The Second? Best of Gene Wolfe

Marc Aramini16 Oct 2014, 17:18

50 is a lot ... when I count the Thag stories as four, my list came to 36 ... so I guess I could throw 14 more in, but gee ...

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On Thu, Oct 16, 2014 at 10:16 AM, Dan'l Danehy-Oakes <danldo at gmail.com> wrote: Good idea, but do we have to come up with 50, or can we limit it to those we feel are more deserving? On Thu, Oct 16, 2014 at 9:56 AM, Robert Pirkola <rpirkola at hotmail.com> wrote:

In The Best of Gene Wolfe story collection, Mr. Wolfe writes small blurbs about each story at its close. After the final story in the volume, "A Cabin on the Coast", Wolfe reveals that he himself chose the stories contained therein. He also said that we the reader has "every right to disagree, but don't tell me if you do; it won't accomplish a thing. Tell Tor Books instead. Name your favorite, and demand that it be included in a second volume." I think that this mailing list could probably discuss and come up with a pretty good list of 30 or so stories to include in such a volume. If we could come to a consensus (now there's a likely story!) we could maybe submit it to Tor as our two cents. Below is a link to the WolfeWiki page listing the stories that were included in the first volume (add "Christmas Inn" from the British version): http://www.wolfewiki.com/pmwiki/pmwiki.php?n=WolfeWiki.TheBestOfGeneWolfe Here is a link to the WolfeWiki's full list of Gene Wolfe short stories: http://www.wolfewiki.com/pmwiki/pmwiki.php?n=WolfeWiki.StoriesListByDate If you want to participate, select fifty (50) stories to nominate and post it. After everyone has had a reasonable amount of time to chime in, I will tally the votes and publish the top thirty vote getters. Any concerns about the list can be hashed out through discussion after that. If anyone has an idea for a system more likely to produce a list reflecting the opinions of the list, I would be open to suggestions. Otherwise, why not give it a go? _______________________________________________

António Pedro Marques16 Oct 2014, 17:29

↳ follows, by subject match Marc Aramini

I'd rather have 'The This Far Uncollected Gene Wolfe'. No dia 16/10/2014, ?s 17:56, Robert Pirkola <rpirkola at hotmail.com> escreveu:

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Marc Aramini16 Oct 2014, 17:31

↳ follows, by subject match António Pedro Marques

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On Thu, Oct 16, 2014 at 9:56 AM, Robert Pirkola <rpirkola at hotmail.com> wrote: If anyone has an idea for a system more likely to produce a list reflecting the opinions of the list, I would be open to suggestions. Otherwise, why not give it a go? _______________________________________________ Urth Mailing List To post, write urth at urth.net Subscription/information: http://www.urth.net

This is off topic, but your call for suggestions on a more equitable way to run the system evoked a snicker from me. When I was teaching college, my students never realized how innately authoritarian I was because I was always so kind and easy to approach, and naturally gave people the benefit of the doubt. Every once in a while, they would come up with the idea of voting for something and I would laugh and smile, and say, do you imagine you are in a democracy? This is a tyranny. And they were content, never realizing that they had seriously entered the soft determined universe of my will. (When you have cancer, you don't poll your friends on what to do - however, I do admit that in this case the list is closer to the cancer specialist of my metaphor than the general public would be and a similar weighted vote system might be appropriate). But ... you can't leave out Trip, Trap and Suzane Delage, in any case. Trip, Trap is the quintessential Wolfe universe: an objective spiritual reality occluded by sundered and fragmented subjective viewpoints, but still more "real" than even the physical world. In microcosm this is the viewpoint behind his entire corpus.

Gerry Quinn16 Oct 2014, 17:38

↳ follows, by subject match Marc Aramini

A lot of those are in 'Endangered Species', which is a very good collection, though... - Gerry Quinn

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On 16/10/2014 17:56, Robert Pirkola wrote: In The Best of Gene Wolfe story collection, Mr. Wolfe writes small blurbs about each story at its close. After the final story in the volume, "A Cabin on the Coast", Wolfe reveals that he himself chose the stories contained therein. He also said that we the reader has "every right to disagree, but don't tell me if you do; it won't accomplish a thing. Tell Tor Books instead. Name your favorite, and demand that it be included in a second volume." I think that this mailing list could probably discuss and come up with a pretty good list of 30 or so stories to include in such a volume. If we could come to a consensus (now there's a likely story!) we could maybe submit it to Tor as our two cents. Below is a link to the WolfeWiki page listing the stories that were included in the first volume (add "Christmas Inn" from the British version): http://www.wolfewiki.com/pmwiki/pmwiki.php?n=WolfeWiki.TheBestOfGeneWolfe Here is a link to the WolfeWiki's full list of Gene Wolfe short stories: http://www.wolfewiki.com/pmwiki/pmwiki.php?n=WolfeWiki.StoriesListByDate If you want to participate, select fifty (50) stories to nominate and post it. After everyone has had a reasonable amount of time to chime in, I will tally the votes and publish the top thirty vote getters. Any concerns about the list can be hashed out through discussion after that. If anyone has an idea for a system more likely to produce a list reflecting the opinions of the list, I would be open to suggestions. Otherwise, why not give it a go? _______________________________________________

