{ "export": { "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/whorl/1327", "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": "whorl", "thread": { "id": 1327, "subject": "SS Stuff on a Monday", "messages": 4, "voices": 4, "first": "2001-04-09T09:20:18+00:00", "last": "2001-04-12T11:43:34+00:00" }, "messages": [ { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Dan'l Danehy-Oakes", "address": "ddanehy at siebel.com" }, "date": "2001-04-09T09:20:18+00:00", "subject": "(whorl) SS Stuff on a Monday", "in_reply_to": null, "reply_link": null, "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Michael, no, your theory, attractive though it is (I love the idea of\nembarassing vampires to death...), simply doesn't fit with many of the \nNarr's statements about the nature of the SotI. While pricking them in\nthe vanity might do any number of things to the Inhumi, causing them \nto become mindless leechagators is just _not_ a likely result.\n\nOkay, now as to the utopia thing. There definitely does seem to be an\naspect of that in SS. Some aspects worth considering:\n\n1) It's clearly a form of the Hero's Journey. \n\n2) If Wolfe is going to write a Utopia, it will be a Christian utopia\n -- which is almost a contradiction in terms, given the Christian\n belief that \"this world\" is radically Fallen and no true utopia is\n possible short of Heaven. But and counterweighting this we need\n also to remember that the word \"utopia\" comes from the Catholic \n St. Sir Thomas More, and did not, in his hands, mean a \"perfect\"\n state so much as an optimal one. \n\n3) It's also in dialogue with several other things besides KSR's Mars\n books (which I haven't read, btw: are they really worth the effort?).\n\n a) Another three-volume hero's journey: Dante. Nell mezzo del camino \n de whatever Horn finds himself all at sea (so to speak), lost. His \n journeys lead him through Hell (Green), Purgatory (the Whorl), and \n ultimately to, uh, well, that's where it gets kind of complicated...\n\n But there's also a political Commedia here, as the Narrator \n journeys through hell (the theo-monarchies of OBW), purgatory (the \n Italianate city-states of IGJ), and paradise (the democracy of Dorp \n and the jolly quasi-anarchy of NV), only political \"paradise\" ain't \n no paradise anyway, which leads me to point b.\n\n b) Another well-known SF political \"utopian\" novel featuring twin \n worlds, where the Hero's Journey leads him to realize that political \n utopia ain't going to happen? I refer, of course, to Le Guin's THE \n DISPOSSESSED. (Btw, if we take it that this dialog is intended-- and \n I think a strong case can be made for this -- then there is also an \n implicit dialog with Delany's [TROUBLE ON] TRITON.) \n\n c) And, of course, it is in dialog with (and implicitly critiques, if \n only by differentiae) the LONG and NEW SUN books.\n\nI think I'll go take my medication now.\n\n\n*This is WHORL, for discussion of Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun." } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Alex David Groce", "address": "alex_groce at gs246.sp.cs.cmu.edu" }, "date": "2001-04-10T01:44:53+00:00", "subject": "Re: (whorl) SS Stuff on a Monday", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Well, I haven't got much to say on this other than to direct your attention to:\n\nhttp://world.std.com/~pduggan/wolfeint.html" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "GW: The adventurous reader has probably already moved past\nrealism. I realize that sounds like a smart remark, but I mean past\nthe kind of fiction that is called \"realism\" as a literary genre,\nand that's what it is: a literary genre. It is archtypically the\nstory about the college professor who is married to the other\ncollege professor." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Did you read Ursula K. LeGuin's novel, The Dispossessed? It was\nabout the college professor who's married to a college professor,\nonly science fiction, and this planet is Russia and this planet is\nthe United States. When I read it I was so disappointed. I'd had a\ndozen people tell me how wonderful it was." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Q: Yeah, I heard that too. Then I read it. " }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "GW: I've read that book before; I've read it as realism many a\ntime. It's a John Updike kind of book. I've read that story so many\ntimes ... now I read a book until I can recognize the story, and\nsay, \"This is what it is,\" and that's as far as it goes, since I\nhave no urge to finish it. I'm long past feeling so guilty that I\nhave to finish everything I start. I don't finish ninety percent of\nwhat I start." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Look, the reason someone should go past that sort of realism is that\nit is narrow, stultifying and ultimately false." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I'll add that I agree with Wolfe about THE DISPOSSESSED. It plus THE\nLEFT HAND OF DARKNESS stands as my examplar of how even when the prose\nquality is uniformly excellent, a writer can vary wildly in quality.\n\nAlso, I still like Short Sun despite remaining clueless about the many\napparent red herrings it introduces. The emotional impact didn't feel\nforced or as if he were tired of the series to me--although it did\nfeel as if Silk/Horn was tired of writing." }, { "kind": "sig", "depth": 0, "text": "\"And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.