Subject: (urth) Three new articles in Ultan's Library

From: Nigel Price <nigelaprice at talktalk.net>
Date: Fri, 22 May 2009 17:24:56 +0000

I am pleased to announce that we've recently published (or, in one case, are
at this very moment publishing!) three new articles at Ultan's Library, the
online resource for the study of Gene Wolfe.

The first is actually a re-publication, as we're delighted to be able to
make available again the two issues of Jeremy Crampton's Gene Wolfe fanzine
"The Book of Gold". These contain lots of fascinating articles and
information, especially on Wolfe's Soldier series and the ancient world in
which it is set.

The second article, "The Lupine Scholar", takes the form of an interview
between Urth List contributor Scott Wowra and lexicographer, Wolfe scholar
and science fiction writer Michael Andre-Driussi. Scott has been helping
Michael with one of his current projects and you can read about that and
much more right here.

The third article is by Michael Andre-Driussi himself and is so hot off the
virtual press that it isn't even quite published as of this moment...but
should be in just a few hours' time! Entitled "Japanese Lexicon for The Book
of the New Sun", the article is both a personal memoir and an insight into
how such a lexically complex work as "The Book of the New Sun" was
translated into Japanese. It also throws up one or two interesting
interpretational issues...

You'll find all these articles and more at Ultan Library at
http://www.ultan.org.uk/

Nigel Price
Co-Editor
Ultan's Library

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From: Nigel Price <nigelaprice at talktalk.net>
Date: Fri, 22 May 2009 22:32:26 +0000

Just to confirm that Michael Andre-Driussi's new article is now published in
Ultan's Library.

Nigel
Co-Editor
Ultan's Library
http://www.ultan.org.uk/

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From: James Wynn <crushtv at gmail.com>
Date: Tue, 26 May 2009 15:04:01 +0000

***This contains very minor spoilers that you probably no about unless you 
have avoided all the trailers***

I saw Terminator Salvation this weekend and I liked it with the exception of 
about 3 minutes of political commentary that was about as subtle as 
"America! F*** Yeah!" (except this was "GWB! F*** You!").
However, I was dissatisfied with what little opportunity the 
writers/director made of the human/terminator hybrid. If Wolfe had told this 
story, rather than having a merely "human-good/robot-bad" split personality, 
the merger between the human-mind and the Skynet programming would have 
become a new unforeseeable creature. Similarly, if Michael Crichton had 
written this story, he would have had a morality tale about attempting to 
use software to "ride herd" over a nearly chaotic system like the human mind 
without the software being compromised. On the other hand, if William Gibson 
had written this story, he would have had the hybrid become a new glorious 
evolutionary step for humanity.

I suppose that level of nuance is a lot to hope for from Terminator IV, but 
after 25 years of thinking about "What does it mean to be human?", it would 
have been nice for someone to actually think about that.

(Funniest line from the Terminator franchise was Arnold Schwarzenegger in 
Terminator II:
<soft tender voice>"Why do you cry?")