Excerpt from "The Land Across"

The Urth list — 11 messages, 6 voices, 22 Oct 2013
https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/6453

Fred Kiesche22 Oct 2013, 13:25
A bit of the forthcoming book has been posted to the Tor Dot Com site. http://www.tor.com/stories/2013/10/the-land-across-excerpt-gene-wolfe
F.P. Kiesche III "Ah Mr. Gibbon, another damned, fat, square book. Always, scribble, scribble, scribble, eh?" (The Duke of Gloucester, on being presented with Volume 2 of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.) Blogging at The Lensman's Children ( http://theeternalgoldenbraid.blogspot.com/).
Antonin Scriabin22 Oct 2013, 14:03

↳ in reply to Fred Kiesche

Thanks! I like it ... it feels like the narration in The Sorcerer's House. A sort of authentic, accessible journal. Looking forward to this quite a bit; it comes out the day before I fly out on a trip, which is the perfect time to start a new book.
9 quoted lines
On Tue, Oct 22, 2013 at 9:25 AM, Fred Kiesche <godelescherbach at gmail.com>wrote: A bit of the forthcoming book has been posted to the Tor Dot Com site. http://www.tor.com/stories/2013/10/the-land-across-excerpt-gene-wolfe -- F.P. Kiesche III "Ah Mr. Gibbon, another damned, fat, square book. Always, scribble, scribble, scribble, eh?" (The Duke of Gloucester, on being presented with Volume 2 of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.) Blogging at The Lensman's Children ( http://theeternalgoldenbraid.blogspot.com/). _______________________________________________
Gwern Branwen22 Oct 2013, 14:34

↳ in reply to Fred Kiesche

Curious. Comes off as a mish-mash of a Cold war anti-Communist potboiler and the Dracula myth (Transylvania, national paranoid fear of 'the Turks') with some jarring contemporary features like mention of an iPhone (an iPhone? in a Gene Wolfe novel? I never thought I'd see the day) - jarring because the tone of the narration is so Wolfe and no young or even middle-aged American talks/thinks/writes like the narrator does. I also don't know what to make of the Kleon/Cleon naming.
gwern http://www.gwern.net
Antonin Scriabin22 Oct 2013, 14:41

↳ in reply to Gwern Branwen

If I remember correctly, Able of the High Heart thinks back to his Mac towards the beginning of The Knight, *when he is remembering his previous life in the "real world". *They may be few and far between, but references to modern technology can be found in some of his more recent novels.
6 quoted lines
On Tue, Oct 22, 2013 at 10:34 AM, Gwern Branwen <gwern at gwern.net> wrote: Curious. Comes off as a mish-mash of a Cold war anti-Communist potboiler and the Dracula myth (Transylvania, national paranoid fear of 'the Turks') with some jarring contemporary features like mention of an iPhone (an iPhone? in a Gene Wolfe novel? I never thought I'd see the day) - jarring because the tone of the narration is so Wolfe and no young or even middle-aged American talks/thinks/writes like the narrator does. I also don't know what to make of the Kleon/Cleon naming. -- gwern http://www.gwern.net _______________________________________________
Daniel Otto Jack Petersen22 Oct 2013, 15:40

↳ in reply to Fred Kiesche

Wow. Feels a bit like Swift meets Kafka. (With, interestingly, a hint of China Mieville thrown in.) Very disorienting and weird. The dudes with lanterns felt almost numinous. Seems the narrator has shifted into a parallel world? (Feels resonant yet very different from There Are Doors.) -DOJP
9 quoted lines
On Tue, Oct 22, 2013 at 2:25 PM, Fred Kiesche <godelescherbach at gmail.com>wrote: A bit of the forthcoming book has been posted to the Tor Dot Com site. http://www.tor.com/stories/2013/10/the-land-across-excerpt-gene-wolfe -- F.P. Kiesche III "Ah Mr. Gibbon, another damned, fat, square book. Always, scribble, scribble, scribble, eh?" (The Duke of Gloucester, on being presented with Volume 2 of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.) Blogging at The Lensman's Children ( http://theeternalgoldenbraid.blogspot.com/). _______________________________________________
Antonin Scriabin22 Oct 2013, 16:22

