A Good Society

Lane Haygood · 11 Jul 2008, 17:32 · from 2008-July.txt.gz

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From: lhaygood at gmail.com (Lane Haygood)
Date: Fri, 11 Jul 2008 12:32:45 -0500
Subject: (urth) A Good Society
In-Reply-To: <48779714.8070705 at io.com>
References: <507061.55682.qm at web83701.mail.sp1.yahoo.com>
	<48779714.8070705 at io.com>
Message-ID: <177883BB-A6BD-48E0-BF38-94894A8A9400 at gmail.com>

Given the strong Gnostic vibe I get from a lot of Wolfe's work (not  
that I think he's a gnostic, mind you, but I think he mines the  
theology for plot points), the idea that the material world is flawed  
and evil isn't so strange.

Lane

On Jul 11, 2008, at 12:23 PM, Jeff Wilson wrote:

> John Smith wrote:
>> Can any one think of a Wolfe novel or story in which
>> he portrays a good society?   When I re-read  The Fifth Head of  
>> Cerberus, I realized
>> that on the first reading I had missed how brutal and
>> nasty the planet of Sainte. Croix is.  Urth and the
>> Whorl are also terrible places.    Stories like The
>> Death of Dr. Island have a cruel or indifferent
>> society in the background.
>> Wolfe doesn't seem to write about utopias.   But does
>> he ever show even a decent world?
>
> The Goddess' world in _There Are Doors_ is a pretty tranquil liberal  
> democracy similar to 1950's Britain - She reigns with the lightest  
> of hands and suffers Her people to govern themselves as long as Her  
> worship and personal property are respected.
>
>
> -- 
> Jeff Wilson - jwilson at io.com
> < http://www.io.com/~jwilson >
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