Dan'l Danehy-Oakes16 Oct 2014, 17:54

↳ in reply to Gerry Quinn

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On Thu, Oct 16, 2014 at 10:38 AM, Gerry Quinn <gerry at bindweed.com> wrote: A lot of those are in 'Endangered Species', which is a very good collection, though... - Gerry Quinn On 16/10/2014 17:56, Robert Pirkola wrote: In The Best of Gene Wolfe story collection, Mr. Wolfe writes small blurbs about each story at its close. After the final story in the volume, "A Cabin on the Coast", Wolfe reveals that he himself chose the stories contained therein. He also said that we the reader has "every right to disagree, but don't tell me if you do; it won't accomplish a thing. Tell Tor Books instead. Name your favorite, and demand that it be included in a second volume." I think that this mailing list could probably discuss and come up with a pretty good list of 30 or so stories to include in such a volume. If we could come to a consensus (now there's a likely story!) we could maybe submit it to Tor as our two cents. Below is a link to the WolfeWiki page listing the stories that were included in the first volume (add "Christmas Inn" from the British version): http://www.wolfewiki.com/pmwiki/pmwiki.php?n=WolfeWiki.TheBestOfGeneWolfe Here is a link to the WolfeWiki's full list of Gene Wolfe short stories: http://www.wolfewiki.com/pmwiki/pmwiki.php?n=WolfeWiki.StoriesListByDate If you want to participate, select fifty (50) stories to nominate and post it. After everyone has had a reasonable amount of time to chime in, I will tally the votes and publish the top thirty vote getters. Any concerns about the list can be hashed out through discussion after that. If anyone has an idea for a system more likely to produce a list reflecting the opinions of the list, I would be open to suggestions. Otherwise, why not give it a go? _______________________________________________

Marc Aramini16 Oct 2014, 17:56

↳ in reply to Dan'l Danehy-Oakes

Oh my god how could I leave off the changeling? Probably my favorite Wofe story, I just assumed it was in the first one without thinking about it.

124 quoted lines · 1–2 deep

A lot of those are in 'Endangered Species', which is a very good collection, though... - Gerry Quinn On 16/10/2014 17:56, Robert Pirkola wrote: In The Best of Gene Wolfe story collection, Mr. Wolfe writes small blurbs about each story at its close. After the final story in the volume, "A Cabin on the Coast", Wolfe reveals that he himself chose the stories contained therein. He also said that we the reader has "every right to disagree, but don't tell me if you do; it won't accomplish a thing. Tell Tor Books instead. Name your favorite, and demand that it be included in a second volume." I think that this mailing list could probably discuss and come up with a pretty good list of 30 or so stories to include in such a volume. If we could come to a consensus (now there's a likely story!) we could maybe submit it to Tor as our two cents. Below is a link to the WolfeWiki page listing the stories that were included in the first volume (add "Christmas Inn" from the British version): http://www.wolfewiki.com/pmwiki/pmwiki.php?n=WolfeWiki.TheBestOfGeneWolfe Here is a link to the WolfeWiki's full list of Gene Wolfe short stories: http://www.wolfewiki.com/pmwiki/pmwiki.php?n=WolfeWiki.StoriesListByDate If you want to participate, select fifty (50) stories to nominate and post it. After everyone has had a reasonable amount of time to chime in, I will tally the votes and publish the top thirty vote getters. Any concerns about the list can be hashed out through discussion after that. If anyone has an idea for a system more likely to produce a list reflecting the opinions of the list, I would be open to suggestions. Otherwise, why not give it a go? _______________________________________________

Robert Pirkola16 Oct 2014, 18:15

↳ follows, by subject match Marc Aramini

I know that 50 is a lot of stories to nominate but my intention was that if everyone just selected 30 or fewerthere is unlikely to be significant overlap given the amount of stories that could be nominated. Perhaps thisunderestimates the degree to which the next 30 is already somewhat obvious. Why doesn't everyone justpost as many as they would like (up to 50) and we will see where that takes us?

Robert Pirkola16 Oct 2014, 18:19

↳ follows, by subject match Robert Pirkola

Marc Aramini wrote: "Oh my god how could I leave off the changeling? Probably my favorite Wo[l]festory, I just assumed it was in the first one without thinking about it." Funnily enough before I wrote the first post on this topic I had to recheck toconfirm that Wolfe hadn't selected "The Changeling" for the first volume. An obvious choice for the second.

Robert Pirkola16 Oct 2014, 21:37

↳ follows, by subject match Robert Pirkola

Antonio Pedro Marques wrote: "I'd rather have 'The This Far Uncollected Gene Wolfe'." I, for one, completely agree. He is long overdue for a new short story collection and there iscertainly no shortage.

Robert Pirkola16 Oct 2014, 21:42

↳ follows, by subject match Robert Pirkola

I personally haven't read too many chronologically later than "The Ziggurat" so my list is truncated to thirty: 1. Moutains Like Mice 2. Trip, Trap 3. Volksweapon 4. The Changeling 5. The HORARS of War 6. Three Million Square Miles 7. ?Cues 8. Thag Stories 9. Melting 10. Silhouette 11. Tracking Song 12. Three Fingers 13. Suzanne Delage 14. The Adopted Father 15. Cherry Jubilee 16. The Nebraskan and the Nereid 17. In the House of Gingerbread 18. The Other Dead Man 19. Houston, 1943 20. Sightings at Twin Mounds 21. The Tale of the Rose and the Nightingale (And What Came of It) 22. The Friendship Light 23. Lord of the Land 24. The Haunted Boardinghouse 25. The Monday Man 26. The Old Woman Whose Rolling Pin Is the Sun 27. The Seraph from its Sepulcher 28. The Sailor Who Sailed After the Sun 29. Useful Phrases 30. The Ziggurat

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