Subject: (urth) Urth bibliography update/alert

From: Michael Andre-Driussi <mantis at sirius.com>
Date: Mon, 13 Dec 1999 14:26:46 +0000

Some FAQs can be relatively debate free--the struggle 'round here has been
due to the fact that the subject matter is "Mysteries" rather than, say,
Publishing Facts.

Q: Where can I find out more about Gene Wolfe?  Is there a survey of his work?

A: Joan Gordon's GENE WOLFE by Starmont Press.  "Urth-Man Extraordinary" is
the working bibliography of Gene Wolfe by Phil Stephensen-Payne & Gordon
Benson Jr.  (They can be tricky to find, but that is another Q&A).

Q: Are there any recorded songs relating to Urth?

A: Yes.  At least two by, oh, I'm blanking out on her name.  She's a
published sf author, she also plays acoustic guitar, she records
professional quality cassette tapes on her own label . . . one song is
"Terminus Est" . . .

Q: Are there more stories about Urth?

A: Yes.  And if you already have a copy of "Urth-Man Extraordinary" (UMX,
since UME usually means "Ultra Marine Edition") then I want you to add
these additions and corrections =right now.=  I'm not kidding--this is
important.

UMX lists, under "C. Series":

"C2.  Books [omitted here]
     Stories: A14, B12"

Correction: that A14 ("Bernard A. French" of BIBLIOMEN) should be A16.  And
then add some more after that.

The corrected string should look like this: "A16, A20, A44, A51, A88, A137,
B12"

Which means:
A16 = "The Boy Who Hooked the Sun"
A20 = "The Cat" (in ENDANGERED SPECIES [hereafter "ES"])
A44 = "Folia's [sic] Story: The Armiger's Daughter"
A51 = "The God and His Man" (in ES)
A88 = "The Map" (in ES)
A137 = "The Tale of the Student and His Son"
B12 = EMPIRES OF FOLIAGE AND FLOWER

. . . and there is also "The Old Woman Whose Rolling Pin Is the Sun," which
doesn't have a UMX number yet.

Why this is important: well, I've had plenty of warning over the last ten
years or so, but until this morning it didn't register and I didn't
remember that A51 is an =Urth= story--I incorrectly recalled it as being an
Urth-ish fable along the lines of "The Legend of Xi Cygnus" (gosh, I'd
better go recheck that one, too, asap); with less direct reference to Urth
than, say, the non-Urth stories "A Solar Labyrinth," or "Procreation," or
"The Sailor Who Followed the Sun" (if I got that title right--it seems I've
failed to note it in my UMX), or even "My Book."

And I mean Urth in the sense that it says "Urth" within itself.  Which is
why "The Old Woman Whose Rolling Pin Is the Sun" is an Urth story, because
it says there is a planet named Skuld; nothing vague about that.

So A51 really should have been included in the Lexicon, but it wasn't, due
to some strange oversight on my part.  And that is a pity.

While I'm opening a vein, I might as well mention a new mistake I've
discovered: my dear, dear friend "Fish's Mouth," where I wrote: "Fomalhaut
. . . is a white (A3) star in the Piscis Austrinus constellation.  The fact
that it is red when seen from Urth indicates a degree of stellar evolution
and the gulf of time separating Earth from Urth" (p. 106).

Well, no.  I mean, the first sentence is mostly true; and because I am an
amateur astronomer-by-books rather than -by-telescope, it didn't really
occur to me that the very familiar stellar class "A3" could possibly
produce a red light (since "red" is associated with stellar classes K
[orange] and M [red]).

But it can and it does.  You can go outside tonight and see it.  Or at
least, that is what another book says, one written for telescope-using
astronomers:

"[Fomalhaut] Alpha [Piscis Australis], 1.3 [magnitude], reddish"
(STAR-NAMES AND THEIR MEANINGS, p. 345).

"Well blow me down," as the sailor said when . . .

Sorry to have let everybody down!  The Lexicon, or even one of the
supplements, really should have entries for: "Isid Iooo IoooE" (a god);
"Maser"; "Master" (a weapon); "Tarnung" (a magic cloak); "Zed" (a world).

Furthermore: A51 might have some relevance to OBW; Zed, although just a
sketch, seems rather like Blue (and the adventures that narrator has there
are rather like those that Man has on Zed).  Plus, a special bonus for
alga: direct applications to THE DEEP.

=mantis=

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

---

From: William H. Ansley <wansley at warwick.net>
Date: Thu, 16 Dec 1999 23:54:53 +0000

>"Maser"; "Master" (a weapon); "Tarnung" (a magic cloak); "Zed" (a world).

mantis,

Surely you can't believe that the fact that the "enchanted" sword in _The
God and His Man_ is referred to as "Master" instead of "Maser" the first
two times it is mentioned is anything but a (particularly annoying) typo.

Sorry. I shouldn't make any assumptions about others' beliefs. But *I*
can't believe it. The only way I'll accept the idea that Wolfe meant to use
both names for the sword is if he said so somewhere (and I'll lose a degree
of respect for him as an author at the same time).

I have always assumed that the name of the sword Maser comes from our term
maser (Microwave Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation; just
like a laser but with microwaves instead of light). I am pretty sure a real
maser emitter couldn't be made the size of a swordhilt and I don't know if
it would behave as Maser is described to; I am assuming the term will
become generalized to mean any energy-beam weapon.

I won't deny I could be way off here. Certainly "Tarnung" doesn't suggest
the name of any piece of present day technology to me. Unless it's Romulan
for "cloaking device."

However you slice it, Maser sure sounds like an azoth to me. "... the
enchanted sword ... whose blade is as long as the wielder wishes it (though
it weighs nothing) and against which not even stone can stand."

>alga: direct applications to THE DEEP.

"Isid Iooo IoooE" has long plagued me. It seems as if it is a puzzle Wolfe
is setting us and one he expects us to be able to solve (like the name
Eyebem in the story of the same name). I have always suspected that the
answer involves replacing the capital Is in the second and third parts of
the name with 1s and the lower-case os with 0s. Thus I get ISID 1000 1000E,
if I make the first part uppercase at the same time. Unfortunately, this
doesn't suggest anything definite to me either, although it does look like
the identifying number of a machine, a computer model number, for example.
Certainly Isid Iooo IoooE is an artificially intelligent computer (or
something very much like one) as well as a god.

Double-trunked elephants are found on both Zed and Blue does. It is a pity
that we are not told how many legs Zedian elephants have.

William Ansley