just reading _Book of Days_

Transentient · 31 Jul 2006, 02:21 · from 2006-July.txt.gz

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From: transentient at gmail.com (Transentient)
Date: Sun, 30 Jul 2006 22:21:52 -0400
Subject: (urth) just reading _Book of Days_
In-Reply-To: <cc8d0a80a18e68893dd9f7d75bc70f85 at stanfordalumni.org>
References: <mailman.1.1154302497.28679.urth-urth.net at lists.urth.net>
	<cc8d0a80a18e68893dd9f7d75bc70f85 at stanfordalumni.org>
Message-ID: <236096EF-D5C2-4412-B68A-6605E197D850 at gmail.com>

Okay I'm rapidly running out of easily-obtainable Wolfe books to  
read. I've recently started on _Castle of Days,_ and I am ready to  
proclaim the stories in _Gene Wolfe's Book of Days_ to be, IMO,  
Wolfe's best short fiction.

I'm particularly fond of "How I Lost the Second World War and Helped  
Turn Back the German Invasion," I think it is officially my very  
favorite Wolfe short story. It's just a perfect little piece of  
science fiction - it is alternate history, has a clever ending, a  
terribly fun exposition of a logical game, contains the real world  
inside of it, as a board game, and, I am convinced, that business  
with the transistor is meant to explain how the real world relates to  
fiction, though which side of the transistor represents which, I am  
not sure.

And "Forlesen," wow, I haven't caught up on all of the more  
enlightened discussions to take place on this list about that one  
yet, but to me it seems like he might actually be talking about  
Gnosticism in there. The day that Forlesen leads is a life in the  
imperfect universe created by the Demiurge, who is either Mr Frick or  
the man in the black suit who asks him which Explainer he wants.  
Hmm...perhaps Forlesen is Jesus or the actual Christian God.

Right let me go catch up on those past posts before I waste too much  
bandwidth speculating...

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