# more thoughts on Red Star *The Urth list — 2 messages, 2 voices, 12 Feb 2001* > 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. --- ### maa32 *12 Feb 2001, 15:10* Thanks for the response, Nigel. Another big part of the novel Red Star involves a problem with putting aside individualism. The least individualistic earthman (Leonov) the martians can find to show their society to cannot adapt to it and goes slightly crazy, behaving homicidally, possessively, and jealously. Perhaps the clone has too much individuality, like Leonov when he is faced with a culture in which everyone is the same. CJ Cherryh's novel sounds like a much nicer fit to the story itself. (I haven't read anything by her even though I have a copy of Kutath and Chanur's Legacy lying around somewhere. Is she worth reading? If so, is there a good place to start?) As an aside, I have always wondered about that part in The Book of the New Sun (but right now I can't remember whether it is at the end of Claw or the beginning of Sword) in which Severian meets this old woman (man?) in a hut and she talks to her son about the tall stranger who came through with a staff when he was just a boy. Does anyone know what I'm talking about, and if we are to assume that the tall stranger was someone in the text like Palaemon? (the description does sound like Horn, but that is reading too much into a slight detail.) Sorry this is so sketchy, just one of those unsolved mysteries. I'll look for the exact place later. Marc Aramini --- ### Michael Andre-Driussi *12 Feb 2001, 15:03 · follows maa32* > Marc wrote: > As an aside, I have always wondered about that part in The Book of the New > Sun > (but right now I can't remember whether it is at the end of Claw or the > beginning of Sword) in which Severian meets this old woman (man?) in a hut > and > she talks to her son about the tall stranger who came through with a staff > when he was just a boy. Does anyone know what I'm talking about, and if we > are to assume that the tall stranger was someone in the text like Palaemon? > (the description does sound like Horn, but that is reading too much into a > slight detail.) Sorry this is so sketchy, just one of those unsolved > mysteries. I'll look for the exact place later. You might think you are being sketchy, but we know exactly what you are talking about. (Here, it is in III, ch. 7.) Yes, some of us sometimes think that the silent man is Palaemon-in-exile. Check the archive for some of the detailed arguments for and against. =mantis= Sirius Fiction Catalog and errata sheet at http://www.sirius.com/~mantis/ ---