Subject: (urth) Change of Topic: Latro

From: PMorris33 at aol.com <pmorris33 at aol.com>
Date: Tue, 04 Nov 2008 01:56:36 +0000

Does anyone know if a fourth book in the Soldier series is being  
contemplated?  After all, Latro has not been returned to his home.  

In a message dated 11/3/2008 5:09:14 P.M. Pacific Standard Time,  
urth-request at lists.urth.net writes:

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Today's Topics:

1. Re:  AEG: Is  AEG Lovecraftian? (Bryan Alexander)
2.  Stingray (Nigel  Price)
3.  Stingray (Nigel Price)
4.  Re:  Stingray (James Wynn)
5.  AEG: Is AEG  Lovecraftian? (Nigel Price)
6.  Stingray (Nigel  Price)
7. Re:  Stingray (Matthew  Keeley)

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Message:  1
Date: Mon, 3 Nov 2008 17:10:48 -0500
From: "Bryan Alexander"  <bryan.alexander at gmail.com>
Subject: Re: (urth) AEG: Is AEG  Lovecraftian?
To: "The Urth Mailing List"  <urth at lists.urth.net>
Message-ID:
<a55c3dff0811031410h6cd912e8t9690b7f7b5bd81ba at mail.gmail.com>
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I admit to bringing a Lovecraftian  perspective to my reading of AEG.  That
was due in part to various  things I'd heard about the novel, which were then
brought to mind with the  HPL inscription.  So I suspected far more cosmic
horror from various  quarters, including the flapping creature, than I ended
up with.
My Phil  Dick-style expectations were confirmed instead.

On Mon, Nov 3, 2008 at  3:55 PM, Dave Tallman <davetallman at msn.com> wrote:

> Kieran  Mullen wrote:
>
>>  That needs a bit of  explanation.   For a work to be Lovecraftian I   
don't
>> think it is simply sufficient to stick in Hastur and Cthulu  and  call it
>> that. Lovecraft (IMO) came up with a truly  original  ontological horror
>> premise for his fiction:   the universe is dominated  by inhuman forces 
which
>> we don't  have a hope of understanding or  defeating.  At best we can  only
>> hope that they ignore us.   (We can't  even  pray that they do - there is 
no
>> God, only atoms and a void).   Humanity is a minor irrelevance in a dark
>> and hungry  universe.  Any  attempt to try to change that will only draw  
the
>> attention of forces  that will destroy the  inquirer.
>>
>>
> Given that Wolfe is a Christian I  doubt very much that he would write a
> work consistent with such a  nihilistic Lovecraftian premise. But other
> writers, such as August  Derleth (also a Christian), have expanded the
> Lovecraft universe to  include a more classical view of good vs. evil. To 
me,
> true horror  cannot exist in a universe where our ideas of sanity and
> goodness are  a mere fluke, a cosmic joke. The efforts of the protagonists
> become  simply silly.
>
> But I don't think the Lovecraft parts are simply  tacked on. From the
> beginning Reis announced his intention to retire  to the South Seas (p. 14).
> This cannot be a coincidence. Reis may have  learned something during his
> time as ambassador to Woldercan. He may  have realized there was a connected
> menace on Earth and determined to  fight it. To some degree his provoking a
> fight between Squiddy and the  Navy seems to have been a success. At the 
very
> least the storms took  out many Cthulhu worshipers on the neighboring
>  islands.
>
> Even Lovecraft allowed the forces of good to succeed  sometimes, for example
> in "The Dunwich Horror." Even he could not help  rooting for humanity 
against
> the monsters.
>
>  _______________________________________________
> Urth Mailing  List
> To post, write urth at urth.net
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>

