Subject: (urth) Cherryh Jubilee?

From: Nigel Price <nigel.a.price at virgin.net>
Date: Sun, 11 Feb 2001 23:01:47 +0000

Marc Aramini asks some interesting questions about the GW short story
"Cherry Jubilee" and its possible connections with a Russian novel called
"Red Star" by an author called Bogdanov.

Sorry, Marc, I can't answer your questions directly, but I do remember being
convinced when I read "Cherry Jubilee" that GW was having some gentle fun at
the expense of the SF author C J Cherryh, who in real life, of course,
spells her name surname "Cherry". In particular, I thought that he was
pastiching the themes found in her Hugo-winning novel "Cyteen".

"Cyteen" is, amongst other things, a highly convoluted murder mystery, set
on a planet colonized by humans of Russian and French descent. The heroine
of the second part of the novel is the clone of the victim in the first
part.

Now, I'm not saying that the parallels are close, but we have the name
"Cherry", the murder mystery, the Russian names, and the highly significant
clone. My guess is that Wolfe found it amusing to juggle with these themes
in a short story in which the name of the author being pastiched was itself
a significant item. The tribute is disguised, but at the same time perfectly
open and obvious - "hidden in plain sight", as Poe would have said.

Incidentally, Wolfe refers to C J Cherryh as "the Duchess of Oklahoma" in
his essay "The Ethos of Elfland", which is included in the collection
"Castle of Days". I think that that was intended as a compliment!

I always meant to post this message on the Urth list and on cherryhlist at
the same time, to which I also used to subscribe, so that I could, as it
were, kill two birds with one stone, but I never got round to it. Marc's
enquiry reminded me of my omission, so here you are...

Nigel
Minety, Wiltshire, England

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