Subject: (whorl) Ask Gene Wolfe

From: m.driussi <m.driussi at genie.com>
Date: Mon, 12 May 1997 20:30:00 +0000

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

Attention ladies and gentlemen, lurkers and larkers, et cetera, et
ali, and all ships at sea.

In my regular correspondence with Gene Wolfe I asked him if he would
have the time for a round-table interview (about THE BOOK OF THE LONG
SUN) by snail mail, composed of questions from the Whorl list
audience.  He has agreed to this scheme, writing, "Collect some
questions and I'll proceed to dodge them."

Okay!  So here are the rules: interested parties should individually
come up with the one question they would most like to ask and post it to
the whorl list asap.  I would like to get something in the mail by
Friday, so we'll assume that is when the train is leaving the
station--the response and the next train would come a few weeks later.
Please limit the question to THE BOOK OF THE LONG SUN, and
(as we normally do anyway), be sure to cite the text if the question is
tied into a particular scene or scenes.

I'm thinking that each person can get in one question per round.
(Conditional follow-up questions can probably be appended.  I'll
judge on a case-by-case basis, so go ahead and include the follow-up
if you have it in mind.)

Don't be scared, don't be shy!

=mantis=

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From: Patri10629 <patri10629 at aol.com>
Date: Mon, 12 May 1997 18:08:36 +0000

Patrick O'Leary approaches the sphinx and asks his one question:

Who or What is Oreb?

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From: Michael Richman <mrichman at mail.cybernex.net>
Date: Mon, 12 May 1997 23:22:44 +0000

>From: m.driussi at genie.com
>Subject: (whorl) Ask Gene Wolfe
>Date: Mon, 12 May 97 20:30:00 GMT
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>

>=mantis=

Gene Wolfe seems to be very fond of pretenses that turn out to be the truth
(one might almost call them 'True Lies' if one were extraordinarily brave).

For example, Patera Silk thinks he's only pretending to sabotage the
Trigivante Derigible, when in fact instead of cutting off the fuel he's cut
off the lubricating oil, causing the engine to freeze.  Earlier, he plans to
fool the Trigivante general into believing Maytera Mint is alive by setting
a place at the table for her, but by the time the dinner begins he's already
learned that Mint is in fact alive.

I would like to ask him what is his attraction to situations like this?

Michael Richman
380 Homans Av
Closter, NJ  07624
mrichman at bc.cybernex.net

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From: Kieran Cleary <kcleary at tinet.ie>
Date: Tue, 13 May 1997 11:43:00 +0000

This is like the three wishes problem ("I wish for infinite wishes"). 
I guess I'd have to ask "What was Typhon's purpose in launching the 
Whorl and was the Blue/Green system the intended destination?"
Somebody will have to arbitrate as to whether that's two questions, 
but I can't help feeling that Mr. Wolfe will be tricksy in his 
answers. 

BTW, Michael Richman: somewhere in tBotNS, Severian says "Have I said 
that time turns our lies into truth?" referring to a number of similar
situations (his armiger disguise which made him seem "a pilgrim bound 
for some vague northern shrine" amongst them).

Lasrach

____________________________________________________________
Kieran Cleary
Senior Research Engineer
North West Labs
Finisklin Industrial Estate
Sligo
Republic of Ireland

Tel. +353 71 69441
Fax. +353 71 69451
email kcleary at nwlabs.com
___________________________________________________________

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From: Reusch <newsun at freeway.net>
Date: Thu, 15 May 1997 07:47:55 +0000

Thank you mantis for arranging this with Gene.

OK, I've got to know. What are Quetzal's motives?

I realize that's a pretty open-ended question, but like Mr. O'Leary, I 
don't know how or where to make it more specific than that.

Vance

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From: Derek Bell <dbell at maths.tcd.ie>
Date: Thu, 15 May 1997 20:20:09 +0000

>questions and I'll proceed to dodge them."

	Ok - in the scene where Silk first meets Kypris, what is the
"beam" that she says has not yet been fixed? (This is before Silk goes
remembers to complete the "third circuit" and the rest of the
exorcism. I can see it as a possible biblical reference - the quote
about "removing the beam from your eye", but it a more literal
interpretation might be a link with the rest of the Whorl/Mainframe network.)

	Derek Bell (a.k.a. Tercel)

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From: Fernando Q. Gouvea <fqgouvea at colby.edu>
Date: Thu, 15 May 1997 18:11:35 +0000

OK, here's my question for Gene:

In Horn's "Defence", he writes: "Fewer than I have expected have found
fault with Silk's assertion that [Mint] took her warlike character from the
Goddess of Love, although it seems implausible to me." What did cause the
change in Mint's character?