-- 
Bryan  Alexander
http://infocult.typepad.com/
http://twitter.com/BryanAlexander
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Message:  2
Date: Mon, 3 Nov 2008 22:33:59 -0000
From: "Nigel Price"  <nigelaprice at talktalk.net>
Subject: (urth) Stingray
To: "Urth  List" <urth at lists.urth.net>
Message-ID:  <AFEFKBJKJDDJOMBNACBNGEEMDNAA.nigelaprice at talktalk.net>
Content-Type:  text/plain;    charset="iso-8859-1"

As I was writing about  evil undersea cities and civilisations in AEG and the
Urth Cycle, one part  of my mind facetiously wandered and wondered whether
Gene Wolfe had ever  watched the Gerry Anderson puppet show "Stingray" in the
1960s. As I  thought whimsically about it, the parallels scattered through
his books  became stronger and stranger. Was Seawrack inspired by Marina? Was
the idea  of the US Navy attacking the Storm God inspired by the sight of
Troy  Tempest and the WASPs attacking Titan and his aquaphibian minions?

No,  of course not, it's a silly idea. It's not as if Wolfe ever refers  to
puppetry in his stories.

Hang on there, wait a  minute...

What about that dream Severian has of the toy theatre and the  marionette
versions of himself and Baldander?

Goodness! If I'm  right, anything can happen in the next half hour...

Nigel (in a playful  mood)

------------------------------

Message: 3
Date:  Mon, 3 Nov 2008 23:00:41 -0000
From: "Nigel Price"  <nigelaprice at talktalk.net>
Subject: (urth) Stingray
To: "Urth  List" <urth at lists.urth.net>
Message-ID:  <AFEFKBJKJDDJOMBNACBNOEEMDNAA.nigelaprice at talktalk.net>
Content-Type:  text/plain;    charset="iso-8859-1"

Weird but true: Gerry  Anderson and Ray Harryhausen were both speakers at the
1987 WorldCon in  Brighton, England, which Gene and Rosemary Wolfe also
attended.

Did  Wolfe hear Gerry Anderson talk about his work?

Then again, for anyone  interested in creating submarine squid deities,
Harryhausen's amusing  account of animating the six-limbed giant octopus in
"It came from beneath  the sea" might well have been inspirational. (The
octopus only had six  limbs because Harryhausen was on a tight budget and an
even tighter  timetable. Animating extra limbs takes time, and time  is
money!)

Nigel (who is trying to write a serious analysis of AEG -  coming soon - but
keeps getting distracted by whimsical  notions)

------------------------------

Message:  4
Date: Mon, 3 Nov 2008 17:57:00 -0600
From: "James Wynn"  <crushtv at gmail.com>
Subject: Re: (urth) Stingray
To: "The Urth  Mailing List" <urth at lists.urth.net>
Message-ID:  <8349DBE9E74F4391A5D742992EE9395D at GATEWAY>
Content-Type: text/plain;  format=flowed; charset="iso-8859-1";
reply-type=original

> No, of course not, it's a silly idea. It's not  as if Wolfe ever refers to
> puppetry in his stories.

In The Book  of the Short Sun, Horn remembers the following from his  
childhood:

"I once had a toy, a little wooden man in a blue coat  who was moved by 
strings. When I played with him, I made him walk and bow,  and spoke for him. 
I practiced until I thought myself very clever. One day  I saw my mother 
holding the two sticks that held his strings, and my  little wooden man 
saluting my youngest sister much more cleverly than I  could have made him do 
it, and laughing with his head thrown back, then  mourning with his face in 
his hands. I never spoke of it to my mother, but  I was angry and ashamed."
On Blue's Waters, pg. 158

Soon he after he  was assaulted by the triple-jawed leatherskin---an obvious 
reference to  Pinnochio's  Dog-fish.

J.

------------------------------

Message:  5
Date: Tue, 4 Nov 2008 00:04:01 -0000
From: "Nigel Price"  <nigelaprice at talktalk.net>
Subject: (urth) AEG: Is AEG  Lovecraftian?
To: "Urth List" <urth at lists.urth.net>
Message-ID:  <AFEFKBJKJDDJOMBNACBNCEENDNAA.nigelaprice at talktalk.net>
Content-Type:  text/plain;    charset="iso-8859-1"

Kieran Mullen  asks...

