mantis on TBOTSS and fanfic The Whorl list — 3 messages, 3 voices, 20 Jun 2001 https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/whorl/1454 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. ============================================================================== Michael Andre-Driussi — 20 Jun 2001, 17:26 Hoo, boy. Look here. I mean it! 1) TBOTLS is revealed near the end to have been written by Horn. 2) TBOTSS starts off with some revision to that--it wasn't just Horn, but Horn and his wife Nettle. There is also talk about the trials of publishing, from making the paper on up to the writing of the text in each book. TBOTSS is presumably being written by the narrator Horn alone this time, since Nettle is staying at home. Now it will be 100% Horn. 3) Deep into OBW (TBOTSS vol. 1) it is revealed that there are some editors involved. 4) Toward the end of TBOTSS it is revealed that the narrator wasn't so much Horn writing about Horn's adventure as it was Silk writing about Horn's adventure in absence of Horn (a switch on the situation in TBOTLS, where it was "Horn" [Horn/Nettle] writing about Silk's adventure in the absence of Silk). Then Silk leaves Blue and Nettle leaves, too. 5) Toward the end of TBOTSS it is revealed that some chapters were not written by the narrator Horn, and that these chapters were cobbled together by the editors (all born on Blue; two of them, Hoof and Hide, raised on/with/through TBOTLS). Now then, the editors Hoof and Hide. They are intimately connected to TBOTLS, but not as primary creators. They are immersed in the matter; it is in their mother's milk, if you like. They are so steeped in the stuff that I liken them to "fans," even though they did not voluntarily get into it (and fandom is voluntary, ain't it?). Because of their unique position, they are compelled to step up to the bat and take a wack at completing the manuscript--and they do. When H & H write about The Whorl, we know fully that they have never been there themselves, but ah--they =have= been there through the text of TBOTLS, just as we fans have. So again, H & H are equal to us readers in not knowing The Whorl at first hand and not knowing Silk at first hand. So the writing by H & H, while buttressed by interviews, snatches of conversation, and editorial consensus, amounts to a patch written by fans, which is rather like a fan fiction in the broad sense (rather than the specific sense of "slash" or "Mary Sue"). Now their wives are not likely to be as steeped as the twins are, but they nonetheless have an influence on the shaping of TBOTSS, and since they don't have so many memories of the people involved, their source of inspiration will be TBOTLS. TBOTSS is, therefore, part secondary creation--again, rather like fanfic in the broad sense. It is largely based upon characters and settings depicted in TBOTLS. Neither Horn, nor Nettle, nor even Silk is around to help them in this: nobody involved in the primary creation (TBOTLS) is available. All they have is their memory and the text of TBOTLS. =mantis= Sirius Fiction Has Moved To http://www.siriusfiction.com/ *This is WHORL, for discussion of Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Spectacled Bear — 21 Jun 2001, 08:10 follows, by subject match Michael Andre-Driussi At 01:26 2001-06-21, Michael Andre-Driussi wrote: ... > "slash" It's one of history's great lost opportunities that the inventor of this phrase didn't use one of the other names for the oblique character, "stroke". > Sirius Fiction > Has Moved To > http://www.siriusfiction.com/ What are the relations, if any, among www.sirius.com, www.siriusfiction.com, www.siriusbooks.com (whose web site shows only a CGI directory, inaccessible), www.sirius-books.com, and the Sirius Book Company who published some of Keith Roberts' work? Spectacled Bear. *This is WHORL, for discussion of Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Kevin J. Maroney — 21 Jun 2001, 11:33 follows, by subject match Spectacled Bear > At 05:26 PM 6/20/01 -0700, Mantis wrote: > So the writing by H & H, while buttressed by interviews, snatches of > conversation, and editorial consensus, amounts to a patch written by fans, > which is rather like a fan fiction in the broad sense (rather than the > specific sense of "slash" or "Mary Sue"). "Fanfic" is not the same thing as "fiction written by fans"; "fan" is not the same thing as "admirer of"; "biography" is not the same as "fiction". -- Kevin Maroney | Unplugged Games kmaroney at ungames.com | (212) 777-1190 *This is WHORL, for discussion of Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------