\" John 8:32\n--\nAlex David Groce (agroce+ at cs.cmu.edu)\nPh.D. Student, Carnegie Mellon University - Computer Science Department\n8112 Wean Hall (412)-268-3066\nhttp://www.cs.cmu.edu/~agroce\n\n*This is WHORL, for discussion of Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun." } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Michael Straight", "address": "straight at email.unc.edu" }, "date": "2001-04-10T23:03:47+00:00", "subject": "Re: (whorl) SS Stuff on a Monday", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "On Mon, 9 Apr 2001, Dan'l Danehy-Oakes wrote:\nMichael, no, your theory, attractive though it is (I love the idea of\nembarassing vampires to death...), simply doesn't fit with many of the \nNarr's statements about the nature of the SotI. While pricking them in\nthe vanity might do any number of things to the Inhumi, causing them \nto become mindless leechagators is just _not_ a likely result." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "My original theory was that the Narrator meant this metaphorically. That\nif humans knew what the inhumi were, then they would regard them as\nmindless leechagators, rather than intellegent, possibly superior\npredators. The inhumi want to be taken for human, but they'll settle for\nCount Dracula (judging from Krait's initial encounters with Horn) so long\nas they don't have to be mere vampire bats.\n\nOn re-reading OBW, I see that the Rajan's words are hard to take\nmetaphorically (he talks about the inhumi possibly being better off as\nmindless reptiles)--of course this is the same guy who claims to think\nSilk might be living on Green or some other continent of Blue and who\nclaims to believe that hogwash about inhumi flying from Green to Blue, so\nwhat does he know!\n\nSeriously, it could be both: loving each other would mean the inhumi could\nno longer prey on humans and would lose their intelligence, but the Rajan\nalso says that this is *not* the Secret that the inhumi are hunting him\nfor. So the Secret could still be that they want to be human." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "On Mon, 9 Apr 2001, Adam Stephanides wrote:\n'Fraid not; your theory won't jibe with Horn's statement that the Secret \n\"is a weapon too heavy for our hands,\" and that the Neighbors knew it,\nbut could not wield it (IGJ, 125). The humans on Blue are perfectly\ncapable of saying to the inhumi \"nyah, nyah, you aren't really\nhuman,\" and the Neighbors presumably could have done the same. " }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I take this to mean that the weapon is not too heavy to wield at all, but\ntoo heavy to wield responsibly. It would be too cruel (yes, more cruel\neven than burying them alive--how many inhumi claim to prefer death to\nabandoning the dreamwalking worlds where they seem fully human?) and\nSilkhorn believes that by exercising such cruelty, humans would ultimately\nharm themselves as well as the inhumi.\n\nFurther evidence: It is Hornsilk's harsh frustration of Juganu's desire to\nexperience human life on Urth that seems to lead to the inhumi attack. \nOther inhumi he adopted and treated as human, and they seem to have loved\nhim in return, but he rubs Juganu's face in his inhumanity and it enrages\nhim. \n\n-Rostrum\n\n\n\n\n*This is WHORL, for discussion of Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun." } ] }, { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Adam Stephanides", "address": "adamsteph at earthlink.net" }, "date": "2001-04-12T11:43:34+00:00", "subject": "Re: (whorl) SS Stuff on a Monday", "in_reply_to": "", "reply_link": "subject", "blocks": [ { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "on 4/9/01 11:20 AM, Dan'l Danehy-Oakes at ddanehy at siebel.com wrote:\na) Another three-volume hero's journey: Dante. Nell mezzo del camino\nde whatever Horn finds himself all at sea (so to speak), lost. His\njourneys lead him through Hell (Green), Purgatory (the Whorl), and\nultimately to, uh, well, that's where it gets kind of complicated..." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I like this, though I don't know if Wolfe intended it. But surely Purgatory\nwould be the Whorl _and_ Blue, with the conversation with Remora\ncorresponding to the final purging of Dante's sins; and the undepicted\nvoyage to the stars would be the Paradiso. That would make either Seawrack\nor Nettle Beatrice; either would fit. But who is Virgil, then? Since\nVirgil left Dante at the end of the Purgatorio, the logical candidate would\nbe Horn's spirit, which (as I've argued before) leaves Silk's body around\nthis time; which would mean that it is Silk who corresponds to Dante. But\nSilk wasn't on Green, except in astral form, and that came after the Whorl,\nso this doesn't fit." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "But there's also a political Commedia here, as the Narrator\njourneys through hell (the theo-monarchies of OBW), purgatory (the\nItalianate city-states of IGJ), and paradise (the democracy of Dorp\nand the jolly quasi-anarchy of NV), only political \"paradise\" ain't\nno paradise anyway, which leads me to point b." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "This, otoh, I don't see. There's no significant difference in forms of\ngovernance between the city-states of IGJ and those of RttW, as far as I\nremember; if anything, Blanko is better governed than either Dorp or New\nViron. And anyway, Dante liked theo-monarchies.\n\n--Adam\n\n\n*This is WHORL, for discussion of Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun." } ] } ] }