A Price on my Head (was: Wash Post article)

Nigel Price: Thanks for your kind remarks about my article. In response to your points: 1) When I referred to Wolfe as a maze builder, yes, I certainly had “A Solar Labyrinth” (one of Wolfe’s best stories) in mind, but the labyrinth metaphor is one with a broad natural application to Wolfe. It simply fits, specific story or no. Your analysis of Wolfe’s shifting shadows of significance is elegantly formulated. That example of the end of LONG SUN is a good one—when I wrote my “Five Steps Towards Briah” article back in ’98, the flight from false world to pleroma seemed very clear, but the bases shifted for SHORT SUN—somewhat, not invalidating but rather recontextualising what had gone before. 2) Colons: I’m an inveterate user of colons and semicolons; I like long, rhetorically balanced sentences. I think the editors at the Wash Post did a lot of repunctuating in the article, and the standards they used were very much theirs. 3) Yes, I’m proposing that 5HC is part of the Briah Cycle, retrospectively included of course. As I recently said in response to Kevin Maroney, this is experimental, something I think should be tested, and used if found to be sound. I think that the twin planet parallel requires that my hypothesis be conceded. Perhaps I should articulate a challenge, to those who don’t think 5HC is set in Briah: what actually disqualifies my assumption? Why do you say so emphatically that 5HC doesn’t fit? --Nick Gevers.

This just further supports the theseus that "A Solar Labyrinth" is about reading Wolfe's books.

I'm not sure which way Occam's razor cuts. Should one assume that an author's works are all set in the same universe unless there is evidence otherwise ("Universes should not be multiplied unnecessarily"), or does the assumption lie in the other direction ("Connections should not be assumed unnecessarily")? Would you have assumed the Long Sun books were set in Briah if Wolfe hadn't made the Pas-Typhon connection? I'm much more inclined to see a thematic connection (double planets, shape shifters, colonization, etc.) and I think that's sufficient reason to argue that 5HC is a companion work to the Sun books. -Rostrum

OTOH, if Urth is really Old Earth, then Marc's point about no memory at the dawn of time and full memory at the end of time hints that the Soldier books are also in the same universe! Anyway, they're all in Wolfe's universe! Nutria

Nick Gevers wrote: ---------------------------------------------------------------- This message has been truncated, as it exceeded the maximum size of 0k as specified by the system administrator. The sender of this message has been notified of the problem. ----------------------------------------------------------------

(Reposted from yesterday's urth list glitch)

The SUN books are all set in the far, far future of Earth; 5HC isn't. -Roy