# Dial W for Wolfe *The Urth list — 1 messages, 1 voices, 09 Jul 1998* > 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. --- ### William H. Ansley *09 Jul 1998, 22:29* I have just been rereading _The Island of Doctor Death and Other Stories and Other Stories_ (Pocket Books paperback edition). It seems Gene Wolfe is more than commonly found of using "dial" as a verb. In _The Doctor of Death Island_, on p. 258, an orderly in a prison hospital says, to a patient in a hospital bed, "I thought you might want me to dial you down for the night." It is fairly plain from context that this means turning the control to lower the head of the bed. In _Feather Tigers_, on p. 157, the following passage occurs. "QuoQuo inclined his head (the conventional gesture of acquiescence) and taking his blaster from his belt dialed a semidiffuse beam and depressed the firing stud." I don't think this is of any great significance, but it is mildly interesting (to me, at least) in light of the Solar Labyrinth discussion recently. William Ansley ---