↳ in reply to Daniel Otto Jack Petersen

?You see how nice to you we are. You do not like the food, you say it is rotten, you will go. He give better so you stay. Other things, too. I said nothing. I was watching a girl who had peeked around the corner. Such creepy, minimalist writing. I love it. Also, Daniel, I miss your Lafferty and Wolfe blogs!
18 quoted lines · 1–2 deep
On Tue, Oct 22, 2013 at 11:40 AM, Daniel Otto Jack Petersen < danielottojackpetersen at gmail.com> wrote: Wow. Feels a bit like Swift meets Kafka. (With, interestingly, a hint of China Mieville thrown in.) Very disorienting and weird. The dudes with lanterns felt almost numinous. Seems the narrator has shifted into a parallel world? (Feels resonant yet very different from There Are Doors.) -DOJP On Tue, Oct 22, 2013 at 2:25 PM, Fred Kiesche <godelescherbach at gmail.com>wrote:
A bit of the forthcoming book has been posted to the Tor Dot Com site. http://www.tor.com/stories/2013/10/the-land-across-excerpt-gene-wolfe -- F.P. Kiesche III "Ah Mr. Gibbon, another damned, fat, square book. Always, scribble, scribble, scribble, eh?" (The Duke of Gloucester, on being presented with Volume 2 of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.) Blogging at The Lensman's Children ( http://theeternalgoldenbraid.blogspot.com/). _______________________________________________
Thomas Bitterman22 Oct 2013, 16:51

↳ in reply to Gwern Branwen

1 quoted line
On Tue, Oct 22, 2013 at 10:34 AM, Gwern Branwen <gwern at gwern.net> wrote: with some jarring contemporary features like mention of an iPhone (an iPhone? in a Gene Wolfe novel? I never thought I'd see the day)
Perhaps he got tired of reviewers asking why his characters never just used their cell phones, so he made a point of mentioning it.
There may well be microbial life forms on Mars, yes. We may be polluting a pristine alien environment. But I say that, if they're there, let them fight for it. Let them go to war with the mighty water bears of Earth. I don't care any more. Space stations are crap. I want a castle on Mars. - Warren Ellis
Daniel Otto Jack Petersen22 Oct 2013, 18:20

↳ in reply to Antonin Scriabin

I need to get back to them, Antonin! Glad you enjoyed them. Busy doing '30 Days of Halloween' on my Ride the Nightmare blog right now. Haven't posted on Wolfe yet for this series, but some here may find the following of tangential interest to Gene Wolfe: Day 15: Stalking Hnakra (monsters in C. S. Lewis)<http://ridethenightmare.blogspot.co.uk/2013/10/30-days-of-halloween-day-15-stalking.html> (It'd be fascinating to compare Lewis's treatment of monsters with Wolfe's) Also the posts on Seraphim<http://ridethenightmare.blogspot.co.uk/2013/10/30-days-of-halloween-day-17-seraphim.html> and Cherubim<http://ridethenightmare.blogspot.co.uk/2013/10/30-days-of-halloween-day-18-cherubim.html> kind of relate to Wolfe's portrayal of the holy monstrous (and I can think of at least one short story where he references a Cherub rather explicitly - 'Slow Children at Play' in Innocents Aboard). -DOJP
30 quoted lines · 1–3 deep
On Tue, Oct 22, 2013 at 5:22 PM, Antonin Scriabin <kierkegaurdian at gmail.com>wrote: ?You see how nice to you we are. You do not like the food, you say it is rotten, you will go. He give better so you stay. Other things, too. I said nothing. I was watching a girl who had peeked around the corner. Such creepy, minimalist writing. I love it. Also, Daniel, I miss your Lafferty and Wolfe blogs! On Tue, Oct 22, 2013 at 11:40 AM, Daniel Otto Jack Petersen < danielottojackpetersen at gmail.com> wrote:
Wow. Feels a bit like Swift meets Kafka. (With, interestingly, a hint of China Mieville thrown in.) Very disorienting and weird. The dudes with lanterns felt almost numinous. Seems the narrator has shifted into a parallel world? (Feels resonant yet very different from There Are Doors.) -DOJP On Tue, Oct 22, 2013 at 2:25 PM, Fred Kiesche <godelescherbach at gmail.com wrote:
A bit of the forthcoming book has been posted to the Tor Dot Com site. http://www.tor.com/stories/2013/10/the-land-across-excerpt-gene-wolfe -- F.P. Kiesche III "Ah Mr. Gibbon, another damned, fat, square book. Always, scribble, scribble, scribble, eh?" (The Duke of Gloucester, on being presented with Volume 2 of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.) Blogging at The Lensman's Children ( http://theeternalgoldenbraid.blogspot.com/). _______________________________________________
Antonin Scriabin22 Oct 2013, 18:46

