{ "export": { "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/6453", "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": 6453, "subject": "Excerpt from \"The Land Across\"", "messages": 11, "voices": 6, "first": "2013-10-22T13:25:11+00:00", "last": "2013-10-26T14:17:39+00:00" }, "messages": [ { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Fred Kiesche", "address": "godelescherbach at gmail.com" }, "date": "2013-10-22T13:25:11+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Excerpt from \"The Land Across\"", "in_reply_to": null, "reply_link": null, "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "A bit of the forthcoming book has been posted to the Tor Dot Com site.\n\nhttp://www.tor.com/stories/2013/10/the-land-across-excerpt-gene-wolfe" }, { "kind": "sig", "depth": 0, "text": "F.P. Kiesche III \"Ah Mr. Gibbon, another damned, fat, square book. Always,\nscribble, scribble, scribble, eh?\" (The Duke of Gloucester, on being\npresented with Volume 2 of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.)\nBlogging at The Lensman's Children (\nhttp://theeternalgoldenbraid.blogspot.com/)." } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Antonin Scriabin", "address": "kierkegaurdian at gmail.com" }, "date": "2013-10-22T14:03:57+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Excerpt from \"The Land Across\"", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Thanks! I like it ... it feels like the narration in *The Sorcerer's House*.\nA sort of authentic, accessible journal. Looking forward to this quite a\nbit; it comes out the day before I fly out on a trip, which is the perfect\ntime to start a new book." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "On Tue, Oct 22, 2013 at 9:25 AM, Fred Kiesche wrote:\nA bit of the forthcoming book has been posted to the Tor Dot Com site.\n\nhttp://www.tor.com/stories/2013/10/the-land-across-excerpt-gene-wolfe\n\n\n\n--\nF.P. Kiesche III \"Ah Mr. Gibbon, another damned, fat, square book.\nAlways, scribble, scribble, scribble, eh?\" (The Duke of Gloucester, on\nbeing presented with Volume 2 of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.)\nBlogging at The Lensman's Children (\nhttp://theeternalgoldenbraid.blogspot.com/).\n\n\n_______________________________________________" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Gwern Branwen", "address": "gwern at gwern.net" }, "date": "2013-10-22T14:34:20+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Excerpt from \"The Land Across\"", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Curious. Comes off as a mish-mash of a Cold war anti-Communist\npotboiler and the Dracula myth (Transylvania, national paranoid fear\nof 'the Turks') with some jarring contemporary features like mention\nof an iPhone (an iPhone? in a Gene Wolfe novel? I never thought I'd\nsee the day) - jarring because the tone of the narration is so Wolfe\nand no young or even middle-aged American talks/thinks/writes like the\nnarrator does. I also don't know what to make of the Kleon/Cleon\nnaming." }, { "kind": "sig", "depth": 0, "text": "gwern\nhttp://www.gwern.net" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Antonin Scriabin", "address": "kierkegaurdian at gmail.com" }, "date": "2013-10-22T14:41:51+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Excerpt from \"The Land Across\"", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "If I remember correctly, Able of the High Heart thinks back to his Mac\ntowards the beginning of *The Knight, *when he is remembering his previous\nlife in the \"real world\"*. *They may be few and far between, but\nreferences to modern technology can be found in some of his more recent\nnovels." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "On Tue, Oct 22, 2013 at 10:34 AM, Gwern Branwen wrote:\nCurious. Comes off as a mish-mash of a Cold war anti-Communist\npotboiler and the Dracula myth (Transylvania, national paranoid fear\nof 'the Turks') with some jarring contemporary features like mention\nof an iPhone (an iPhone? in a Gene Wolfe novel? I never thought I'd\nsee the day) - jarring because the tone of the narration is so Wolfe\nand no young or even middle-aged American talks/thinks/writes like the\nnarrator does. I also don't know what to make of the Kleon/Cleon\nnaming.