{ "export": { "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/4866", "note": "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.", "addresses": "obscured as 'user at host'" }, "archive": "urth", "thread": { "id": 4866, "subject": "New Wolfe Story at Subterranean Press", "messages": 19, "voices": 9, "first": "2007-06-26T16:26:44+00:00", "last": "2007-06-28T15:14:07+00:00" }, "messages": [ { "message_id": "<44fb53d10706260926o3e7259d4yfed5fda74e9f3e0f@mail.gmail.com>", "from": { "name": "Matthew Keeley", "address": "matthew.keeley.1 at gmail.com" }, "date": "2007-06-26T16:26:44+00:00", "subject": "(urth) New Wolfe Story at Subterranean Press", "in_reply_to": null, "reply_link": null, "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Hi,\n\nSubterraneanpress.com just posted a new Wolfe story. Should be an\ninteresting read. Does anyone know if Wolfe plans to publish any books with\nSubterranean? It's a great small press, and I wouldn't mind seeing a Wolfe\nvolume from them.\n\n-Matt" } ] }, { "message_id": "<1f7617370706261049l7f9ca2ddu91a0be98c9a80319@mail.gmail.com>", "from": { "name": "Dan'l Danehy-Oakes", "address": "danldo at gmail.com" }, "date": "2007-06-26T17:49:57+00:00", "subject": "(urth) New Wolfe Story at Subterranean Press", "in_reply_to": "<44fb53d10706260926o3e7259d4yfed5fda74e9f3e0f@mail.gmail.com>", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Just read it. It looks like one of those stories Wolfe does occasionally\nthat seem kind of pointless at first and come back to whack you later.\nThis one hasn't come back to whack me yet, but I feel it in there trying\nto figure itself out." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "On 6/26/07, Matthew Keeley wrote:\nHi,\n\nSubterraneanpress.com just posted a new Wolfe story. Should be an\ninteresting read. Does anyone know if Wolfe plans to publish any books with\nSubterranean? It's a great small press, and I wouldn't mind seeing a Wolfe\nvolume from them.\n\n-Matt\n\n_______________________________________________" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Joel Sieh", "address": "joel.sieh at gmail.com" }, "date": "2007-06-26T19:45:49+00:00", "subject": "(urth) New Wolfe Story at Subterranean Press", "in_reply_to": "<1f7617370706261049l7f9ca2ddu91a0be98c9a80319@mail.gmail.com>", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Yeah, same here. It definitely has some dark undertones.\n\nI get the following out of it so far (SPOILERS AHEAD):\n\n- Robots are at the same time perfect (and more convenient), but not as good\nas the real thing.\n\n- Real is messy, imperfect, inconvenient, and is being slowly exterminated\nfor it.\n\n- I think there's a contrast of impurity/purity implied there, too. Roberta\nteaches Julianne. Roberta is blond (pure), while Julianne is brunette\n(impure) (according to some folklore - not sure where I'm getting that,\nmaybe pulpy werewolf stories).\n\n- Roberta the robot girl pities Robber the robot dog, and through this we\nget to see her self pity. At the same time she pities him, she loves him.\nMaybe she loves him because he is like her, or because she empathizes with\nhim. And maybe her understanding is why he loves her (as shown by his\nattempts to get back to her - I'd like to think it's because she understands\nand values him, and not just because they're both robots).\n\n- I think Julianne kills Rover the real dog.... At least that's what the\nnarrator wants us to think, without coming out and saying it.\n\n- Maybe the narrator does, but I don't think so. There's the repeated hedge\nimagery when Rover comes into his yard and when the dog dies, but I think it\nmore likely that the narrator is some incarnation of death.... Or\nsomething. His talk at the beginning about the inevitability of death, his\nfascination with the girls, his attempt at proving the value of living\nthings through his dog-swapping experiment, and his collection of the dead\ndog at the end lead me in that direction. As a side note, I thought\n\"penetrated\" was an odd word choice in the following sentence: \"Roberta's\npuppy had penetrated the hedge that separates the Robinson's back yard from\nour own.\" With the screaming in the same paragraph, it could take on a\nviolent or sinister quality like what Michael Swanwick says of \"A Solar\nLabyrinth\".\n\n- A question that popped out at me while I was reading: Who is the \"our\" in\nthe \"our own\" in the sentence quoted above?\n\n- The narrator fixates on innocence. He mentions it when he talks about the\ngirls and baby dogs/animals. There may be parallels between his\nrelationships to the girls and their relationships to the dogs.\n\n- Some other things I noticed: Both the narrator and Roberta tried to\nteach. Robots, children, and small animals share the quality of innocence,\nand the narrator definitely does not (or believes he does not).\n\nJust a bunch of bits and pieces. That's what I often end up with at the end\nof a first reading of Gene Wolfe, however. Not quite enough to put it all\ntogether, yet. Maybe it'll help move the discussion along, though!