Gene Wolfe's New Sun stuff

Gavin Steyn · 03 Oct 1992, 20:22 · from sf-lovers.1992.mbox

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From: steyn at cs.rochester.edu (Gavin Steyn)
Subject: Re: Gene Wolfe's New Sun stuff
Date: 3 Oct 92 20:22:15 GMT
Message-ID: <sflovers-v17-521-3 at digest.sf-lovers>
X-Digest-Issue: SF-LOVERS Digest V17 #521
X-Urthmirror-Source: https://archive.org/details/sf-lovers-digest-vol-17b

>Here's a question in return: at least one of the stories which Severian
>relates from his little brown book is recognizable - that of Theseus
>returning without changing his sails.  Can the other stories be matched up
>with tales we already know?

Except that the sources are more complicated than that...

  I don't remember that much of that sequence, but one thing I do remember
(partly because Wolfe confirmed it when I talked to him) was that the
battle between the giant and the scholar is not straight out of the
mionotaur legend - it also comes from the battle of the Monitor and the
Merrimack.  There are other sources in there too, but that's the main one I
recall.

  One of the stories comes from Kipling, I think, (_The Jungle Book_), but
I don't remember where it is.

  Someone should annotate these books one of these days...

Gavin Steyn

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