\n\n--\ngwern\nhttp://www.gwern.net\n_______________________________________________" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Daniel Otto Jack Petersen", "address": "danielottojackpetersen at gmail.com" }, "date": "2013-10-22T15:40:39+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Excerpt from \"The Land Across\"", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Wow. Feels a bit like Swift meets Kafka. (With, interestingly, a hint of\nChina Mieville thrown in.)\n\nVery disorienting and weird. The dudes with lanterns felt almost numinous.\n\n\nSeems the narrator has shifted into a parallel world? (Feels resonant yet\nvery different from There Are Doors.)\n\n-DOJP" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "On Tue, Oct 22, 2013 at 2:25 PM, Fred Kiesche wrote:\nA bit of the forthcoming book has been posted to the Tor Dot Com site.\n\nhttp://www.tor.com/stories/2013/10/the-land-across-excerpt-gene-wolfe\n\n\n\n--\nF.P. Kiesche III \"Ah Mr. Gibbon, another damned, fat, square book.\nAlways, scribble, scribble, scribble, eh?\" (The Duke of Gloucester, on\nbeing presented with Volume 2 of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.)\nBlogging at The Lensman's Children (\nhttp://theeternalgoldenbraid.blogspot.com/).\n\n\n_______________________________________________" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Antonin Scriabin", "address": "kierkegaurdian at gmail.com" }, "date": "2013-10-22T16:22:30+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Excerpt from \"The Land Across\"", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "?You see how nice to you we are. You do not like the food, you say it is\nrotten, you will go. He give better so you stay. Other things, too.\n\nI said nothing. I was watching a girl who had peeked around the corner.\n\n\nSuch creepy, minimalist writing. I love it.\n\n\nAlso, Daniel, I miss your Lafferty and Wolfe blogs!" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "On Tue, Oct 22, 2013 at 11:40 AM, Daniel Otto Jack Petersen <\ndanielottojackpetersen at gmail.com> wrote:\nWow. Feels a bit like Swift meets Kafka. (With, interestingly, a hint of\nChina Mieville thrown in.)\n\nVery disorienting and weird. The dudes with lanterns felt almost\nnuminous.\n\nSeems the narrator has shifted into a parallel world? (Feels resonant yet\nvery different from There Are Doors.)\n\n-DOJP\n\n\nOn Tue, Oct 22, 2013 at 2:25 PM, Fred Kiesche wrote:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "A bit of the forthcoming book has been posted to the Tor Dot Com site.\n\nhttp://www.tor.com/stories/2013/10/the-land-across-excerpt-gene-wolfe\n\n\n\n--\nF.P. Kiesche III \"Ah Mr. Gibbon, another damned, fat, square book.\nAlways, scribble, scribble, scribble, eh?\" (The Duke of Gloucester, on\nbeing presented with Volume 2 of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.)\nBlogging at The Lensman's Children (\nhttp://theeternalgoldenbraid.blogspot.com/).\n\n\n_______________________________________________" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Thomas Bitterman", "address": "tom at bitterman.net" }, "date": "2013-10-22T16:51:49+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Excerpt from \"The Land Across\"", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "On Tue, Oct 22, 2013 at 10:34 AM, Gwern Branwen wrote:\nwith some jarring contemporary features like mention\nof an iPhone (an iPhone? in a Gene Wolfe novel? I never thought I'd\nsee the day)" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Perhaps he got tired of reviewers asking why his characters never just used\ntheir cell phones, so he made a point of mentioning it." }, { "kind": "sig", "depth": 0, "text": "There may well be microbial life forms on Mars, yes. We may be polluting a\npristine alien environment. But I say that, if they're there, *let them\nfight for it*. Let them go to war with the mighty water bears of Earth. I\ndon't care any more. Space stations are crap. I want a castle on Mars.\n - Warren Ellis" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Daniel Otto Jack Petersen", "address": "danielottojackpetersen at gmail.com" }, "date": "2013-10-22T18:20:02+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Excerpt from \"The Land Across\"", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I need to get back to them, Antonin! Glad you enjoyed them.\n\nBusy doing '30 Days of Halloween' on my Ride the Nightmare blog right now.\n Haven't posted on Wolfe yet for this series, but some here may find the\nfollowing of tangential interest to Gene Wolfe:\n\nDay 15: Stalking Hnakra (monsters in C. S.