\n\n--Joel" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "On 6/26/07, Dan'l Danehy-Oakes wrote:\n\nJust read it. It looks like one of those stories Wolfe does occasionally\nthat seem kind of pointless at first and come back to whack you later.\nThis one hasn't come back to whack me yet, but I feel it in there trying\nto figure itself out.\n\nOn 6/26/07, Matthew Keeley wrote:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "Hi,\n\nSubterraneanpress.com just posted a new Wolfe story. Should be an\ninteresting read. Does anyone know if Wolfe plans to publish any books\nwith\nSubterranean? It's a great small press, and I wouldn't mind seeing a\nWolfe\nvolume from them.\n\n-Matt\n\n_______________________________________________" } ] }, { "message_id": "<1f7617370706261403r3b6f7364pd5e80e3b702b643a@mail.gmail.com>", "from": { "name": "Dan'l Danehy-Oakes", "address": "danldo at gmail.com" }, "date": "2007-06-26T21:03:43+00:00", "subject": "(urth) New Wolfe Story at Subterranean Press", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "One bit-and-piece that got left out: Roberta and Robber both have\n\"Rob\" names. So do the Robinsons. Are they actually flesh&blood\nthemselves?" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "On 6/26/07, Joel Sieh wrote:\nYeah, same here. It definitely has some dark undertones.\n\nI get the following out of it so far (SPOILERS AHEAD):\n\n- Robots are at the same time perfect (and more convenient), but not as good\nas the real thing.\n\n- Real is messy, imperfect, inconvenient, and is being slowly exterminated\nfor it.\n\n- I think there's a contrast of impurity/purity implied there, too. Roberta\nteaches Julianne. Roberta is blond (pure), while Julianne is brunette\n(impure) (according to some folklore - not sure where I'm getting that,\nmaybe pulpy werewolf stories).\n\n- Roberta the robot girl pities Robber the robot dog, and through this we\nget to see her self pity. At the same time she pities him, she loves him.\nMaybe she loves him because he is like her, or because she empathizes with\nhim. And maybe her understanding is why he loves her (as shown by his\nattempts to get back to her - I'd like to think it's because she understands\nand values him, and not just because they're both robots).\n\n- I think Julianne kills Rover the real dog.... At least that's what the\nnarrator wants us to think, without coming out and saying it.\n\n- Maybe the narrator does, but I don't think so. There's the repeated hedge\nimagery when Rover comes into his yard and when the dog dies, but I think it\nmore likely that the narrator is some incarnation of death.... Or\nsomething. His talk at the beginning about the inevitability of death, his\nfascination with the girls, his attempt at proving the value of living\nthings through his dog-swapping experiment, and his collection of the dead\ndog at the end lead me in that direction. As a side note, I thought\n\"penetrated\" was an odd word choice in the following sentence: \"Roberta's\npuppy had penetrated the hedge that separates the Robinson's back yard from\nour own.\" With the screaming in the same paragraph, it could take on a\nviolent or sinister quality like what Michael Swanwick says of \"A Solar\nLabyrinth\".\n\n- A question that popped out at me while I was reading: Who is the \"our\" in\nthe \"our own\" in the sentence quoted above?\n\n- The narrator fixates on innocence. He mentions it when he talks about the\ngirls and baby dogs/animals. There may be parallels between his\nrelationships to the girls and their relationships to the dogs.\n\n- Some other things I noticed: Both the narrator and Roberta tried to\nteach. Robots, children, and small animals share the quality of innocence,\nand the narrator definitely does not (or believes he does not).\n\nJust a bunch of bits and pieces. That's what I often end up with at the end\nof a first reading of Gene Wolfe, however. Not quite enough to put it all\ntogether, yet. Maybe it'll help move the discussion along, though!\n\n--Joel\n\n\nOn 6/26/07, Dan'l Danehy-Oakes wrote:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "Just read it. It looks like one of those stories Wolfe does occasionally\nthat seem kind of pointless at first and come back to whack you later.\nThis one hasn't come back to whack me yet, but I feel it in there trying\nto figure itself out.\n\nOn 6/26/07, Matthew Keeley wrote:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 3, "text": "Hi,\n\nSubterraneanpress.com just posted a new Wolfe story. Should be an\ninteresting read. Does anyone know if Wolfe plans to publish any books\nwith\nSubterranean? It's a great small press, and I wouldn't mind seeing a\nWolfe\nvolume from them.\n\n-Matt\n\n_______________________________________________" } ] }, { "message_id": "<3BF5884F-0197-4F50-BCC0-95279DD3F0A7@gmail.com>", "from": { "name": "Matthew King", "address": "automatthew at gmail.com" }, "date": "2007-06-26T21:12:29+00:00", "subject": "(urth) New Wolfe Story at Subterranean Press", "in_reply_to": "<1f7617370706261403r3b6f7364pd5e80e3b702b643a@mail.gmail.com>", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "On Jun 26, 2007, at 4:03 PM, Dan'l Danehy-Oakes wrote:\nOne bit-and-piece that got left out: Roberta and Robber both have\n\"Rob\" names. So do the Robinsons. Are they actually flesh&blood\nthemselves?" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "The Robinsons are fleshly:\n\n\"Either the Robinsons could not have a child of their own, or were \nunwilling to undertake the travail and expense of a real child.\"" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Matthew King", "address": "automatthew at gmail.com" }, "date": "2007-06-26T21:13:05+00:00", "subject": "(urth) New Wolfe Story at Subterranean Press", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "If I hadn't known the story was by Wolfe, this sentence would have \nrevealed it:\n?I’m going to pry, Roberta. I’m going to ask you about things that \nare none of my business. I hope you’ll answer.\n\n\n\nSecondly, in response to a few of Joel Sieh's observations:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "- Roberta the robot girl pities Robber the robot dog, and through \nthis we get to see her self pity. At the same time she pities him, \nshe loves him. Maybe she loves him because he is like her, or \nbecause she empathizes with him. And maybe her understanding is \nwhy he loves her (as shown by his attempts to get back to her - I'd \nlike to think it's because she understands and values him, and not \njust because they're both robots)." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I think this exchange is important:\n-----\n“Robber thinks he’s a real dog. The words held a world of agony.\n?Does he?”\n\n?Yes! He’s?he’s a thing, but he thinks he’s a real dog. She turned \naway and ran into her house.\n\n-----\n\nSo has the narrator caused Roberta to lose her innocence by leading \nher to \"realize\" that she is a thing, not a real girl? I use the \nscare quotes because Wolfe has consistently shown in his other work \nthat one needn't be human to be people." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "- I think Julianne kills Rover the real dog.... At least that's \nwhat the narrator wants us to think, without coming out and saying it.\n\n- Maybe the narrator does, but I don't think so. There's the \nrepeated hedge imagery when Rover comes into his yard and when the \ndog dies, but I think it more likely that the narrator is some \nincarnation of death.... Or something. His talk at the beginning \nabout the inevitability of death, his fascination with the girls, \nhis attempt at proving the value of living things through his dog- \nswapping experiment, and his collection of the dead dog at the end \nlead me in that direction." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I don't believe the dog was dead. The narrator guessed that Rover \nhad followed Julianne home, and when he went there, he \"found Rover \nlying quietly\" under Julianne's bedroom window. Rover was pining for \nJulianne, not for the fjords.\n\nThe surface story (Roy Lackey's term) seems simple on this point of \nunrequited love. Robot dog loves robot girl, and flesh dog loves \nflesh girl. One or both girls do not love their counterpart dogs in \nreturn.\n\nJulianne tells the narrator that she likes the robot better because \nhe \"don't mess the carpet\". If Julianne is not dissimulating, this \nsupports the narrator's disgust for the sterile civilization.\n\nPerhaps Roberta, in answer to my question above, refuses to love the \nrobot dog so as to avoid hard thoughts about her own nature.\n\nRoberta is wrong, though, in thinking that Robber is not a real dog. \nWere he just a thing, Julianne's family would not need to keep him \nchained up." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "As a side note, I thought \"penetrated\" was an odd word choice in \nthe following sentence: \"Roberta's puppy had penetrated the hedge \nthat separates the Robinson's back yard from our own.\" With the \nscreaming in the same paragraph, it could take on a violent or \nsinister quality like what Michael Swanwick says of \"A Solar \nLabyrinth\".\n\n- A question that popped out at me while I was reading: Who is the \n\"our\" in the \"our own\" in the sentence quoted above?" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "And why does the narrator give himself the role of the evil dwarf in \nhis imagining of a fecund human past?" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Joel Sieh", "address": "joel.sieh at gmail.com" }, "date": "2007-06-26T21:35:36+00:00", "subject": "(urth) New Wolfe Story at Subterranean Press", "in_reply_to": "<3BF5884F-0197-4F50-BCC0-95279DD3F0A7@gmail.com>", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Roberta, Robber, Rover, and the Robinsons all have \"Ro\" names. Julianne is\nthe only exception. I wonder if there's anything to that?