of fun to put together. Mantis, what say
you? Donn Seeley, are you here? (Anyone know how to reach him?)

Ron H-E
--
Ron Hale-Evans: rwhe at apocalypse.org  ... <http://www.apocalypse.org/~rwhe/>
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*More Wolfe info & archive of this list at http://www.urth.net/urth/

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From: Ron Hale-Evans <rwhe at apocalypse.org>
Date: Fri, 03 Dec 1999 13:31:26 +0000

OK, we have mantis's permission to crib from his list of New Sun mysteries.

I've been thinking about copyright law, which protects only the expression
of a work, not its ideas. (Only a patent can protect an idea, and no one
has patented the idea of a list of New Sun mysteries.) This means that
while it would be nice to have Mr. Seeley's blessing on the New Sun
Mysteries FAQ, if we cannot locate him in 1999 (fifteen years after his
piece was posted to Usenet), we need not wait for his permission to
incorporate the _gist_ of his questions into the FAQ. We cannot legally use
his actual prose or even a close paraphrase, but we can nevertheless use
his piece as a guide for creating a list of questions of our own.

That said, is anyone willing to compare Seeley's list and mantis's, and
distill them down into a single list, to be posted here?

If no one volunteers by Sunday, I'll put it together myself.

Ron H-E

---

From: Ron Hale-Evans <rwhe at apocalypse.org>
Date: Sun, 05 Dec 1999 17:33:33 +0000

I got a very nice message from Donn Seeley yesterday; you'll find it below.
We have his blessing.

alga has volunteered to help me get the list of questions into shape. I
hope we'll soon have the initial mysteries list, and can then work on (1)
expanding the list of questions, and (2) adding answers.

Ron

<BEGIN FORWARDED TEXT>

>To: Ron Hale-Evans <rwhe at apocalypse.org>
>Subject: Re: (urth) New Sun Mysteries FAQ?
>Date: Sat, 04 Dec 1999 07:58:51 -0700
>From: Donn Seeley <donn at BSDI.COM>
>
>	You compiled an excellent list of mysteries in the New Sun
>	books that you posted to Usenet in 1984.  ...
>
>Wow, that was certainly a long time ago.  Feel free to make any
>use of that posting that you want.
>
>Donn Seeley
>
<END FORWARDED TEXT>

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From: JMCAzurin <mikah at brewsoft.com>
Date: Tue, 07 Dec 1999 02:51:32 +0000

> Ron Hale-Evans <rwhe at apocalypse.org> wrote
> I hope we'll soon have the initial mysteries list, and can then work on (1)

Hi Ron,

  Just a suggestion: perhaps two versions of the FAQ could be maintained? One with answers and one without.

Mikah

- Are you crying?
- No, I'm bleeding.

---

From: William H. Ansley <wansley at warwick.net>
Date: Mon, 06 Dec 1999 22:29:44 +0000

The story so far.

Ron Hale-Evans <rwhe at apocalypse.org> bravely volunteers to produce a TBotNS
FAQ.

> One with answers and one without.

How about a dozen or so versions of the FAQ. All the questions will be the
same, but the answers will vary depending on which of us is reading it. We
can have the Roy C. Lackey version, the Tony Ellis version, the Robert
Borski version, the William Ansley version... . Just to name a few folks
with differing insights into TBofNS.

William Ansley

P.S. Ron, by all means, carry on! It is a most noble quest. Just don't
expect the going to be too smooth.

---

From: Ron Hale-Evans <rwhe at apocalypse.org>
Date: Mon, 06 Dec 1999 19:48:39 +0000

>  Just a suggestion: perhaps two versions of the FAQ could be maintained?
One with answers and one without.

I *just* got an email from alga, who is working on combining and editing
the two lists. She expressed a couple of similar concerns. Briefly put, she
said that we probably don't want an easy-answers/"Cliff's Notes" approach
-- and that maybe we don't want to give answers at all; couldn't we hint at
the answers instead and make the reader do the work?

I thought about this for a moment and thought of a possible solution that
might make everybody happy, both the people who want to incorporate answers
(including me) and the people who don't. And this is going to make Dave
Lebling laugh, I know...

InvisiClues!

What the heck are those, you ask? Well, the computer game company Infocom
(which Dave helped found, BTW) published a very successful and long-lived
series of "adventure games" in the 1980s, including the Zork series,
_Trinity_, and one based on _The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy_.
Adventure games are a text-based genre of computer fiction wherein you type
commands like GO NORTH and TAKE SWORD and KILL TROLL, and the computer
responds by describing your environment to you. Much of the game centers
around puzzles that you must solve, such as how to open a locked treasure
chest or how to get into a room with a very small door.

Infocom did not invent the adventure game, but they made many innovations.
One of them was a way for players to get clues to puzzles without spoilers.
InvisiClues came in little books that you could buy at the computer store
where you bought the game or from Infocom itself. The questions in the
booklets were printed in ordinary ink, but the answers were printed in
invisible ink. There were perhaps four or five progressively more detailed
clues for each answer, and the last entry in the series just gave the
answer straight. You would wipe a little pen that came with the book over
the InvisiClues until you got to the level of detail that you wanted.

Example:

How do I get into the room with the tiny door?

1. Look around the hallway.

2. Do you see a bottle on the stand in the corner?

3. Did you read the bottle's label?

4. What do you do with a bottle that says DRINK ME?

5. Drink the contents of the bottle and it will make you small enough to
fit through the door.

... and so forth. There was also a certain percentage of bogus questions
(sometimes with very entertaining bogus answers) scattered throughout, so
that you couldn't be sure that the other questions referred to real things
in the context of the game, thus avoiding the questions becoming spoilers
themselves, to a certain extent at least.

Later Infocom games incorporated InvisiClues directly into the games via a
menuing system. After Infocom was eaten by Activision and the text-based
games were neglected in favour (oooooh...) of flashier graphical games,
Netters "liberated" the text of the InvisiClues booklets and incorporated
it into a series of files for a program called UHS, standing for something
like "Universal Hint System" -- a standalone, generalised version of
Infocom's earlier menuing systems.

Whew. So the point I'm making is that a system like the one described above
-- perhaps UHS itself, or perhaps some web-based setup -- could be used so
that we could have a list of questions with answers, but no one would be
getting more than they wanted, or less than they wanted! And of course we
should prepend the proviso that no one should read the "FAQ" until they
have read TBOTNS at least twice, as I mentioned in my original message.

This whole thing reminds me of the controversy in Japan over books for sale
there that contain a list of Zen koans together with their "answers." I
have seen one myself in the States. They do indeed contain the "real
answers" (as far as I can tell), but any Zen teacher will tell you that it
is the process of arriving at the answer yourself that is the real answer.
Anyone who thinks a koan answer book or our FAQ is a shortcut to instant
understanding deserves what they get.

What do you good folks think?

Ron H-E