\nLewis)\n(It'd\nbe fascinating to compare Lewis's treatment of monsters with Wolfe's)\n\nAlso the posts on\nSeraphim\n and Cherubim\nkind\nof relate to Wolfe's portrayal of the holy monstrous (and I can think of at\nleast one short story where he references a Cherub rather explicitly -\n'Slow Children at Play' in *Innocents Aboard*).\n\n-DOJP" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "On Tue, Oct 22, 2013 at 5:22 PM, Antonin Scriabin\nwrote:\n?You see how nice to you we are. You do not like the food, you say it is\nrotten, you will go. He give better so you stay. Other things, too.\n\nI said nothing. I was watching a girl who had peeked around the corner.\n\n\nSuch creepy, minimalist writing. I love it.\n\n\nAlso, Daniel, I miss your Lafferty and Wolfe blogs!\n\n\nOn Tue, Oct 22, 2013 at 11:40 AM, Daniel Otto Jack Petersen <\ndanielottojackpetersen at gmail.com> wrote:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "Wow. Feels a bit like Swift meets Kafka. (With, interestingly, a hint\nof China Mieville thrown in.)\n\nVery disorienting and weird. The dudes with lanterns felt almost\nnuminous.\n\nSeems the narrator has shifted into a parallel world? (Feels resonant\nyet very different from There Are Doors.)\n\n-DOJP\n\n\n On Tue, Oct 22, 2013 at 2:25 PM, Fred Kiesche ", "from": { "name": "Antonin Scriabin", "address": "kierkegaurdian at gmail.com" }, "date": "2013-10-22T18:46:41+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Excerpt from \"The Land Across\"", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Cool, I'll check out the Nightmare blog. I like the idea of the \"Horror of\nthe Holy\". It reminds me of how often in the Old Testament God is\ndescribed as \"terrible\" and \"awful\", and how something as otherworldly as\nan angel couldn't appear as anything other than terrifying to a mortal." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "On Tue, Oct 22, 2013 at 2:20 PM, Daniel Otto Jack Petersen <\ndanielottojackpetersen at gmail.com> wrote:\nI need to get back to them, Antonin! Glad you enjoyed them.\n\nBusy doing '30 Days of Halloween' on my Ride the Nightmare blog right now.\n Haven't posted on Wolfe yet for this series, but some here may find the\nfollowing of tangential interest to Gene Wolfe:\n\nDay 15: Stalking Hnakra (monsters in C. S. Lewis) (It'd\nbe fascinating to compare Lewis's treatment of monsters with Wolfe's)\n\nAlso the posts on Seraphim\n and Cherubim kind\nof relate to Wolfe's portrayal of the holy monstrous (and I can think of at\nleast one short story where he references a Cherub rather explicitly -\n'Slow Children at Play' in *Innocents Aboard*).\n\n-DOJP\n\n\nOn Tue, Oct 22, 2013 at 5:22 PM, Antonin Scriabin <\nkierkegaurdian at gmail.com> wrote:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "?You see how nice to you we are. You do not like the food, you say it is\nrotten, you will go. He give better so you stay. Other things, too.\n\nI said nothing. I was watching a girl who had peeked around the corner.\n\n\nSuch creepy, minimalist writing. I love it.\n\n\nAlso, Daniel, I miss your Lafferty and Wolfe blogs!\n\n\nOn Tue, Oct 22, 2013 at 11:40 AM, Daniel Otto Jack Petersen <\ndanielottojackpetersen at gmail.com> wrote:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 3, "text": "Wow. Feels a bit like Swift meets Kafka. (With, interestingly, a hint\nof China Mieville thrown in.)\n\nVery disorienting and weird. The dudes with lanterns felt almost\nnuminous.\n\nSeems the narrator has shifted into a parallel world? (Feels resonant\nyet very different from There Are Doors.)\n\n-DOJP\n\n\n On Tue, Oct 22, 2013 at 2:25 PM, Fred Kiesche <\ngodelescherbach at gmail.com> wrote:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 4, "text": " A bit of the forthcoming book has been posted to the Tor Dot Com site.\n\nhttp://www.tor.com/stories/2013/10/the-land-across-excerpt-gene-wolfe\n\n\n\n--\nF.P. Kiesche III \"Ah Mr. Gibbon, another damned, fat, square book.\nAlways, scribble, scribble, scribble, eh?\" (The Duke of Gloucester, on\nbeing presented with Volume 2 of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.)\nBlogging at The Lensman's Children (\nhttp://theeternalgoldenbraid.blogspot.com/).