Subject: (urth) recent Wolfe stuff

From: Joshua A. Solomon <j.solomon at ucl.ac.uk>
Date: Thu, 08 May 1997 10:12:05 +0000

[Posted from URTH, a mailing list about Gene Wolfe's New Sun and other works]

Recently visited my local sf shop, found a couple of Wolfe things.
"Counting Cats in Zanzibar" and "Try and Kill It" are two short stories
published in Asimov's last year. Another, published in F & SF, I haven't
succeeded in tracking down yet. Both of these stories allude to "God's
finger's." Anybody want to take a stab at what these are supposed to
represent? Does anybody know of any other stories involving 
supernatural digits? Does anybody know of any more recently published
Wolfe things? I think that URTH is an appropriate place to post
Wolfe-related news items. For example, the May issue of Interzone
contains an (extremely superficial) interview with the man. 

bee

FWIW my initial guess re. God's fingers is that they create the
artifice responsible for turning ordinary fiction into speculative
fiction.

PPS My previous post (several weeks ago, to WHORL) about
A Solar Labyrinth seems to have vanished without a trace, but
it's noteworthy that, according to said interview, GW claims that
it is one of his favorites. (The others were, Westwind, The Eyeflash
Miracles & THERE ARE DOORS.) I had said that I thought this story
was the archetypical GW story. 
IMO Wolfe writes specifically for the audience who will have the
perception and imagination to discover and become fascinated, if not
entrapped, in the literary mazes (puzzles, really) he builds.
--
Joshua A. Solomon
Institute of Ophthalmology
Bath Street
London EC1V 9EL
Voice: (44) 171 608 6924
Fax: (44) 171 608 6846
j.solomon at ucl.ac.uk
http://vision.arc.nasa.gov/personnel/jsolomon

---

From: m.driussi <m.driussi at genie.com>
Date: Thu, 08 May 1997 16:38:00 +0000

Reply:  Item #5191086 from URTH at LISTS.BEST.COM@INET00#

bee,

The F&SF (Oct/Nov '96) story is "The Man in the Pepper Mill," which
IMHO harkens back to "The Island of Doctor Death and Other Stories."
Or maybe you are thinking of the F&SF (Jan '97) story "No Planets
Strike," which features talking animals in an interstellar clown
show.

The anthology SPACE OPERA, edited by McCaffrery and Scarborough, has
"Bluesberry Jam," a dystopian near future (or perhaps "dark future"
captures the sense better?) story.  My favorite of the 1996 shorts.

(Me, I finally got and read "The Sailor Who Sailed After the Sun," in
the anthology GRAILS: QUESTS OF THE DAWN.  While it isn't even
remotely Urthian, seeing as how it is set in a "City of Lost
Children" sort of world, it is possible to read it as an overview of
the Urth Cycle.  Which is disturbing in some ways; since, if you look
at it this way, the first Severian is a nice boy and his successor,
the Severian of the narrative, is literally a very clever monkey.
"Revenge of the Tanist?" I'm wondering.  All from my soon-to-be
patented school of over-reading, "Uberlesen!")

=mantis=