Subject: (urth) Elementary

From: Dan <autarch at vippn.com>
Date: Thu, 25 Aug 2005 03:43:43 +0000

>
>All good points: but what does it mean that Number 5 cannot find any books?
>
>~Maru

Because they've all been checked out and are being read by avid (or should 
that be rabid?) fans!

Dan

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From: Los Arboles Del Frio <losarbolesdelfrio at gmail.com>
Date: Thu, 25 Aug 2005 03:47:45 +0000

> Because they've all been checked out and are being read by avid (or should

Or because that library has none, maybe?

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From: Maru Dubshinki <marudubshinki at gmail.com>
Date: Thu, 25 Aug 2005 20:29:23 +0000

> Or because that library has none, maybe?

Not to be snippy, that was what I was asking: if his 'father' has written a 
whole roomful of books
like the lady said, and we are correct in identifying the original as Gene 
Wolfe, where are the books?
Gene Wolfe is popular. 
Two possibilities: A) this whole question is an anacrhonism; Wolfe had no 
way of knowing he would be a success
and go on to write many fairly popular books; B) we are wrong in our premise 
that the "masion du chien" = Wolfe

~Maru
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From: Chris <rasputin_ at hotmail.com>
Date: Fri, 26 Aug 2005 01:15:27 +0000

Does this take that much agonizing? The fact that Gene Wolfe is popular now 
is irrelevant, unless you're claiming that somehow Wolfe somehow should have 
known back then that he would be as popular an author as Vinge. Even if you 
assume he made that presumption, when you think about it it would be a 
relative miracle for a book by Vinge or Wolfe to have survived and made its 
way into a library on a planet circling another star.

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From: mournings glory <mourningsglory at hotmail.com>
Date: Fri, 26 Aug 2005 09:52:54 +0000

>Wolfe, where are the books?

Almost certainly any books written by Maitre would be in the non-fiction 
sections of the stacks--something the very young Number Five may not yet 
have conceptualized. (Hmmm, wonder if they use the Dewey Decimal System way 
out there on Saint Croix?)

But perhaps more importantly, two of the books #5 does find are _Monday or 
Tuesday_ by Virginia Woolf and _The Great Prince Died_ by Bernard Wolfe. 
Surely, you can see the pattern, no matter how much they jibe against your 
chien = wolf animadversion?

msg

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From: David Lebling <dlebling at hyraxes.com>
Date: Fri, 26 Aug 2005 13:14:56 +0000

> out there on Saint Croix?)

As I recall, one of the other books he finds is _The Mile-long Spaceship_ by
Kate Wilhelm, which he (mistakenly) believes has been misshelved from the
astronautics section, so he clearly knows the difference between fiction and
non-fiction.

-- Dave Lebling, aka vizcacha

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From: Maru Dubshinki <marudubshinki at gmail.com>
Date: Fri, 26 Aug 2005 14:14:56 +0000

> -- Dave Lebling, aka vizcacha

Thta is what my edition reads as as well. I've never heard of "The Great 
Prince Dies".

~Maru
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From: mournings glory <mourningsglory at hotmail.com>
Date: Fri, 26 Aug 2005 15:32:31 +0000

Maru writes:

>I've never heard of "The Great Prince Dies".

It's the "book about the assassination of Trotsky" that Number Five finds 
next to Virginia Woolf's _Monday or Tuesday_ and was written by Bernard 
Wolfe, who, besides having been a bodyguard for Trotsky in Mexico, also 
wrote in various genres and was a frequent contributer to Playboy. His only 
sf novel is _Limbo_ (once hailed by JG Ballard as the best American sf 
novel), but when Gene Wolfe first began to make a name for himself, he may 
have been frequently asked if he was related to this other Wolfe (let alone 
Tom and Thomas). For more info see either Clute's _Encyclopedia_ or Harlan 
Ellison's intro to B. Wolfe's stories in _Again, Dangerous Visions_ .