↳ in reply to Daniel Otto Jack Petersen

Cool, I'll check out the Nightmare blog. I like the idea of the "Horror of the Holy". It reminds me of how often in the Old Testament God is described as "terrible" and "awful", and how something as otherworldly as an angel couldn't appear as anything other than terrifying to a mortal.
49 quoted lines · 1–4 deep
On Tue, Oct 22, 2013 at 2:20 PM, Daniel Otto Jack Petersen < danielottojackpetersen at gmail.com> wrote: I need to get back to them, Antonin! Glad you enjoyed them. Busy doing '30 Days of Halloween' on my Ride the Nightmare blog right now. Haven't posted on Wolfe yet for this series, but some here may find the following of tangential interest to Gene Wolfe: Day 15: Stalking Hnakra (monsters in C. S. Lewis)<http://ridethenightmare.blogspot.co.uk/2013/10/30-days-of-halloween-day-15-stalking.html> (It'd be fascinating to compare Lewis's treatment of monsters with Wolfe's) Also the posts on Seraphim<http://ridethenightmare.blogspot.co.uk/2013/10/30-days-of-halloween-day-17-seraphim.html> and Cherubim<http://ridethenightmare.blogspot.co.uk/2013/10/30-days-of-halloween-day-18-cherubim.html> kind of relate to Wolfe's portrayal of the holy monstrous (and I can think of at least one short story where he references a Cherub rather explicitly - 'Slow Children at Play' in Innocents Aboard). -DOJP On Tue, Oct 22, 2013 at 5:22 PM, Antonin Scriabin < kierkegaurdian at gmail.com> wrote:
?You see how nice to you we are. You do not like the food, you say it is rotten, you will go. He give better so you stay. Other things, too. I said nothing. I was watching a girl who had peeked around the corner. Such creepy, minimalist writing. I love it. Also, Daniel, I miss your Lafferty and Wolfe blogs! On Tue, Oct 22, 2013 at 11:40 AM, Daniel Otto Jack Petersen < danielottojackpetersen at gmail.com> wrote:
Wow. Feels a bit like Swift meets Kafka. (With, interestingly, a hint of China Mieville thrown in.) Very disorienting and weird. The dudes with lanterns felt almost numinous. Seems the narrator has shifted into a parallel world? (Feels resonant yet very different from There Are Doors.) -DOJP On Tue, Oct 22, 2013 at 2:25 PM, Fred Kiesche < godelescherbach at gmail.com> wrote:
A bit of the forthcoming book has been posted to the Tor Dot Com site. http://www.tor.com/stories/2013/10/the-land-across-excerpt-gene-wolfe -- F.P. Kiesche III "Ah Mr. Gibbon, another damned, fat, square book. Always, scribble, scribble, scribble, eh?" (The Duke of Gloucester, on being presented with Volume 2 of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.) Blogging at The Lensman's Children ( http://theeternalgoldenbraid.blogspot.com/). _______________________________________________
Daniel Otto Jack Petersen22 Oct 2013, 19:47

