Subject: (urth) Wizard Knight and after

From: Christopher Culver <christopher_culver at yahoo.com>
Date: Mon, 01 Apr 2002 05:04:05 +0000

I've been corresponding with Gene Wolfe for a few weeks now, and I'm 
pleasantly surprised that he has time to answer letters from fans.

Apparently, The Wizard Knight will be in two volumes called, 
appropriately enough, WIZARD and KNIGHT. Wolfe seems to be pretty modest 
about his talents, he tells me there's no guarantee that David Hartwell 
will accept it.

I asked him if after Wizard Knight we'd see a conclusion to the Soldier 
series, and his response was "I don't know what my next book will be. Or 
even if there will be a next book. If there is, it may be another 
Soldier book. If it is, it may conclude the series, though I doubt it." 
That the Soldier series wouldn't be completed after three volumes makes 
me wonder what sort of plans Wolfe has come up with for Latro since 
SOLDIER OF ARETE was published.

I wonder why the Soldier series tends to be the most underappreciated of 
Wolfe's work. (Well, it's certainly rated higher than Operation Ares for 
everyone, I'm sure.)

Christopher Culver

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From: David DiGiacomo <david at slack.com>
Date: Wed, 03 Apr 2002 19:06:00 +0000

>Wolfe's work. (Well, it's certainly rated higher than Operation Ares for 

I would distinguish between underappreciated and low rated books.  I think
that if the Soldier series is underappreciated, it's because very few
readers are sufficiently well read in history to have more than a vague
understanding of it.  CASTLEVIEW is also underappreciated, because it's
incomprehensible (but good otherwise).

In contrast, THERE ARE DOORS and PANDORA BY HOLLY HOLLANDER are low rated
because readers understand them (?), but dislike them.

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From: Fernando Gouvea <fqgouvea at colby.edu>
Date: Wed, 03 Apr 2002 19:25:00 +0000

> because readers understand them (?), but dislike them.

Hmm, I don't quite feel that way. I agree, pretty much, about
Castleview. My problem with the Soldier series is just that it's
unfinished. The books so far seem quite satsifying to me, but the
open-ended status of the story makes it hard to have an overall
opinion. I'd love to see more books in that series.

I do like There Are Doors. I think Gene's description of it is fair: it's a
book about "falling in love" and what it does to you. People don't like the
alternate universe aspect, I guess, because they feel that the other
universe is not sufficiently different from ours. That doesn't bother me
too much because the changes seem to fit the overall theme, and I'm willing
to take the (admittedly somewhat ad hoc) explanation offered in the book
for why the worlds are in fact so similar.

Pandora is harder for me to find much significance in, though I enjoyed the
ride when I was reading it.

One major reason, of course, for all of these books (and Free Live Free and
others) to receive less attention is that they don't fit into some large
framework as the various Sun books do. Because they don't, there are far
fewer details to discuss and unravel, and so we discuss them less.

Fernando

============================================================================
Fernando Q. Gouvea                              
Dept. of Mathematics                            Editor, FOCUS and MAA Online
Colby College                                   http://www.maa.org
Waterville, ME 04901
fqgouvea at colby.edu

Sattinger's Law:
        It works better if you plug it in.

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From: Nigel Price <nigel.a.price at virgin.net>
Date: Sun, 14 Apr 2002 11:02:32 +0000

Oh, ages ago, David DiGiacomo wrote:

>>I would distinguish between underappreciated
>>and low rated books.  I think that if the
>>Soldier series is underappreciated, it's
>>because very few readers are sufficiently
>>well read in history to have more than a vague
>>understanding of it.  CASTLEVIEW is also
>>underappreciated, because it's incomprehensible
>>(but good otherwise).

>>In contrast, THERE ARE DOORS and PANDORA BY
>>HOLLY HOLLANDER are low rated because readers
>>understand them (?), but dislike them.

Strange, isn't it? I really like "Pandora by Holly Hollander" - it's
charming, witty, and well executed - and thought "There are Doors" was quite
brilliant, if decidedly odd.

Is "Castleview" really incomprehensible? The narrative seems radically
compressed, certainly, and there are what may be signs of haste in the
composition, but essentially it is GW doing a sort of late twentieth
century, midwestern Charles Williams, and as such is excellent fun.

For the record, I rate the "Soldier" books very highly indeed and am
constantly surprised that we don't discuss them on the list more often.
Personally, I would love to see "Soldier of Sidon" (or whatever it might be
called) published.

Nigel (who is slowly reading his way through two weeks' worth of accumulated
Urth lists, having been away on holiday, and has now read Fernando Q.
Gouvea's response to David DiGiacomo's posting...he agrees with Fernando and
probably wouldn't have bothered to type out the above if he'd read that
message first!)

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