Also, while I have your attention: the Linnaean binomial for wolf is "Canis 
lupus," and it's a well-established fact that wolves and dogs can 
interbreed. Biologically, it can even be argued they are the same species, 
and while "chien" and "loup" are not perfect synonyms like "car" and "auto,"
the difference is more an artificial distinction than an actual one.

C5H9NO4 (he, he)

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From: James Wynn <thewynns at earthlink.net>
Date: Fri, 26 Aug 2005 16:02:21 +0000

>["The Great Prince Dies" is] the "book about the assassination of Trotsky"
>that Number Five finds next to Virginia Woolf's _Monday or Tuesday_ and
>was written by Bernard Wolfe, who, besides having been a bodyguard for
>Trotsky in Mexico, also wrote in various genres and was a frequent
>contributer to Playboy. His only
> novel)...

Actually, the section Number Five is looking in seems to be the "science
fiction authors" section; that is, any authors who have written science
fiction. The library seems to organize its books the way I do rather than
according to the DDS.

Apparently, the original or one of his clones had written SF or had written
something (like his life story) that was believed to be SF.

J

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From: Jeff Wilson <jwilson at io.com>
Date: Fri, 26 Aug 2005 22:46:37 +0000

> something (like his life story) that was believed to be SF.

Or maybe, with typical family tunnel vision, 5 continues going up to the 
section he's already familiar with from younger desires for more story 
books. Besides, it's up some rickety stairs at the top of the dome, 
where Mister Million can't follow and his voice would be hardest to hear.

-- 
Jeff Wilson - jwilson at io.com
< http://www.io.com/~jwilson >

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From: Jeff Wilson <jwilson at io.com>
Date: Fri, 26 Aug 2005 23:06:24 +0000

Chris wrote:

> Does this take that much agonizing? The fact that Gene Wolfe is popular 
> now is irrelevant, unless you're claiming that somehow Wolfe somehow 
> should have known back then that he would be as popular an author as 
> Vinge. Even if you assume he made that presumption, when you think about 
> it it would be a relative miracle for a book by Vinge or Wolfe to have 
> survived and made its way into a library on a planet circling another star.

It's a BIG library as described, and the locals could not hope to have 
produced enough writings of note in their debased state of 
civilizational devolution.

Given the political history also described, wholesale re-printing of 
English-language books from Earth could be a conscious culture war 
stratagem. The authorities depicted as never throwing anything written 
away, though they are fairly indifferent about keeping it up.

Some or all of the above may be a reflection of GW's experiences with 
his alma mater, complete with autocratic unformed authoritarians, 
neoclassical buildings plopped down in the middle of the wilderness to 
establish Anglophone civilization where former continental colonies had 
been, libraries crammed with books but relatively little care given 
them, even the lengthy evening sunlight during the play is to be found 
there. Oh, and the vivisection as well, lest we forget.

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From: Chris <rasputin_ at hotmail.com>
Date: Sat, 27 Aug 2005 01:47:22 +0000

Jeff Wilson wrote:
>Some or all of the above may be a reflection of GW's experiences with his 
>alma mater...

>Oh, and the vivisection as well, lest we forget.

...
...
What?

Civet

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From: Jeff Wilson <jwilson at io.com>
Date: Sat, 27 Aug 2005 13:18:38 +0000

Chris wrote:

>> his alma mater...

Texas A&M has a prominent veterinary school, it occupies several 
buildings on campus, some decorated with sculpted animal skulls. Part of 
the curriculum involves practicing surgical procedures on live animals.

Now that I think about it, the university is a fair microcosm of Urthian 
architechture and geography, compressed in time as well as space. It has 
sprawled noticeably between my leaving 17 years ago and my latest visit 
this spring, but even during GW's matriculation it apparently had 
occupational segregation, hidden nooks and forgotten alcoves, disparate 
parts connected via tunnel, technical wonders alongside agrarian 
commonality, ritual fire of cannon far older and longer at peace than 
their operators were old.

There's even a bronze fasces forming the base of the flagpole at the old 
center of campus! I'll have to seriously think about compiling a LEXICON 
TEXAS with some of these factoids some day.