A Gene Wolfe glossary?

Emmet O'Brien · 16 Apr 1996, 15:11 · from sf-lovers.1996.mbox

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From: eaobrien at ebi.ac.uk (Emmet O'Brien)
Subject: Re: A Gene Wolfe glossary?
Date: Tue, 16 Apr 1996 15:11:56 GMT
Message-ID: <sflovers-v21-153-15 at digest.sf-lovers>
X-Digest-Issue: SF-LOVERS Digest V21 #153
X-Urthmirror-Source: https://archive.org/details/sf-lovers-digest-vol-21a

Destriers are definitely not horses.. they move much faster, and they
have fangs. There's an essay in _Castle of Days_, I can't for the life of
me remember if it's in _Castle of the Otter_ or the later part of the book,
where Wolfe goes into arguments re the utility of such a cavalry force,
making them sound like scaled-up cheetahs with a speed of c. 160 km/h.

  Many of the creatures, baluchitheres among them, are anglicisations of
the names of various fossil mammals: as a kid I was heavily into pop
palaentology books with lots of artists' impressions of such animals, and
what bits of description Wolfe gives for baluchitheres, diatrymae et al. do
fit with the clear images I still have of these things. Baluchitherium was
significantly bigger than modern elephants, IIRC it was the largest land
mammal known.

Emmet

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