# Mostly Spoiler Free Thoughts on Home Fires *The Urth list — 7 messages, 4 voices, 02 Mar 2011* > 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. --- ### Dan'l Danehy-Oakes *02 Mar 2011, 17:55* Well, first of all, there seems to be a complete lack of wolves. Not a one, unless I missed something. The "meditation" sections often seem to be lessons from Gene Wolfe about how to reason out the plot details of his novels. This is one of the most emotionally satisfying books GW has ever written. Kind of shapeless, plotwise. ``` Dan'l Danehy-Oakes ``` --- ### Jeff Wilson *02 Mar 2011, 19:01 · in reply to Dan'l Danehy-Oakes* > On 3/2/2011 11:55 AM, Dan'l Danehy-Oakes wrote: > Well, first of all, there seems to be a complete lack of wolves. Not a > one, unless I missed something. > > The "meditation" sections often seem to be lessons from Gene Wolfe > about how to reason out the plot details of his novels. > > This is one of the most emotionally satisfying books GW has ever written. > > Kind of shapeless, plotwise. It's boy meets girl overall, with pirates and spies and a whodunnit as the obstacles to overcome. There's also almost a total lack of technical detail of any kind, and the SFnal elements are barely more than tokens. ``` Jeff Wilson - jwilson at io.com Computational Intelligence Laboratory - Texas A&M Texarkana < http://www.tamut.edu/CIL > ``` --- ### Dan'l Danehy-Oakes *02 Mar 2011, 19:47 · in reply to Jeff Wilson* > Jeff Wilson wrote: > There's also almost a total lack of technical detail of any kind, and the > SFnal elements are barely more than tokens. When you say technical detail I agree -- but there is a lot of stfnal content, it's just that that content is mostly social speculation shoved into the background. ``` Dan'l Danehy-Oakes ``` --- ### Son of Witz *02 Mar 2011, 19:52 · in reply to Jeff Wilson* > On Mar 2, 2011, at 11:01 AM, Jeff Wilson wrote: > On 3/2/2011 11:55 AM, Dan'l Danehy-Oakes wrote: >> Well, first of all, there seems to be a complete lack of wolves. Not a >> one, unless I missed something. >> >> The "meditation" sections often seem to be lessons from Gene Wolfe >> about how to reason out the plot details of his novels. >> >> This is one of the most emotionally satisfying books GW has ever written. >> >> Kind of shapeless, plotwise. > It's boy meets girl overall, with pirates and spies and a whodunnit as the obstacles to overcome. > > There's also almost a total lack of technical detail of any kind, and the SFnal elements are barely more than tokens. Glad to hear. I've been waiting for a simple review like this. --- ### Dave Tallman *03 Mar 2011, 00:42 · follows Son of Witz* Dan'l Danehy-Oakes wrote: Well, first of all, there seems to be a complete lack of wolves. Not a one, > unless I missed something. Chelle mentions that in the army they "ate like wolves and slept like babies." At one point there's a dog and a goat in the road. Skip thinks the goat looks Satanic. Does that mean the dog is like God? --- ### Jeff Wilson *03 Mar 2011, 03:20 · in reply to Dan'l Danehy-Oakes* > On 3/2/2011 1:47 PM, Dan'l Danehy-Oakes wrote: > Jeff Wilson wrote: >> There's also almost a total lack of technical detail of any kind, and the >> SFnal elements are barely more than tokens. > When you say technical detail I agree -- but there is a lot of stfnal > content, it's just that that content is mostly social speculation > shoved into the background. hmm, not spoilery, so I'll just say that aside from the inherent Forever War premise in the promotion, I can't think of anything that has to be SFnally justified for things to progress the way they did, except maybe for one of the mistaken identities, which could be done with the usual devices though it would take a rather unwieldy pile of them. Oh, and rather a lot of the detective work is Columbo-style. Skip becomes privy to a lot of the stuff that would be a deep dark mystery in other Wolfe books, but he (and the reader) have to really work on *why* such a thing was done, and how to catch or just stop the antagonists. ``` Jeff Wilson - jwilson at io.com Computational Intelligence Laboratory - Texas A&M Texarkana < http://www.tamut.edu/CIL > ``` --- ### Jeff Wilson *03 Mar 2011, 03:28 · in reply to Son of Witz* > On 3/2/2011 1:52 PM, Son of Witz wrote: > > > On Mar 2, 2011, at 11:01 AM, Jeff Wilson wrote: >> On 3/2/2011 11:55 AM, Dan'l Danehy-Oakes wrote: >>> Well, first of all, there seems to be a complete lack of wolves. Not a >>> one, unless I missed something. >>> >>> The "meditation" sections often seem to be lessons from Gene Wolfe >>> about how to reason out the plot details of his novels. >>> >>> This is one of the most emotionally satisfying books GW has ever written. >>> >>> Kind of shapeless, plotwise. >> It's boy meets girl overall, with pirates and spies and a whodunnit as the obstacles to overcome. >> >> There's also almost a total lack of technical detail of any kind, and the SFnal elements are barely more than tokens. > Glad to hear. I've been waiting for a simple review like this. Paypal may be sent to the address below. ``` Jeff Wilson - jwilson at io.com Computational Intelligence Laboratory - Texas A&M Texarkana < http://www.tamut.edu/CIL > ``` ---