-- 

Fernando Q. Gouvea			
Chair, Dept. of Math & CS		Editor, MAA Online
Colby College				http://www.maa.org
fqgouvea at colby.edu			fqgouvea at maa.org
==========================================================

No matter what other nations may say about the United States,
immigration is still the sincerest form of flattery.

---

From: m.driussi <m.driussi at genie.com>
Date: Thu, 15 May 1997 22:47:00 +0000

Reply:  Item #3615878 from WHORL at LISTS.BEST.COM@INET01#

Reef and Tercel,

Got the questions.  Thanks.

=mantis=

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From: Marcos B. Gouvea <m_gouvea at colby.edu>
Date: Thu, 15 May 1997 22:30:41 +0000

Gah! I was so busy doing my science fair project that I
didn't check my e-mail until now... I would've been disappointed if I
had missed this oppurtunity for some *real* answers to all those
mysterious questions. Cutoff is Friday, right? (I hope I hope I hope
I hope!)
	I don't really want to be attributed with ruining the
mysteries of the whorl, and I don't think I've really contributed
enough to justify me asking one of the big ones. It's being knawing
on me for a while anyway. So, with that in mind, my question is: "Who
WAS Blood's father?" I don't think we ever found it out.

		Bloody was a baby, 
		and Rosey was his Ma,
		and though she vowed her secrecy,
		We should know who was his Pa!

	Sorry. Just feeling a little inspired.

	In case anyone who hasn't asked their question yet didn't
notice, no one's thought of asking whether Blue/Green was St.
Anne/Whatever (I haven't read that series yet, so I wouldn't know).
Come on, we neeed to get all of the biggies! Also, did anyone ask
specifically for the five things Mint gave up after she became 15?
One final loose strand: At the beginning of Chapter 8 in Calde,
Marble/Rose remembers having seen an object in the sky and thinking
that it was dirty, causing the soldier nearby to remark "Why don't
you dust it?" Was the dirty object the Whorl?
	"A memory so remote that it seemed to have lain behind her
curved metal skull stirred at this, her third view. Dust flew, as
dust always does when something that has remained motionless for a
long time moves at last."
				
				Thanks!
					---Quill

=====================================================
Marcos Gouvea--------------------------m_gouvea at colby.edu

Brutha tried to nod, and thought: I'm on everyone's side. It'd be
nice if, just for once, someone was on mine.
        -- (Terry Pratchett, Small Gods)

---

From: Doug Eigsti <d.eigsti at worldnet.att.net>
Date: Thu, 15 May 1997 22:10:26 +0000

mantis,

	It is a daunting proposition to boil down all the variables and 
uncertainities from the Long Sun into just one question. The Whorl is 
nearly as grand and unsearchable as our world, peopled with characters 
toiling away in their quarter oblivious to the grand gambits of unseen 
forces above. Part of the mystique of the series is the mystery. If I 
know Gene Wolfe, never met him, he will not give away anything he 
deems important in an answer to a direct question that he has evaded 
in 1400 pages of fiction. Such things, it seems, are meant to be an 
exercise for the reader. I almost feel guilty in hoping that his 
answers are as elusive and diffuse, and delectible, as his text. I am 
reminded of LeGuin's THE LEFT HAND OF DARKNESS where one must take 
exacting care in drafting one's question else risk getting an 
unexpected answer. None the less, the offer is irresistable. Here's 
hopin':

	As has been lamented in these postings the publicized link between 
the NEW SUN and LONG SUN turns out to be tenuous when all is said and 
done, Typhon/Pas being the only common character. (Scylla seems only 
to share the common name). 
	My search for a more robust connection lead me to the story told to 
Severian by Cyracia of the "race of ancient days [that] reached the 
stars, and how they bargained away all the wild half of themselves to 
do so, so they no longer cared for wind...love or lust...songs or any 
other animal things they believed they had brought with them out of 
the rain forests at the bottom of time-though in fact, so my uncle 
told me, those things brought them." (SWORD, Ch.VI, p. 38, paperback). 
These machines later tried to restore the "wild" thoughts to men, in 
order to destroy them, by introducing "artifacts of every kind, 
calculated by them to revive all those thoughts that people had put 
behind them because they could not be written in numbers". (SWORD, Ch 
VI, p.39, paperback).
	The necessity for having living cultures on the Whorl segregated in 
city-states, isolated by topographical barriers fortified by Chem 
armies programmed to be mutually hostile in order to dissuade an 
organized revolt against Mainframe seems to be an overly complex means 
of transport, considering that Typhon obviously had access to 
"sleeper" technology (Mamelta). My question, in a roundabout way: Was 
the live cargo of the Whorl only put on board to preserve the "wild" 
half of mankind so the Typhon/Pas entity could establish a vital human 
vassal state on the destination world, or did the Inhumi require the 
"wild" parts to satisfy their blood lust?  

=Talon=
aka Doug Eigsti