\n\n\n_______________________________________________" } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Daniel Otto Jack Petersen", "address": "danielottojackpetersen at gmail.com" }, "date": "2013-10-22T19:47:17+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Excerpt from \"The Land Across\"", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "*I like the idea of the \"Horror of the Holy\". It reminds me of how often\nin the Old Testament God is described as \"terrible\" and \"awful\", and how\nsomething as otherworldly as an angel couldn't appear as anything other\nthan terrifying to a mortal.*\n\nYes, exactly." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "On Tue, Oct 22, 2013 at 7:46 PM, Antonin Scriabin\nwrote:\nCool, I'll check out the Nightmare blog. I like the idea of the \"Horror\nof the Holy\". It reminds me of how often in the Old Testament God is\ndescribed as \"terrible\" and \"awful\", and how something as otherworldly as\nan angel couldn't appear as anything other than terrifying to a mortal.\n\n\nOn Tue, Oct 22, 2013 at 2:20 PM, Daniel Otto Jack Petersen <\ndanielottojackpetersen at gmail.com> wrote:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 2, "text": "I need to get back to them, Antonin! Glad you enjoyed them.\n\nBusy doing '30 Days of Halloween' on my Ride the Nightmare blog right\nnow. Haven't posted on Wolfe yet for this series, but some here may find\nthe following of tangential interest to Gene Wolfe:\n\nDay 15: Stalking Hnakra (monsters in C. S. Lewis) (It'd\nbe fascinating to compare Lewis's treatment of monsters with Wolfe's)\n\nAlso the posts on Seraphim\n and Cherubim kind\nof relate to Wolfe's portrayal of the holy monstrous (and I can think of at\nleast one short story where he references a Cherub rather explicitly -\n'Slow Children at Play' in *Innocents Aboard*).\n\n-DOJP\n\n\nOn Tue, Oct 22, 2013 at 5:22 PM, Antonin Scriabin <\nkierkegaurdian at gmail.com> wrote:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 3, "text": "?You see how nice to you we are. You do not like the food, you say it is\nrotten, you will go. He give better so you stay. Other things, too.\n\nI said nothing. I was watching a girl who had peeked around the corner.\n\n\nSuch creepy, minimalist writing. I love it.\n\n\nAlso, Daniel, I miss your Lafferty and Wolfe blogs!\n\n\nOn Tue, Oct 22, 2013 at 11:40 AM, Daniel Otto Jack Petersen <\ndanielottojackpetersen at gmail.com> wrote:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 4, "text": "Wow. Feels a bit like Swift meets Kafka. (With, interestingly, a hint\nof China Mieville thrown in.)\n\nVery disorienting and weird. The dudes with lanterns felt almost\nnuminous.\n\nSeems the narrator has shifted into a parallel world? (Feels resonant\nyet very different from There Are Doors.)\n\n-DOJP\n\n\n On Tue, Oct 22, 2013 at 2:25 PM, Fred Kiesche <\ngodelescherbach at gmail.com> wrote:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 5, "text": " A bit of the forthcoming book has been posted to the Tor Dot Com\nsite.\n\nhttp://www.tor.com/stories/2013/10/the-land-across-excerpt-gene-wolfe\n\n\n\n--\nF.P. Kiesche III \"Ah Mr. Gibbon, another damned, fat, square book.\nAlways, scribble, scribble, scribble, eh?\" (The Duke of Gloucester, on\nbeing presented with Volume 2 of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.)\nBlogging at The Lensman's Children (\nhttp://theeternalgoldenbraid.blogspot.com/).\n\n\n_______________________________________________" } ] }, { "message_id": "<6E82D1035E40484997E880E3B4F5AC0A@Rover>", "from": { "name": "Gerry Quinn", "address": "gerry at bindweed.com" }, "date": "2013-10-26T14:17:39+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Excerpt from \"The Land Across\"", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "header", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "From: Gwern Branwen " }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Curious. Comes off as a mish-mash of a Cold war anti-Communist\npotboiler and the Dracula myth (Transylvania, national paranoid fear\nof 'the Turks') with some jarring contemporary features like mention\nof an iPhone (an iPhone? in a Gene Wolfe novel? I never thought I'd\nsee the day) - jarring because the tone of the narration is so Wolfe\nand no young or even middle-aged American talks/thinks/writes like the\nnarrator does. I also don't know what to make of the Kleon/Cleon\nnaming." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "The narrator's voice is quite bizarre, but the story seemed interesting.\n\n- Gerry Quinn" } ] } ] }