>>So what do you think?   Is AEG just  a  romp
>>through different genres or is it really meant
>>to  be a horror novel?

No, I don't think that AEG is a Lovecraftian horror  story in the sense that
you define. As far as I understand - which is not  very far at all - it
borrows some Lovecraftian elements, but does not share  their underlying
philosophy, their "ontological horror premise" (great  phrase!).

I've read back through all the posts here on AEG and I've  reread bits of the
story but I still don't really understand how all the  parts of the book fit
together. I'm trying to work it out. The nature of  Gideon Chase seems to be
key. That in turn, because Gideon was born there  and is probably a
human-Woldercanese hybrid, is tied up with the moral  status of the planet
Woldercan.

Wolfe depicts Woldercan as a place  which has talking fish, dangerous
forests, alchemy and different physics.  The inhabitants superficially
resemble humans but are subtly different.  They can breed successfully with
lower animals, including humans, and male  Woldercaners try to seduce and
mate with human females. All in all,  Woldercan sounds more like Fairyland
than a conventional science fiction  alien planet. If it is a sort of SF
Fairyland, that would make the Wolders  fairies, or fairy analogues anyway.

The moral status of fairies and  Fairyland is moot in the European tradition.
Sometimes they are morally  equivalent to humans, with the "good" and "bad"
fairies familiar in  children's stories. Often, though, they are depicted as
being amoral and  "other", outside human schemes of morality and, when their
stories get  merged with the Christian tradition, outside the divine scheme
of  salvation.

Yet another tradition, evident in stories like that of Tam  Lin and some
versions of Thomas the Rhymer, has Fairyland as a subsidiary  dominion of
Hell to which it pays tax (usually every seven years) in the  form of human
souls. Fairies in this tradition become similar to devils or  demons.

In the opening chapter of AEG, Gideon tells the President that  there is no
such thing as good and evil. His position seems to be that  there is no such
thing as absolute good or evil, only things that we  ourselves disapprove of.
If he means that no person is ever wholly good or  wholly evil, he must
surely be right. If he means that good and evil do not  themselves exist,
then, from Wolfe's perspective as a Christian, he must  surely be wrong. He
seems to mean both, which is confusing!

Gideon's  perspective is either that of an amoral alien, analogous to the
amoral  fairies I described above, with no human sense of good or evil, or  he
himself is evil and is deceiving others with his untruths, which makes  him
more of the "demonic" type of alien/fairy.

Wolfe has stated in  interviews that his starting point for AEG was the idea
of a detective who  was a wizard. Gideon is a wizard, and certainly the
archetypal wizard,  Merlin, is half-human and half-devil in some accounts of
his  parentage.

By this account, Gideon is at best amoral and at worst  positively evil.

At the start of AEG, the President of the United  States attempts to recruit
Gideon to work with the FBI in catching Bill  Reis. In many stories,
certainly in the 1930s pulp stories which Wolfe is  pastiching, this would
make Gideon the good guy, an untouchable science  fictional Eliot Ness. But
there's a strong element of satire in AEG. The  USA over which the President
presides is a place where abortion has become  legalised child murder, and
where the various federal agencies fight an  endless turf war against each
other, possibly under the manipulative  influence of demonic submarine
aliens. The moral status of the President in  this story is pretty cloudy,
especially as we later come to see that Bill  Reis himself may be far from
being the evildoer the President claims. As  the President's agent, Gideon's
moral status is equally  suspect.

That's at the start of the story. Does Gideon  change?

I'm not clear in my own mind whether Bill Reis starts off bad  but is changed
by the transforming power of his love for Cassie, or whether  he was always
good and it just takes Cassie and the reader a long time to  find the correct
moral orientation within the confusing landscapes of AEG.  I think that
there's at least an element of the former because Bill Reis  learned his
alchemy and other tricks on the morally dubious  Woldercan.