\n\n--Joel" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "On 6/26/07, Matthew King wrote:\n\n\nOn Jun 26, 2007, at 4:03 PM, Dan'l Danehy-Oakes wrote:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "One bit-and-piece that got left out: Roberta and Robber both have\n\"Rob\" names. So do the Robinsons. Are they actually flesh&blood\nthemselves?" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "The Robinsons are fleshly:\n\n\"Either the Robinsons could not have a child of their own, or were\nunwilling to undertake the travail and expense of a real child.\"\n_______________________________________________" } ] }, { "message_id": "<47E5A92A-0448-4278-B005-049D18FB3270@gmail.com>", "from": { "name": "Matthew King", "address": "automatthew at gmail.com" }, "date": "2007-06-26T21:49:06+00:00", "subject": "(urth) New Wolfe Story at Subterranean Press", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "On Jun 26, 2007, at 4:35 PM, Joel Sieh wrote:\nRoberta, Robber, Rover, and the Robinsons all have \"Ro\" names. \nJulianne is the only exception. I wonder if there's anything to that?" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Perhaps we are supposed to use this pattern to determine the name of \nthe narrator. \n " } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Joel Sieh", "address": "joel.sieh at gmail.com" }, "date": "2007-06-26T21:55:54+00:00", "subject": "(urth) New Wolfe Story at Subterranean Press", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "And one more note on names: Julianne says her father the chef gave her her\nname. I'm guessing it's a pun on julienne. \"Julienning is a method of food\npreparation in which the food item is cut into long thin strips\" (source\nWikipedia - Julienning). Sounds ominous to me!\n\nAnother sinister association: Back in that paragraph I mentioned:\n\n\"First I seized an opportunity to speak to the girls together. Roberta's\npuppy had penetrated the hedge that separates the Robinson's back yard from\nour own. Both girls screamed, jumped up and down, and did little else. I\nquieted them, assured them that I would capture their small fugitive, and\ndid so by tempting him with scraps of meat.\"\n\nThe more I look at the paragraph, the worse it looks: seized, penetrated,\nscreamed, capture, tempting him with scraps of meat. Maybe I'm jumping at\nshadows here, but it all seems very dark. It seems nonsensical that the\nscraps of meat could be from \"Julienne,\" but it's another strange\nconnection.\n\n--Joel" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "On 6/26/07, Joel Sieh wrote:\n\nRoberta, Robber, Rover, and the Robinsons all have \"Ro\" names. Julianne\nis the only exception. I wonder if there's anything to that?\n\n--Joel\n\nOn 6/26/07, Matthew King wrote:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "On Jun 26, 2007, at 4:03 PM, Dan'l Danehy-Oakes wrote:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 3, "text": "One bit-and-piece that got left out: Roberta and Robber both have\n\"Rob\" names. So do the Robinsons. Are they actually flesh&blood\nthemselves?" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "The Robinsons are fleshly:\n\n\"Either the Robinsons could not have a child of their own, or were\nunwilling to undertake the travail and expense of a real child.\"\n_______________________________________________" } ] }, { "message_id": "<1f7617370706261501v41e35ec7w1fcb463c4dbcf15c@mail.gmail.com>", "from": { "name": "Dan'l Danehy-Oakes", "address": "danldo at gmail.com" }, "date": "2007-06-26T22:01:08+00:00", "subject": "(urth) New Wolfe Story at Subterranean Press", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "On 6/26/07, Matthew King wrote:\nIf I hadn't known the story was by Wolfe, this sentence would have\nrevealed it:\n\"I'm going to pry, Roberta. I'm going to ask you about things that\nare none of my business. I hope you'll answer.\"" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Yeah ... that sounds like it could come right out of Silk's mouth,\ndoesn't it?" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "So has the narrator caused Roberta to lose her innocence by leading\nher to \"realize\" that she is a thing, not a real girl? I use the\nscare quotes because Wolfe has consistently shown in his other work\nthat one needn't be human to be people." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "What we have here appears at first glance to be a variation on the\nPinocchio/Astro Boy problem: the robot who wants to be a \"real boy,\" or,\nin this case, girl. Roberta is, as you say, \"people,\" and at the story's\nbeginning it has not even occurred to her that she might not be.\n\nThis tells us a few things (in the manner of science fiction) about the\nculture in which she lives, the most important of which is that most\npeople in this culture accept robots as \"people.\" She has been going\nto school and does not appear to have been in any way singled out\nor mistreated for her \"different\"-ness; she plays with flesh children\nwith nobody thinking anything bad or odd about it.\n\nThis is key. Robots are *totally* integrated into this human society.