Subject: (whorl) Marble Rose Mint

From: m.driussi <m.driussi at genie.com>
Date: Wed, 19 Feb 1997 04:17:00 +0000

[Posted from Whorl, the mailing list for Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun]

Reply:  Item #5049313 from WHORL at LISTS.BEST.COM@INET#

Rana,

(Distantly related to Peeper, no doubt? <g>)

Re: adding Mint to the Marble Rose.  Start (IV, 313).  Then (IV,
380).  Still doubtful?  See (II, 208).  Neat, huh?

Re: question or quiz, well I'm quizzing us all, most of the time.
Trying to tease out a strand of spaghetti and follow where it leads
(hopefully to a meatball).  (In this particular case it was even more
of a question than a quiz.)

Re: the smashed door, okay, I like it!  However, there's this problem
in that it seems like Marble was dreaming that scene . . . the text has
the surreal quality we associate in the Long Sun text with dreaming,
where nouns and verbs are veiled metaphors, or unveiling revelations
of deeper truths, but not concrete objects (door) or physical actions
(smashing).  So do you mean that Marble was a somnambulist on this occasion?
Dangerous business, sleepwalking robots!

Hey!  Which Niven novel was that?  Where the crew set themselves up
as rulers before thawing out the sleepers.

Re: using the cards for money.  Alga and I tried guessing how long
that has been going on.  If it isn't a random factor (as if there is
any "coincidence" in a Wolfe novel!) then it definitely serves the
anti-landfall alliance.  And once it starts, you get Raiders of the
Lost Shrine style archeological plundering to get the "money."  But
still, one wonders what they used for exchange before?  (Actually,
since cards break down into bits, which is the play on the old coins
called "bits," they probably had a similar tradition of coin
suplanted by paper money or plastic credit.)  Doesn't matter much.
But the change would seem to have happened at least a generation or
two ago, since there doesn't seem to be any mention of any other way
of doing business.

=mantis=

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