Either way, Gideon's transforms Cassie into a star (her  name, after all, is
that of an astronomical star) and its her loveliness  which captures both
Gideon and Bill Reis' hearts. Somehow, this love helps  to orientate all
three of them. Cassie chooses to marry Bill and Gideon  goes to work for him,
although he doesn't seem to break his agreement with  the President so much
as suspend it.

That seems to be one half of  the story. Bill is inspired to self-sacrifice,
Cassie loves the Christ-like  Bill and Gideon is working, at least for the
moment, for the good guys.  Gideon may have transformed Cassie into a star in
order to trap Reis, but  the her power of beauty has transformed all three of
them for the  better.

But the other half of the story seems to involve putting the  bad guys into a
properly inverted hierarchy of wickedness.

Cassie's  story of how she came to love the neighbour's dog is instructive in
this  context. Scared of the neighbour's dog but even more scared of  her
violently abusive father, she finds herself sheltering with the animal  and
accepting its protection. Her clear perception of the greater source  of
danger enables her to accept the dog just as she later accepts the help  of
the bat creatures which would otherwise have terrified her in order  to
escape the agents of the evil Storm God.

The US Navy act as  agents of the bad American President and pursue Bill Reis
for his gold.  Reis uses that gold, however, to direct them against the Squid
God. If the  US President, his navy and other agencies are not made virtuous
as such,  they are at least properly directed against the greater evil of  the
malevolent underwater alien.

I still don't fully understand the  ending. Why does Gideon return to
Woldercan? Because it is his true home?  Perhaps it's because the spell of
Cassie's star quality has been broken and  without it he has fallen from
virtue back to his old immoral/amoral ways. I  don't know what Cassie is
looking for.

As an allegory, AEG is  confusing. But I don't think it is an allegory any
more than it's  Lovecraftian horror. It uses allegory, or has an allegorical
dimension, but  there's a lot more going on and the correspondences between
characters and  qualities seem to be dynamic rather than  static.

Nigel

------------------------------

Message:  6
Date: Tue, 4 Nov 2008 00:10:14 -0000
From: "Nigel Price"  <nigelaprice at talktalk.net>
Subject: (urth) Stingray
To: "Urth  List" <urth at lists.urth.net>
Message-ID:  <AFEFKBJKJDDJOMBNACBNGEENDNAA.nigelaprice at talktalk.net>
Content-Type:  text/plain;    charset="iso-8859-1"

Thanks for that, James.  I'd forgotten about that marionette reference in
OBW.

There's the  story "The Toy Theater" in TIoDDaOSaOS too. That's all  about
marionettes.

I started this thread as a sort of joke on  myself, but now I'm really
beginning to  wonder!

Nigel

------------------------------

Message:  7
Date: Mon, 3 Nov 2008 20:08:43 -0500
From: "Matthew Keeley"  <matthew.keeley.1 at gmail.com>
Subject: Re: (urth) Stingray
To: "The  Urth Mailing List" <urth at lists.urth.net>
Message-ID:
<44fb53d10811031708s57a39c09k508af7025e14b5bd at mail.gmail.com>
Content-Type:  text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1

On Mon, Nov 3, 2008 at 7:10 PM, Nigel  Price <nigelaprice at talktalk.net> wrote:
> Thanks for that, James.  I'd forgotten about that marionette reference in
> OBW.
>
>  There's the story "The Toy Theater" in TIoDDaOSaOS too. That's all  about
> marionettes.
>
> I started this thread as a sort of  joke on myself, but now I'm really
> beginning to  wonder!
>
> Nigel
>

And "Strange Birds" from the  chapbook of the same name. Have we ever
discussed those two stories here? I  thought they were pretty good, but
I'm not sure how many people actually  ordered the chapbook. Well at
least Mr. Gevers read  it:
http://slaughterhousestudios.blogspot.com/2006/05/strange-birds-indeed.html

Minor  spoiler
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
"Strange Birds"  actually features the return of Stromboli [sic?] from
"The Toy Theater". I  guess Wolfe does have a thing for puppets  and
puppeteers.