\n\nYet our narrator has a problem with that. He seems to function in the\nsociety, but he hates it, hates what he perceives as its neat, orderly,\nartificial nature, and especially its sterility.\n\n-----\nOur gently curving streets offended me. Our neatly finished green\nlawns, more than half of them of artificial grass, offended me still more.\nI hated every house I saw; their fresh paint and absurd mixture of\nstyles were more than sufficient to account for any amount of hatred.\n\nYet I had another, better, reason. I hated then because there was\nscarcely one that housed two children, and that most housed none.\n\nLike my own.\n-----\n\nThe first question to pose here: Is his society really this sterile, or is\nhe projecting his own sterility onto it? The three words that convey\nhis own childlessness get a paragraph to themselves. They are\nimportant to him.\n\nThis leads to a second: Is he human? If robots this integrated into\nsociety, he might not think to mention it; yet, if he feels the way he\nseems to, one would hardly think he would fail to mention it.\n\n(Incidentally, why are we all saying \"he\" and \"him\"? Is the narrator's\ngender ever mentioned?)\n\nAnd the next paragraphs feed on this ambiguity:\n\n-----\nMy kind had built a paradise, of which I was a part. A paradise for\nmachines, in which the human race, though welcome, could not and\ndid not thrive. In and around the filthy huts of the medieval peasants,\nchildren ran and shouted, laughed and wept, and no doubt received\nsturdy buffets when they made too much noise. There the family\nsang around a table we would scorn. There grandmothers recounted\nwild tales before the fire, tales full of bold boys who made good and\nhonest country maidens who tricked evil dwarves like me.\n\nTales that were full of life because the children were, and full of\ndeath, too, because each child had to learn that death is life's\nshadow.\n\nHere?But I have gone on too long already.\n-----\n\nHow very odd: the narrator speaks of \"my kind,\" but as far as these\nparagraphs suggest, the narrator's \"kind\" could as easily be the\nmachines as the humans.\n\nI am reminded a bit of Isaac Asimov's story, \"Segregationist,\" a story\nabout a surgeon who is opposed to the practice of putting machine\nparts into human bodies. The \"shock ending\" reveals that the surgeon\nis, himself, a robot (a fact important in the context of Asimov's robot\nstories, in which robots very much reflected the position of Blacks\nin mid-20th-century America).\n\nChildren full of life, and full of death: where is this going? And what\ndid the narrator stop him/herself from saying?" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "I don't believe the dog was dead." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Nor do I. The narrator picks \"him,\" not \"it\" up, and carries \"him\" home.\nIn a story that focuses (in part) on the relation between the living and\nthe non-living the choice of pronoun matters." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "- A question that popped out at me while I was reading: Who is the\n\"our\" in the \"our own\" in the sentence quoted above?" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "An excellent question. The narrator does not at any other point mention\nany companions -- unless it is the \"we\" who would \"scorn\" the\nmedieval peasants' tables." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "And why does the narrator give himself the role of the\nevil dwarf in his imagining of a fecund human past?" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Because he has contributed to the corruption of an \"honest country\nmaiden,\" perhaps. And perhaps, like Rumplestiltskin, all would be\nresolved if we could guess his name. (Pleased to meet you ...)\n\nWe are clearly intended to set up parallels and oppositions\nbetween the girls and the pups, leading to questions about\nJulianne's parents(!), and about how all four relate to the\nnarrator. I find this detail telling. The narrator says that Rover\nwas\n\n-----\ninnocent as are the young of almost every animal, and\nfriendly as are the young of a very few.\n-----\n\nThe word \"animal\" takes on additional resonances if we try\non the position that the narrator is a robot, does it not?" }, { "kind": "sig", "depth": 0, "text": "Dan'l Danehy-Oakes, writer, trainer, bon vivant\n-----\nhttp://www.livejournal.com/users/sturgeonslawyer\nhttp://www.danehyoakes.com\nSoon, where Toon Town once stood will be a string of gas stations,\ninexpensive motels, restaurants that serve rapidly prepared food. Tire\nsalons, automobile dealerships and wonderful, wonderful billboards\nreaching as far as the eye can see. My God, it'll be beautiful." } ] }, { "message_id": "<200706261929.35537.ddjones@riddlemaster.org>", "from": { "name": "Daniel D Jones", "address": "ddjones at riddlemaster.org" }, "date": "2007-06-26T23:29:34+00:00", "subject": "(urth) New Wolfe Story at Subterranean Press", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "On Tuesday 26 June 2007 17:13, Matthew King wrote:\n\"our\" in the \"our own\" in the sentence quoted above?" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "And why does the narrator give himself the role of the evil dwarf in\nhis imagining of a fecund human past?" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "The one that popped out at me is whether the narrator is robot or human. Has \nhe, perhaps, managed to infect Roberta with his own disgust at his own \nnature? \n\n\"...Either the Robinsons could not have a child of their own, or were \nunwilling to undertake the travail and expense of a real child. I could not?I \ndo not blame them in the least. But I wondered, because I have never had much \nto do with such “bots, about her schooling...\" What's the significance of \nthe word \"such\" in that sentence” Has he, perhaps, had \"much to do\" with \nother types of 'bots? \n\n\"My kind had built a paradise, of which I was a part. A paradise for machines, \nin which the human race, though welcome, could not and did not thrive...\" \nWhat is his kind? Did machines build the paradise? Is he part of he \nparadise for machines because he's a machine himself? When he speaks of the \nhuman race not thriving, is he speaking as a member of that race - or as an \nobserver outside the race?\n\nWhy is Roberta, the robot girl, the center of the story rather than Julianne, \nthe human girl? Early in the story, he says \"...poor simple little beings \nwhose torment I began....\" Who's he referring to here? The two girls? Or \nthe two robots, one in human form, one in canine?" } ] }, { "message_id": "<936D7D91-3D3E-4231-ABEF-A018DDB292CE@gmail.com>", "from": { "name": "Matthew King", "address": "automatthew at gmail.com" }, "date": "2007-06-27T01:16:09+00:00", "subject": "(urth) New Wolfe Story at Subterranean Press", "in_reply_to": "<1f7617370706261501v41e35ec7w1fcb463c4dbcf15c@mail.gmail.com>", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "On Jun 26, 2007, at 5:01 PM, Dan'l Danehy-Oakes wrote:\nIf I hadn't known the story was by Wolfe, this sentence would have\nrevealed it:\n\"I'm going to pry, Roberta. I'm going to ask you about things that\nare none of my business. I hope you'll answer.\"" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Yeah ... that sounds like it could come right out of Silk's mouth,\ndoesn't it?" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Or Able, or the father from \"Ziggurat\", or Latro on his better days. \nIf I'm remembering rightly, the protagonist of Memorare also spoke \nlike that." } ] }, { "message_id": "<210591.1321.qm@web32409.mail.mud.yahoo.com>", "from": { "name": "don doggett", "address": "kingwukong at yahoo.com" }, "date": "2007-06-27T04:05:16+00:00", "subject": "(urth) New Wolfe Story at Subterranean Press", "in_reply_to": "<3BF5884F-0197-4F50-BCC0-95279DD3F0A7@gmail.com>", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "--- Matthew King wrote:\n\nThe Robinsons are fleshly:\n\n\"Either the Robinsons could not have a child of\ntheir own, or were \nunwilling to undertake the travail and expense of a\nreal child.\"" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Not necessarily. Wolfe's best trick is to make us make\nassumptions. The only statement of fact in the\nsentence is that the Robinsons don't have \"real\"\nchildren. It's suspiciously vague in the face of this\nRo- pattern of the names. Even undertaking the travail\nand expense of a real child has no concrete meaning.\nBirthing a child? Procuring a child? Cloning one? All\nof these could be an expensive ordeal. \n\nDon\n\nThe Evangelists: a Lesser Apocrypha http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendid=178109961\n\n\n " } ] }, { "message_id": "<845956.59488.qm@web32404.mail.mud.yahoo.com>", "from": { "name": "don doggett", "address": "kingwukong at yahoo.com" }, "date": "2007-06-27T04:15:58+00:00", "subject": "(urth) New Wolfe Story at Subterranean Press", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "--- Matthew King wrote:\n\nAnd why does the narrator give himself the role of\nthe evil dwarf in \nhis imagining of a fecund human past?" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Maybe this is reaching on my part, but Herman Hesse\nwrote a story about a hideous dwarf who belonged to a\nprincess. He's given a puppy that he loves more than\nanything, but the princess'\njackass husband drowns it. So the dwarf gets revenge\nby poisoning the prince and himself, leaving the\nprincess alone iirc. What this might have to do with\nthe story, I'm not sure. It also seems to have\nreflections of Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?\nwhere everyone is a replicant, but not everyone knows\nit.\n\nDon\n\nThe Evangelists: a Lesser Apocrypha http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendid=178109961\n\n\n " } ] }, { "message_id": "<204532.13323.qm@web32407.mail.mud.yahoo.com>", "from": { "name": "don doggett", "address": "kingwukong at yahoo.com" }, "date": "2007-06-27T05:34:21+00:00", "subject": "(urth) New Wolfe Story at Subterranean Press", "in_reply_to": "<845956.59488.qm@web32404.mail.mud.yahoo.com>", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Okay,\n \nI may crash and burn with this, but be darned if I'm\nnot going to try to fly.