Subject: (whorl) Black Hole Series -- I hope not!

From: David_Lebling <david_lebling at avid.com>
Date: Tue, 12 Oct 1999 16:41:28 +0000

Lots of the speculations engendered by Kevin Maroney's hints (and some before
that -- it isn't his fault) revolve around what I call the Black Hole Series
philosophy.  That is, Urth is Green (or Blue), Blue is St. Anne, Silk is
Severian, Seawrack is Merryn, Horn is Silk's cousin, Horn is Severian's second
cousin twice removed, Marble is Jonas, and so on, until every detail of the
author's earlier works is sucked into the black hole of the current one.

In these sorts of series, it turns out everyone is related to everyone else, all
the mysteries are cleared up by connecting them with chains of infodump to all
the other mysteries, gods fly down from the ceiling on wires, galactic
conspiracies are exposed, and the whole enterprise is revealed to be a shaggy
dog story.  Asimov's attempt to spot-weld the Robot stories to the Foundation
series is the Milli Vanilla poster-child-classic of this genre, and Niven's
"Down in Flames" is the intentional _reductio ad absurdem_.

With all due respect to those who are speculating along these lines, that isn't
gonna be what Wolfe is doing here.  He's too good a writer for that.

I hope.

     -- Dave Lebling
     (aka vizcacha)

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From: Jim Jordan <jbjordan at gnt.net>
Date: Tue, 12 Oct 1999 16:04:56 +0000

the current series has always struck me as kind of hokey, and it will
require Wolfe at his best to convince me. Of course, I know he will, and
I'll be happy.
	I keep thinking that we've really got two huge trilogies going here. The
first consists of TBNS and TUNS, which leaves the story of Severian
hanging, and projects a third book (book series) left to go. And now it
appears that the current trilogy is going to leave us hanging, as Horn
seems to be left hanging, which might project a third and final set of
books to round out the Silk story.
	Oh, stupid me! Scratch that. I was thinking that OBW was written by
someone at the end of his own journey, but the next two volumes will carry
the total story forward, and perhaps round things out fully.
	But I'm not counting on it. Since when has Wolfe ever left us feeling that
it's all been told? 
	(He'd better not die anytime soon).

Nutria

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From: Michael Straight <straight at email.unc.edu>
Date: Wed, 13 Oct 1999 08:26:10 +0000

> gonna be what Wolfe is doing here.  He's too good a writer for that.

Here! Here! Huzzah! Amen! Me Too!

-Rostrum