-Matt

------------------------------

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From: James Wynn <crushtv at gmail.com>
Date: Tue, 04 Nov 2008 02:13:58 +0000

Actually, I don't think Latro will ever get home until he passes through India, Micronesia, Columbia, Ireland, Britain, Germania, and Slavakia. I asked Wolfe once if he anticipated a wrap-up to the series and he said no.
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: PMorris33 at aol.com 
  To: urth at lists.urth.net 
  Sent: Monday, November 03, 2008 7:56 PM
  Subject: (urth) Change of Topic: Latro

  Does anyone know if a fourth book in the Soldier series is being contemplated?  After all, Latro has not been returned to his home.  

  In a message dated 11/3/2008 5:09:14 P.M. Pacific Standard Time, urth-request at lists.urth.net writes:
    Send Urth mailing list submissions to
        urth at lists.urth.net

    Today's Topics:

    Message: 1

    On Mon, Nov 3, 2008 at 3:55 PM, Dave Tallman <davetallman at msn.com> wrote:

    > Kieran Mullen wrote:
    >
    >>  That needs a bit of explanation.   For a work to be Lovecraftian I  don't
    >> premise for his fiction:  the universe is dominated  by inhuman forces which
    >> hope that they ignore us.   (We can't  even pray that they do - there is no
    >> and hungry universe.  Any  attempt to try to change that will only draw the
    > Lovecraft universe to include a more classical view of good vs. evil. To me,
    > fight between Squiddy and the Navy seems to have been a success. At the very
    > in "The Dunwich Horror." Even he could not help rooting for humanity against
    > the monsters.
    >

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    Message: 2

    Message: 3

    Message: 4

    J.

    Message: 5

    Kieran Mullen asks...

    Nigel

    Message: 6

    Nigel

    Message: 7

    Minor spoiler
    -
    -
    -
    -
    -
    -
    -
    -
    -

    -Matt

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From: Matthew Keeley <matthew.keeley.1 at gmail.com>
Date: Tue, 04 Nov 2008 04:06:58 +0000

On Mon, Nov 3, 2008 at 9:13 PM, James Wynn <crushtv at gmail.com> wrote:
> Actually, I don't think Latro will ever get home until he passes through
> India, Micronesia, Columbia, Ireland, Britain, Germania, and Slavakia. I
> asked Wolfe once if he anticipated a wrap-up to the series and he said no.

You forgot Japan and China.

I wouldn't mind Latro in Ireland - Wolfe seems to have a penchant for
Irish myth, but I don't know how much he's explored it outside of
short stories and Peace. I wouldn't mind reading Latro meets Cu
Chulainn and the leprechauns...

-Matt

---

From: Matthew Keeley <matthew.keeley.1 at gmail.com>
Date: Tue, 04 Nov 2008 04:10:05 +0000

On Mon, Nov 3, 2008 at 11:06 PM, Matthew Keeley
> Chulainn and the leprechauns...

I need to proofread these messages more - two uses of the "I wouldn't
mind" construction in two sentences. I apologize for the offense to
good English.

Anyone know if Wolfe has spent time in Ireland? Or just read a lot of Yeats?

-Matt

---

From: brunians at brunians.org <brunians at brunians.org>
Date: Tue, 04 Nov 2008 14:41:10 +0000

He was home for a while off-stage, between volume two and volume three.

He forgets.

.

>   Subscription/information:
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From: Jeff Wilson <jwilson at io.com>
Date: Tue, 04 Nov 2008 17:21:58 +0000

brunians at brunians.org, crushtv at gmail.com, and PMorris33 at aol.com, kindly 
trim the quoted material in your reply posts.  You can read more about 
this genteel practice here:

http://www.greenend.org.uk/rjk/2000/06/14/quoting.html

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