\n\nFirst. You don't cook a salad. You prepare it. And if\nyou're a cook rather than a chef, you don't specialise\nin salads. And the money won't be that great. \n\nThis is from the Word Detective (google that and\n\"cook\"):\n\n {Our everyday \"prepare food\" verb \"to cook\" first\nappeared in the 14th century and is derived from the\nmuch older noun form, which comes from the Latin\n\"coquus,\" which also gave us \"concoct.\" As might be\nexpected from an activity so central to human life,\n\"to cook\" has spawned a variety of slang and\ncolloquial senses over the years, including \"to ruin\"\nand, alternatively, \"to do very well\" (as in \"to\ncook with gas\"). \"To cook\" meaning \"to falsify,\ntamper with, present in a secretly altered form\" is\nactually one of the oldest slang senses of the verb,\ndating all the way back to at least the early 17th\ncentury, and is directly drawn from the \"prepare\ncarefully\" sense of \"cook.\"}\n\nOkay, so what is salad? Well a salad, in addition to\nbeing a food, can also simply mean a \"variety of\nthings\". BUT. . . another word for salad is sallet,\nwhich is also a helmet with eyeslits from the middle\nages.\n\nSo, I think that Julianne's dad is some sort of\nbiomechanical engineer that specializes in sallets:\nbrain pans and such. And Julianne is literally made\nfrom strips of meat. Either a clone or a Jonas type\nhybrid. But she's as artificial as Roberta.\n\nDon\n\nThe Evangelists: a Lesser Apocrypha http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendid=178109961\n\n\n " } ] }, { "message_id": "<20070627092800.D4EF61BB57@che.dreamhost.com>", "from": { "name": "Mo Holkar / UKG", "address": "lists at ukg.co.uk" }, "date": "2007-06-27T09:28:23+00:00", "subject": "(urth) New Wolfe Story at Subterranean Press", "in_reply_to": "<845956.59488.qm@web32404.mail.mud.yahoo.com>", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "At 05:15 27/06/2007, Don wrote:\nMaybe this is reaching on my part, but Herman Hesse wrote a story \nabout a hideous dwarf who belonged to a princess. He's given a puppy \nthat he loves more than anything, but the princess' jackass husband drowns it." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "A more familiar reference might be to Rumpelstiltskin, who spins \nstraw into gold for the miller's daughter in exchange for (he hopes) \nher first-born child.\n\nI'm also picking up references to Don Juan -- the great hand which \ndrags people down to Hell, and the quotation from Byron about his dog?\n\nThe epigraph is from Shakespeare's 144th sonnet:\n\nTwo loves I have of comfort and despair,\nWhich like two spirits do suggest me still:\nThe better angel is a man right fair,\nThe worser spirit a woman coloured ill.\nTo win me soon to hell, my female evil,\nTempteth my better angel from my side,\nAnd would corrupt my saint to be a devil,\nWooing his purity with her foul pride.\nAnd whether that my angel be turned fiend,\nSuspect I may, yet not directly tell;\nBut being both from me, both to each friend,\nI guess one angel in another's hell:\nYet this shall I ne'er know, but live in doubt,\nTill my bad angel fire my good one out.\n\nalthough what to make of that, I don't know. Possibly also a \nreference to Lord Alfred Douglas's \"Two Loves\", one of which famously \ndare not speak its name?\n\nI'm not sure why the narrator implores God to forgive him for taking \nRover back to Roberta. Julianne has already said that she didn't want \nRover, so it's not like he could have stayed there. Unless the \nnarrator thinks that Julianne was lying about this? He's said that he \nwas doubtful when Roberta said that both girls called the deal off.\n\nMo" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Solomon, Joshua", "address": "j.a.solomon at city.ac.uk" }, "date": "2007-06-27T09:46:43+00:00", "subject": "(urth) New Wolfe Story at Subterranean Press", "in_reply_to": "<20070627092800.D4EF61BB57@che.dreamhost.com>", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Date: Tue, 26 Jun 2007 17:35:36 -0400\nFrom: \"Joel Sieh\" \n\nRoberta, Robber, Rover, and the Robinsons all have \"Ro\" names. Julianne is\nthe only exception. I wonder if there's anything to that?" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Yeah. I'm pretty sure we're supposed to think about Shakespeare's Romeo. And\nJulianne is like Juliet." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Date: Tue, 26 Jun 2007 15:01:08 -0700\nFrom: \"Dan'l Danehy-Oakes\" \n\nI am reminded a bit of Isaac Asimov's story, \"Segregationist,\" a story\nabout a surgeon who is opposed to the practice of putting machine\nparts into human bodies. The \"shock ending\" reveals that the surgeon\nis, himself, a robot (a fact important in the context of Asimov's robot\nstories, in which robots very much reflected the position of Blacks\nin mid-20th-century America)." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Me too. Again, I think we are supposed to draw a parallel between racial\nsegregation and robot/human segregation. Note the exchange\n\"What do you get if you mix black and white?\"\n\"Grey if you mean paint. Brown if you mean people.\"\n\nbee" }, { "kind": "sig", "depth": 0, "text": "Joshua A. Solomon\nhttp://www.staff.city.ac.uk/~solomon" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Nigel Price", "address": "nigelprice at onetel.net" }, "date": "2007-06-27T09:56:02+00:00", "subject": "(urth) New Wolfe Story at Subterranean Press", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I think it's a really good short short-story. As already pointed out, there\nseems to be a distinct possibility that the narrator is him-, her- or itself\na robot. The situation on \"his\" world is paradoxical. It is sterile because\nhumans have opted for the mechanical rather than the biological, but\nintroducing segregation between humans and machines turns out not to be the\nanswer to solving the problem. It introduces pain and sorrow without solving\nthe preference. This seems to be in part because the dogs retain a natural\npreference for their own kind which humans have lost. The girls, in\ncontrast, prefer their opposites. The robot girl is made miserable by the\nway the robot dog shows her her own lack of humanness while the human girl\nand her family are burdened by the biological inconveniences of a real dog.\n\nIt's a sad little tale, but brilliantly told and full of unexplainedly\nsinister notes and references. The narrator has from the start a slightly\ndevilish quality that isn't quite substantiated by the apparent facts of the\nstory. He begins with references to devils hauling sinners off to hell and\nacts and speaks throughout like a stalker or a paedophile, though nothing\nthat he does actually justifies this impression. He's interfering and\nunwise, that's all. But maybe that's enough, and maybe that's the - or a -\npoint of the story. If you're miserable and disatisfied, it's easy to spread\nyour unhappiness to others. The narrator lives, by his own description, in a\nmachine paradise and he's the snake in the garden introducing machine\nunhappiness.\n\nMaybe he really is a robot Satan, or at least a robot Satan analogue?\n\nNigel" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Joel Sieh", "address": "joel.sieh at gmail.com" }, "date": "2007-06-28T15:14:07+00:00", "subject": "(urth) New Wolfe Story at Subterranean Press", "in_reply_to": "<1f7617370706261501v41e35ec7w1fcb463c4dbcf15c@mail.gmail.com>", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "On 6/26/07, Dan'l Danehy-Oakes wrote:\n\n\nChildren full of life, and full of death: where is this going? And what\ndid the narrator stop him/herself from saying?" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I just looked back at this part. My best guess is that he stops himself\nfrom further contrasting the current time with the past. He begins the\nsentence with \"Here,\" which I figure means, \"Here, now.\" I'll take a stab\nat finishing the sentence: \"Here, life and death are both shunned, as they\nare unnecessary burdens on a culture too perfect to allow either.\"" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "I don't believe the dog was dead.\n\nNor do I. The narrator picks \"him,\" not \"it\" up, and carries \"him\" home.\nIn a story that focuses (in part) on the relation between the living and\nthe non-living the choice of pronoun matters." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Yeah, I think I misread this part. My misread might point out an ambiguity\nthat can allow a different reading, however. I'm not really going to pursue\nthe alternate reading here, but I want to explain why I came to my original\nconclusion, and why the ambiguity might exist.\n\nHere's the relevant part of the story:\n\n\"I got Julianne's address from Roberta, drove over there, and found Rover\nlying quietly by the side of the house, half hidden by shrubbery, under a\nwindow that I would guess was that of Julianne's bedroom.\n\nGod forgive me! I picked him up and carried him home.\"\nThe part that first made me jump to my dead dog conclusion was \"lying\nquietly by the side of the house, half hidden by shrubbery.\" It seemed odd\nto me that the dog would be half hidden by the shrubbery, unless he was\ndead. He would either be \"hiding in the shrubbery,\" or the shrubbery would\nnot be mentioned. \"Lying quietly by the side of the house\" made him look\nlike a discarded thing, and is similar to a dog \"lying quietly by the side\nof the road,\" which anyone could read as a dead dog. The \"God forgive me!\"\nline reinforced this, because carrying a dead dog home would be jarring to\nthe family, and could seem callous, and ... odd. Lastly, Rover was not\nmentioned again after this paragraph.\n\nOf course, there are clearly other valid reasons why this idea is wrong.\nHowever, I found it fun to think about.\n\n--Joel\n\n\nP. S. -- I think that the list has figured most of this story out. I've\nenjoyed the interpretations I've seen presented." } ] } ] }