↳ in reply to Antonin Scriabin

I like the idea of the "Horror of the Holy". It reminds me of how often in the Old Testament God is described as "terrible" and "awful", and how something as otherworldly as an angel couldn't appear as anything other than terrifying to a mortal. Yes, exactly.
52 quoted lines · 1–5 deep
On Tue, Oct 22, 2013 at 7:46 PM, Antonin Scriabin <kierkegaurdian at gmail.com>wrote: Cool, I'll check out the Nightmare blog. I like the idea of the "Horror of the Holy". It reminds me of how often in the Old Testament God is described as "terrible" and "awful", and how something as otherworldly as an angel couldn't appear as anything other than terrifying to a mortal. On Tue, Oct 22, 2013 at 2:20 PM, Daniel Otto Jack Petersen < danielottojackpetersen at gmail.com> wrote:
I need to get back to them, Antonin! Glad you enjoyed them. Busy doing '30 Days of Halloween' on my Ride the Nightmare blog right now. Haven't posted on Wolfe yet for this series, but some here may find the following of tangential interest to Gene Wolfe: Day 15: Stalking Hnakra (monsters in C. S. Lewis)<http://ridethenightmare.blogspot.co.uk/2013/10/30-days-of-halloween-day-15-stalking.html> (It'd be fascinating to compare Lewis's treatment of monsters with Wolfe's) Also the posts on Seraphim<http://ridethenightmare.blogspot.co.uk/2013/10/30-days-of-halloween-day-17-seraphim.html> and Cherubim<http://ridethenightmare.blogspot.co.uk/2013/10/30-days-of-halloween-day-18-cherubim.html> kind of relate to Wolfe's portrayal of the holy monstrous (and I can think of at least one short story where he references a Cherub rather explicitly - 'Slow Children at Play' in Innocents Aboard). -DOJP On Tue, Oct 22, 2013 at 5:22 PM, Antonin Scriabin < kierkegaurdian at gmail.com> wrote:
?You see how nice to you we are. You do not like the food, you say it is rotten, you will go. He give better so you stay. Other things, too. I said nothing. I was watching a girl who had peeked around the corner. Such creepy, minimalist writing. I love it. Also, Daniel, I miss your Lafferty and Wolfe blogs! On Tue, Oct 22, 2013 at 11:40 AM, Daniel Otto Jack Petersen < danielottojackpetersen at gmail.com> wrote:
Wow. Feels a bit like Swift meets Kafka. (With, interestingly, a hint of China Mieville thrown in.) Very disorienting and weird. The dudes with lanterns felt almost numinous. Seems the narrator has shifted into a parallel world? (Feels resonant yet very different from There Are Doors.) -DOJP On Tue, Oct 22, 2013 at 2:25 PM, Fred Kiesche < godelescherbach at gmail.com> wrote:
A bit of the forthcoming book has been posted to the Tor Dot Com site. http://www.tor.com/stories/2013/10/the-land-across-excerpt-gene-wolfe -- F.P. Kiesche III "Ah Mr. Gibbon, another damned, fat, square book. Always, scribble, scribble, scribble, eh?" (The Duke of Gloucester, on being presented with Volume 2 of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.) Blogging at The Lensman's Children ( http://theeternalgoldenbraid.blogspot.com/). _______________________________________________
Gerry Quinn26 Oct 2013, 14:17

↳ in reply to Gwern Branwen

From: Gwern Branwen
1 quoted line
Curious. Comes off as a mish-mash of a Cold war anti-Communist potboiler and the Dracula myth (Transylvania, national paranoid fear of 'the Turks') with some jarring contemporary features like mention of an iPhone (an iPhone? in a Gene Wolfe novel? I never thought I'd see the day) - jarring because the tone of the narration is so Wolfe and no young or even middle-aged American talks/thinks/writes like the narrator does. I also don't know what to make of the Kleon/Cleon naming.
The narrator's voice is quite bizarre, but the story seemed interesting. - Gerry Quinn

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